Dora said to me: “Friday, we’re going to the theater.” I had sworn, I don’t remember after what pitiful play given at the Comédie-Française, to never go to the theater again, and in fact, it had been several months since we had last set foot there. But it’s a vow that I’ve made so many times when leaving a play… “I’ll never go to the theater again!” by exaggerating the circumflex accent on the has to try to imitate the inimitable voice of Jean-Pierre Marielle in Evening dressthe film by Bertrand Blier.
Remember, Depardieu, Miou-Miou and Michel Blanc, broke into the sublime apartment of an ultra-rich couple, took advantage of the moment to have a nice laugh, when suddenly, they were interrupted in their scene of menage a trois by the unexpected return of the ultra-rich couple, Jean-Pierre Marielle and Caroline Sihol, who return home in evening wear, walking slowly, tired, so disappointed that they throw their coats on the ground. The viewer then wonders what is distressing them so much because they have not yet seen that three ostrogoths had entered their home… Marielle is there, in the middle of his large living room, his arms dangling, he sighs, and, in his stentorian voice with its unparalleled bass, he blurts out: “I will never go to the theater again.” In this reply, all the despondency of the Parisian bourgeoisie, socially required to go and be bored at the theater once a month.
If you knew how many times we came home after a terrible evening at the theater throwing our coat on the floor, how many times I blurted out this fateful sentence, implicitly blaming Dora for having dragged me into this mess, and deprived of an evening in front of my computer burning while watching the Vincennes nightlife ! If you knew how many times in twenty years I have sworn never to go to the theater again, you would send a letter to the director of L’Express to tell him to stop sending me to the theater if it hurts me so much. .
Except that it’s not true, I love the theater, it’s my first love, I left everything for the theater when I was 14, family, studies and a bright future in I don’t know what, and it’s because nothing, in my eyes, is more overwhelming and exciting than theater, which I tolerate so badly that it disappoints me. And if I go back, it’s because I always hope to come across a play by Joël Pommerat, or a show by Christian Hecq.
Infantilizing
Dora didn’t tell me the other night that it was a participatory piece. She was careful not to do so. Or maybe she didn’t know it herself. And then, according to her, we had to go to the theater: “It’s been too long!” she said, as she would have said “It’s been too long since we last fucked”. How can we resist the charms of gentrification? Yet she knows that there is nothing I hate more than participatory theater. Already, at the cabaret, I find it painful, but at the theater, it’s infantilizing.
Participation is the thing that General de Gaulle launched after May 68. The great man believed that this gesture towards the youth and the proletariat would allow him to still be loved by his people. But the French were hostile to participation. Like me, in participatory theater. Still, from what I could tell from the applause, everyone loved it. Besides, the room was packed, thanks to excellent press and Mr. and Mrs. Word of Mouth, whose system worked to death, as said. I still felt that my neighbor on the left didn’t really like it.
As for Dora, she slept three quarters of the show. On my shoulder. The other miraculous thing is that when we left the theater, there was a bus there, right at the stop, we ran, the doors were already closed, but the nice driver opened the door for us, and nothing There’s nothing cooler than a trip through Paris at night, aboard an almost empty bus.