Director's statement

Why do I like Anthony Noack's writing?

I like the tone of Noack's writing: absurd comedy. It offers a disenchanted look on our world expressed with a bitter-sweet irony, but also a good laugh! That's why I think Comedy is an excellent genre to use to get onto confronting subjects: People have fun, they relax and they become more open and receptive to the words. 

I also enjoy the meta-theatrical elements that Noack often bases his plays around. Meta-theatre or "The play within the play" is very much one of my key focuses. It allows me to question the devices of drama and, more generally, the conventional ways of making a theatre piece.

Have we previously worked together?

I worked with Anthony previously on Brighter/Whiter for the Melbourne Comedy festival in 2011. I had just arrived in Australia from Paris. He was my first professional encounter in Melbourne and his writing was a perfect fit to my work! How lucky!

B/W recounts the attempts of two wannabe ad men to ascend the corporate hierarchy. They imagine scenarios and set up the scene in the mailroom at the basement of an advert company's building. It made perfect sense to feature them as actors performing a play. 

What about this project?

Banana Republic is about a sitcom showing the life of four young people in a share house. The house is being organized into a commune as a ploy by one of its members, Julian, who wants to teach a lesson to his cousin and house mate, Jen. 

The sitcom scenario is full of the usual improbable comical situations typical of this genre. But it turns out to be quite realistic as our society itself is full of grotesque contradictions that you couldn't write in a serious script. Truth is more absurd than fiction. 

I was very attracted by the form of the sitcom because it opens once again the possibility of "the play within the play". And it will allow me to play with the devices of a TV set, such as cuts, repetitions, actor's preparations or technicians working around the set. It's a great opportunity to have an insight on the backstage, the whole making process, everything that an audience is not use to seeing. I want to reveal the production of "fun". Exposing the process is a way for me to deconstruct the sitcom's form to show all the aspects of it: the incredible energy of the actors, the efficiency of the scenario, the mad rhythm but also its rigidity and directive side. When you watch a sitcom you're told when you should laugh, when you should be moved, when you should applause... The deconstruction allows me to offer moments of distance to the audience for them to get a bit of a perspective on what they're watching. 

Why am I so fond of meta-theatre?

It opens the possibility of two distinct narrations: The story and the play. To define them: The story features the actors embodying characters and the play features the actors performing in front of an audience. This duality is what I'm playing with. 

The story is what has been written by the playwright and the play is what I'm composing with the actors during the rehearsals but also every single night leaving space for improvisation in the body of the performance. It's a great specificity of Theatre. It implies elements of Fiction, the story, and elements of Reality, the live performance. So as different temporalities: within the performance several times co-exist: the Story has been written ahead and sets in a fictional time whereas the play is speaking of the present time, the "here and now". It speaks of actors and audience sharing the experience of the show in the same space at the same time. This is this very unique aspect of theatre. It is what attracted me to it and made me become director.

I focus my work on the experience: the live performance which allows a direct relationship between performers and audience. Theatre is the only art offering that device as a necessary element. Therefore the audience is a part of the show as a matter of fact. I'm acknowledging this fact in my work. I play with the theatrical devices to question the conventional ways of making theatre and attempt to form new processes more current and more relevant to the specificities of theatre

How do I do that in practical terms?

I expose all the theatrical devices: nothing is hidden. For instance there is no backstage. Or, I should say, no hidden one. I just mark the boundary of the performing space and you can see the actor coming in and out of it. You get to see the costume changes or the little ritual of preparation before entering the scene. 

I try to base my work on fundamental elements of theatre: the performer, the stage (or performing space) and the audience. Then you can ad: the text (or choreography), lights and sounds. But no props, no decoration, nothing that is not strictly essential.

I engage the actors in a work where they perform on two levels: as a character and as... themselves. In other words, they will drop in and out of the character in order to question its relevance. At the end of the day, the character is just a concept. I don't think it's the Alpha and Omega of performing art. It's a construction that helps actor to figure their role. It's certainly handy but it becomes too often a display of virtuosity from the actor. He's too focused on his own acting performance and becomes less aware of the bound with the audience. When I go to theatre, I often have the feeling that if i wasn't there watching it wouldn't change anything to the performance. I feel a barrier between performers and I. So I don't feel it affects me. The variation on performance level I work with is designed to deconstruct "the fourth wall", brick by brick. And it opens a direct relationship with the public. acknowledging the actual participation of the public in the play.

Isn't it too conceptual and boring?

Not at all! It is very conceptually based but the result is very entertaining and fun as well as thought provoking. There is a lot of variations and a lot of things happening. You never get bored. And something I find very beautiful with theatre is even though you're exposing every tricks the magic remains. 

What are your influences?

Mainly the new german theatre. Directors like Frank Castorf, René Pollesch or Christoph Schlingensief. But also Pina Bausch.