Savagery spreads, the savages respond to each other, and here are the artists summoned to mix their voices in the concert of ignominies, at the edge of the stage, like an ancient choir. But they are silent. Their silence is deafening, according to the prevailing cliché. If only. It is their last hope, that their silence serves as an example, gives a little hope, reassures, provides refuge, becomes like a force, a weight. The beautiful, majestic silence of the artists. The antidote to the poison of opinions. A silence which would escape even the concept of non-violence, and which no one could claim. An inappropriate, antisocial, scandalous, resistant, stubborn, courageous silence. The silence of those who continue to paint, sing, write, the silence that slips between the hatreds, the insults, the threats. The silence of the ruins, too, and the cemeteries.
The artist who “speaks”, the one who “takes the floor” – and generally, because he is a cabotine, keeps it – ceases at that very moment to be an artist. And if he has to go to war, so much the better and too bad for him, a soldier through the force of bad things, a propagandist through contagion, anger, despair, everything is possible and will be the subject of a story, of a painting, a song… by the artist he will have become again, if he returns.
After this step aside to proclaim the right to silence, let’s talk about the artists who no longer have a voice. Old. The forgotten, those left out of glory, those excluded from the limelight: retired actors. For them, rest is worse than death, the double punishment of disgrace and misery. Know that today they are parked, there are no other words, in an accommodation establishment for dependent elderly people, poorly medicalized, in which our cacochyme acrobats have no other leisure than to rehash the memories of a celebrity whose ungrateful society makes them pay a hundredfold for the lost privileges. This establishment in Pont-aux-Dames is on the verge of bankruptcy. Will you believe it? In the industry, we call it “the Frenchman’s dying place”. Yes, French! Because they are all veterans of the Comédie-Française who vegetate out of sight.
Consider that they moved our grandparents, our parents and sometimes ourselves, as children, in THE Bourgeois gentleman and I’m not talking about Cyrano, and this is where our retirees from the Comédie-Française are reduced to it, every evening, to keep their refuge afloat: they participate, by force more than willingly, in a most degrading television show. What if it was them, is the title of this merciless spectacle, consisting of subjecting the nursing homes of theater companies to a histrionics competition. Spectators vote, send money, the media-electoral hysteria is maintained by Alban Vauqueur (the name of Laurent Stocker has been changed), a bouncy demagogue whose lock of hair is the craziest, the most platinum blond in the PAF. The tournament takes place live from Vieux-Colombier, every evening, except Monday, until November 5.
This pathetic farce, as defined by its authors, Christophe Montez and Jules Sagot, is not broadcast on any existing television channel, nor on Netflix or on Imposs-gouv.fr. It’s just a play of drollery, sadism and intelligence to die for.
What if it was them does not question the place of elderly people in our society, its authors are silent on this. They simply inform us that the nursing homes they visited when their grandparents were there and died were also a source of inspiration, with first-rate theatrical situations. It’s their place, their job, their role, whatever you want to call it, their destiny as artists to write a play that takes place there. With all the freedom, fantasy, tenderness of which they are capable.