This year, at the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des papes, in the prestigious setting of the Avignon Festival, Julie Deliquet presents her latest creation: Welfare. Through this show, the director continues to capture life at the heart of human comedy, offering audiences a unique and profound theatrical experience. The DRAC Île-de-France went to meet him to highlight his career, his commitments, his vision of the theatre... and this upcoming Avignon moment.
Rehearsals of the play "Welfare" directed by Julie Deliquet, after the film by Frederick Wiseman © Pascal Victor
Child, quel was your environment cultural? What was your relationship to art?
I was more of a self-taught person, meaning that I did not regularly attend cultural venues with my family. Nevertheless, my father painted and played several instruments. My mother was a great reader. My sister danced and I did shows every week in my room. So it was more of a playground where culture was part of the walls of the house and everyone took it as they wanted. We went to the movies, not the theater at all. As a spectator, I met the culture much later, once I did it myself from adolescence.
Why just haveDid you choose theatre after a trip to film studies?
Because I’ve always been in theatre, even before I’ve been in film. I’ve never studied theatre. I first did theatre by myself. Then, very quickly, when it was necessary to find a workshop on Wednesday afternoon, in the MJC of our neighborhood, that’s what I chose. So I’ve always been in theatre.
"First, I did theater by myself."
On the other hand, my sector high school offered what was called an A3 section (arts) which was not a theatre section but a film and visual arts section. So I naturally chose an arts education for an artistic baccalaureate, while continuing, at the same time, to practice the theatre in an amateur way, on Wednesday afternoons and weekends.
The teaching of cinema that we had, of very high quality, led me to frequent the cinemas. Thanks to this section and the exceptional teaching we had, we did all the festivals in France, we met artists, directors… I had an infinite chance. It was my area school, and I didn’t go and get that facility.
So I met art in a different way than doing it, which had always been the case for me, because I also painted, I fiddled with furniture, built cabins, put on shows where I played in them… All this was really childish but very important to me. I could not have stopped doing this practice. But the latter was absolutely not conscious, I did not know what I liked the most in terms of forms, I did not know the past of these arts, nor how they fit into time, in the present, how these arts mutated… All this, I did not meet him with the history of theatre but with the history of cinema, film analysis, the history of art. It was a great encounter, not with practice, but with the works of others and the artists who carried them.
This awakened in me a look and most certainly influenced the fact of becoming a director rather than an actress. Once I got my BA, I met the theatre - while keeping an appetite for films and pursuing film studies - just by reading more theatre, going more, meeting teachers who, themselves, spoke of other teachers and other actors. But the technical aspect, the relation to the duration of the cinema in relation to the immediacy and vitality of the living and the ephemeral, proper to the living spectacle (whether it is, moreover, when we look at it in a theatre, whether we make it or embody it when we are in performance), this vibration, I have never met in such a powerful way at the cinema.
It was the living that made me choose the theatre, which had always been my instinct. These three arts (film, visual arts and theatre) continue to be very present in the theatre I am looking for today.
What men and fHave theater women helped build your imagination and inspired you as an artist?
I’m very inspired by the work of others generally. I can be inspired by something that I don’t like. I am not looking for recognition, role models or masters. I was raised by parents sixty-eight years old, in the anti-model of authority. The education of my parents is emancipation, the ability to assert myself in and for who I was and, therefore, to find myself.
"When I found myself, I realized that I am totally dependent on others."
I like this dependence, I like dispossession. I am inspired, as a spectator and as a reader, by the work of others. I am not jealous or envious: I have an insatiable appetite to look at art. I let myself get through it. They make me wonder about my own place.
When it comes to men and women in theatre, they never inspired me for I myself have never had the will to fit into any line. I was struck by those who could lead a lot of people in an unusual setting and give us an experience. It was moments, not journeys or masters, that shaped my career.
Why did you choose to take the plunge and apply for the direction of a venue – in this case the Théâtre Gérard-Philipe, centre dramSaint-Denis National Park – in 2019?
I don’t have an institutional background at all, I didn’t go to national school. I love school and I liked being a student in school, before I was a theatre student. I liked working in a group, on promotion. So I had a more shaped path by the troupe and by the places.
In Vitro: Catherine and Christian (end of game) © Sabine Bouffelle
When we started founding the In Vitro collective, we started from scratch: these are places that made our band history recognized. First, city theatres – I am thinking of the Vanves theatre, which established that collectives could coexist with each other and not against each other – and then through the institution.
"I always felt that I was doing my theatre in houses anchored in a territory."
Very inspired by others, I thought it was great that we were bands. We surely had a common manifesto of a theatre made of a theatre of actors, actors-creators and very diverse aesthetic forms. That was the identity of my career. I always felt that I was doing my theatre in homes anchored in a territory.
With the In Vitro collective, we like to be in touch with life, with transmission. We have often been associated artists and we were for the first time in Saint-Denis, at the Théâtre Gérard-Philipe, under Jean Bellorini’s first mandate. There, we worked a lot with the schools, the hospital, the prison, even when we were no longer associated with artists in Saint-Denis but in Lorient, in Saint-Étienne.
Everywhere, we have maintained our missions of artistic action in the territory. We were there and we are committed to it. We felt – and feel – that we could give a little and we received so much, both as citizens and as individuals. These missions had become so important that I wanted to embody them in a place, for the work we were doing and the work I wanted to do. I wanted to find a territory over time.
As a company director, I also want to recreate a link with other companies and other directors. I wanted to find a collective work, not only on the artistic, but on a collective thought; in short, to find what we had at the beginning of the creation of the collective In Vitro.
In Vitro: La Noce © Sabine Bouffelle
Thus, we wondered what theatre we wanted to do together: it could only be in Saint-Denis. It is a territory on which we had the opportunity to work collectively. Everything made sense since it all started there, it was instinctive.
What are the main lines of your project as director, and what dynamics have you wanted to drive since your arrival?
The first main line is drawn around youth, with shows designed for all ages of life, from early childhood to the young public, childhood, preadolescence, with a dynamic that tends to create shows for the 6e-5e, forgotten by programming.
"The troupe makes me vibrate!"
I would like to encourage shows for this very special age that is pre-adolescence, with themes for high school students and a series of shows that move outside the walls, especially in high schools far from city centres. I want to take the theatre to those who do not have the opportunity to go there.
I also want to think about how a national drama centre can support creation and make it shine. That’s why I decided to schedule two first shows by young artists, one by a female team and the other by a male team. On the big stages, I have the will to defend what made my identity and the identity of collectives, bands, troops around me. The troupe makes me vibrate. I am amazed, as a spectator, by these bodies, by the difference, by the world; moreover, by the fact of seeing people doing theatre together.
Every time I go into a classroom and I improvise, I’m surprised at how well young people are doing. In life, we lose this notion of being together and so many. It does not exist, this "being together", 30 as in a classroom. It is precisely our power to do together that gives me faith, since it is together that we can still try great things today.
"I intend to defend creation embodied by women."
Among my guidelines, I hope that women will lead major projects. I intend to defend the creation embodied by women, since we know that there is still work to be done. Although programming parity is increasing - we cannot say that it is established everywhere - there are hidden inequalities. For example, inequalities in the means of production are still extremely marked today. I am also thinking of the unequal sharing of seats, since women are often programmed in small rooms. Who says small room says small tray, smaller budget, therefore smaller exhibition, while women need it, envy. These findings highlight the difficulty behind claiming to be legitimate candidates in a place. All of that is really a big mesh, I understand. I therefore intend that the Théâtre Gérard-Philipe will embody and give a place to other women creators.
Théâtre Gérard-Philipe, Centre dramatique national de Saint-Denis © Pascale Fournier
I want this theatre to be a place that allows research and takes into account the long time, as other places have done for me and for the In Vitro collective before. I am talking here about the relationship to duration, one of the main axes of my project as director of the Théâtre Gérard-Philipe. To assert that a national drama centre is a production house implies a time of research, a time of work, a time to miss and start again. It is necessary to understand that all this is done over time. We are looking for productions: we are not a house looking for products and this is very important to me.
"It is not so much documentary theatre, but documented theatre. Fiction is created from reality."
I took up my duties just at the beginning of the pandemic with a closed theatre. All these axes were initially difficult to implement in a practical way because we were no longer performing, the curtain was closed. Our first missions and the return to the exercise of our professions were finally done outside the walls, in connection with the structures of the city, such as the school, the hospital, the social centers and the neighborhood houses. This social line has always been a field line for us. It has become an editorial line with social and political themes. It is not so much documentary theatre, but documented theatre. Fiction is created from reality. The social concept has always been present in our gesture. It exploded when I took office because it is a fundamental guideline of my mandate.
Is the theatre thenWhat role do you think theatre plays today?
In rehearsal, we have time to look, that is to say to miss, to resume, not to find and to start again. This is not a luxurious time, but a necessary time, especially when it comes to art. So I wonder about the possibility of taking this precious time in life. Human experience means taking a time for encounter, for collective questioning, for questioning.
"The present moment is political because it brings us together in a world that is ours."
In the theatre there is, of course, a search for results, but it is a path and this path is as in the moment, in the duration. This is a path that is also part of our world and our present. This is what I like about the live performance. From there, the present moment is political since it brings us together in a world that is ours.
Each representation is unique, different, because it is part of the living. The permanent, democratic interrogation is very current and updated day by day. This is why I feel that our place is a place of aesthetic research and a search for common thoughts.
In addition, we are always forced to question the reasons to appear before other humans and to speak up, it is something completely crazy. So we build relationships around us. I will for example receive a kindergarten class that will hang drawings in my decor following a project around my show. We leave for Avignon with 20 high school students from Saint-Denis, who will be present for 5 days at our side. In short, I wonder about the possibility of forging a bond, a conversation, projects and ideas through a work and not just through its representation.
"We have the power to invent things together."
It is true that we are free to do, and that makes this place unique. At the same time, it is difficult. We lack the means, we are in resistance, like any sector of the public service. But we have this opportunity to try to develop a research for others, for children, for inhabitants, but also for other structures of the city. We have the power to invent things together. Enrichment is mutual and, from there, art is at the centre of the city.
Theatre is not a strange thing, in a room immersed in the dark and cut off from the world. It’s something that creates a bond, a sense, a common question. It’s a place of action. So I can’t look at my work as one of the larger institutions, the hospital or the school, which are some of the most active places in the world. That is why our public theatre missions are totally within a territory and a common thought.
WhatAnd that means for you to put on a show for the Cour d'honneur of the Avignon Festival?
For me all part of the work of art. It is the fact of showing Welfare to the Court of Honor that means something to me. I am moved to speak on behalf of these men and women, politically it makes sense and therefore artistically as well.
Rehearsals of the play "Welfare" directed by Julie Deliquet, based on the film by Frederick Wiseman © Pascal Victor
Before that, Jean Vilar had the political will to put art at the centre of the city and to bring the word of those men and women who are probably no longer in this world, the word of people who sleep in the street or who are on the verge of falling, or on the verge of escaping and putting words on their condition as citizens.
"All these invisible people we represent will be put to a vote in the Court of Honour."
It is bringing the word of these people to the Court of Honour, a symbolic place, out of the ordinary, that is important to me. they say is essential to hear today, they are words of survival that question the inequalities of our world.
What also counts is the fact that this show is staged by a designer, a woman and carried by a team of people with various ages, ranging from 20 to 70 years. All these invisible people we represent will be put to a vote in the Court of Honour.
I do not know at this hour what my show will be but I do not ask myself the question of its legitimacy to be shown to the Court of Honour. I am not alone. What is strong for me is to repeat in Saint-Denis, to go to the Cour d'honneur and then go back to Saint-Denis. That is why children come to hang their drawings and high school students come with us to Avignon. All this makes sense.
Why have choisi to adapt Frederick Wiseman’s documentary? How was the meeting with the director?
It’s the other way around. Frederick Wiseman is a great theatre fan who divides his life between Boston where he lives, New York where he works and France where he stays regularly. At the beginning of 2020, after seeing my work, he calls me and offers me a meeting. He shows me his work, makes me attend editing sessions.
Frederick Wiseman then reveals to me that he always thought that there was theatre in his films and that they would be likely to be good plays. He speaks to me more particularly of a work, which takes place in a social center in New York and which seems to him still relevant today, Welfare. Frederick wishes to entrust me with his adaptation.
At first I do not project myself at all in a hypothetical adaptation of the documentary since I do not know it yet and am not used to operate by command. On the other hand, I just made a short film with the Paris Opera. The latter raises the issue of disease and care and is largely located in the oncology department of the Gustave Roussy Hospital in Villejuif, the largest cancer centre in Europe.
The porosity between documentary and fiction leads me to consider the documentary genre as an engine. I find it very close to the methodologies of the live show. The meeting with Frederick Wiseman was very powerful, after watching Welfare, I am shocked, as a spectator, by the work of this gentleman and by the power of the protagonists' words.
After my appointment to Saint-Denis, we maintained a strong connection with Frederick. We continued to trade, he confessed to me never wanting to entrust the rights of Welfare to someone other than me, whether I decide to take it back or not. Frederik Wiseman withdrew any paternalism or injunction that might have rendered me incapable of making the play. He gave me time to make this work my own.
Rehearsals of the play "Welfare" directed by Julie Deliquet, based on the film by Frederick Wiseman © Pascal Victor
Indeed, in Saint-Denis, the social issue had become predominant in the pandemic context and I had a real admiration for the men and women in action in the territory. Obviously the institutions were also heavily involved in the management of the crisis but the associations were crazy. The invention, the vitality of the department and the city to invent reception facilities, to invent food banks, to fill the lack of connection that all young people who had been confined to difficult conditions had felt, have left a mark on me. Of course I didn’t do any of that, but I attended and therefore I wanted to invent things with these structures.
"Finally I was not going to imitate the characters of the film, I was going to have to make visible the invisible, the collective body, and reincarnate these men and women in a new skin and in a new direction."
Finally, the social center in Welfare I had looked very admiringly, impressed by Frederik’s work at the beginning of 2020, resonated with me a year later. The questions were not exactly the same but between the film I had made earlier, the taking office in Saint-Denis, the theme of care, the theme of public service, social work, the question of adapting Welfare became evident.
The question was to change the format. Frederick Wiseman made his film in black and white with zoomed-in portraits, I had to "zoom out" his work and this collective that we mean by the sound, I had to give him body and face. Finally I was not going to imitate the characters of the film, I was going to have to make visible the invisible, the collective body, and reincarnate these men and women in a new skin and in a new direction.
For that, we needed an open territory, a symbolic territory, like a land of asylum, a little windy, in which these men and women would try to rebuild the democratic notion and the notion of territory.
I didn’t really know about the Avignon festival but soon enough the Cour d'honneur was mentioned. I didn’t think it was for me, Avignon. Finally it was for them, for these voices that we were going to carry and reincarnate in new skins.
What a domi feelinga few days before the premiere? Is it stress, excitement, fear?
I’d say hyper-concentration on work. The latter requires a crazy radicalism and an almost surgical observation of the human condition, which escapes any notion of classical construction. It’s scary, but it’s very exciting. There is a constant stage fright, comparable to the one we have when we give birth, go on stage or start a chemotherapy protocol. In the theatre we know that everything is false. Nevertheless, the attempt is true, more important than the result.
People are in such a fragile situation, workers and users are tired of exhaustion. From the moment one has a comfort in the theatrical exercise, one must have the courage to remove it because the theatre must never repair the fragility but on the contrary incarnate it. Any notion of staging must fall, it means that the human must be the only master aboard his own destiny and at the same time he depends on others, one must in fact radicalize everything. To try to keep the dizziness in WelfareEvery actor doesn’t know when he is in the show, we are in a hyper dependence. The idea is to reproduce the fragility and the strength of the insolence to say "if I am given a place, I will take it and I will not leave it".
Finding this survival requires training as for a high level sport. The idea is not to succeed every day, but to take the risk of going further. When we go further we fall, then we wonder if in a month we will be able to stop falling. We are really in a physical training much more than in a classic rehearsal, we take the risk of falling every day but we also take the risk of doing things that we thought impossible.
It’s one of the most exciting things I’ve done in my life and the most dizzying at the same time.
What are your prosjets then?
I’m going to work for two months with the graduating class of the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique. We will be half the time in Saint-Denis and the other half at the conservatory. We will work on the question of social struggles from the work of Robert Linhart, The Established, written in the late 1960s and written by his daughter Virginie Linhart.
In the latter, she talks with the children, sons and daughters of Maoists and revolutionaries to discover the inheritance they have received from their parents.
In parallel, we will conduct research with students in the territory, to observe and study the social struggles embodied by the structures and individuals of the Seine-Saint-Denis. This approach will allow us to establish a dialogue between our professions as artists and our infiltrations into the real world, with the aim of developing a common reflection based on the two works mentioned and the documentary work that we have done on the ground.
It’s a show called An invisible night envelops us and will be created at the very end of the year in December 2023.
Welfare, directed by Julie Deliquet, based on Frederick Wiseman’s film.
First performance at the Festival d'Avignon 2023, produced by the Théâtre Gérard-Philipe, Centre dramatique national de Saint-Denis.
From 5 to 14 July 2023 at the Court of Honour of the Popes' Palace.
Show broadcast on France 5 on July 7 and available on Culturebox on 23 July.
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