“Médée” by Max Rouquette (France/Burkina Faso)
By Stefano • May 18th, 2008 • Category: Agenda| June 8, 2008 9:00 pm | a | June 12, 2008 9:00 pm |
MÉDÉE
by Max Rouquette
directed by Jean-Louis Martinelli
coproduction Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers and Napoli Teatro Festival Italia
from 8th to 12th June 9.00pm
Real Albergo dei Poveri
First night
language French, Occitan (Italian supertitles)
duration 120′
music by Ray Lema
set-designGilles Taschet
light design Marie Nicholas
sound design Philippe Cachia
costume Patrick Dutertre
make-up artist Françoise Chaumayrac
Bambara translations Habib Dembele e Odile Sankara
with Odile Sankara, Bakary Konate, Mariam Kone, Moussa Sanou, Hamadou Sawadogo, Ténin Dembele, Adiaratou Diabate, Haoua Diawara, Assetou Demba, Karidia Konate, Fatimata Kouyate, Blandine Yaméogo, Kabore Joel, Thiombiano Diama
musician Baba Kouyaté
artistic collaboration Florence Bosson
technical direction Patrick Bonnereau
light direction Jean-Marc Skatchko
sound direction Philippe Cachia
Jean-Louis Martinelli directs African actors in the mise-en-scene of Euripides’s text, rewritten in Occitan language and signed by Max Rouquette.
Euripides’s Medea is an Oriental sorceress of royal origins who left everything behind for the sake of Giasone’s love, but ends up lonely and forsaken in turn. Hurt and burning for vengeance she commits the unimaginable act: the murder of her sons to punish Giasone’s perjury. Rouquette rewrites Euripides’s text which results in a magnificent and intense work, sweet and monstrous at the same time, where the main character is transfigured, because of the emptiness and wandering.
Martinelli’s Médée stages the encounter between Rouquette’s text and Africa. According to what the director wrote in his travel book, the Occitan poet’s text reveals an intimate connection to the African continent «because it is based on the observation of nature, abounding with plants and stellar movements and entangled to the basic essentials, to the main source of survival for every human being».
And then there is the African nation with its stammering democracies, ethnic conflicts and frail boundaries, from where every tragedy regarding exile and cultural belonging resounds. Thus, the sacred chants invented by Rouquette himself to extend the dialogue topics, from passion to abandonment, from anguish to nothing, are entrusted to the chorus of the Bambara women who sing in their own dialect to the music composed by Ray Lema, a remarkable character committed to promoting synthesis between western music and African traditions. «The Neapolis of the Mediterranean – as Jean-Louis Martinelli suggests– welcomes the legendary Boat-people, Médée. Médée, a king’s daughter carried away from the splendour of power by the winds, finds herself left behind. What better place than the Inn of the poor to find shelter? Which other place, which other location could we assign to the other, the foreigner, the
stranger?».
In 1977 Jean-Louis Martinelli establishes the Théâtre du Réfectoire company in Lione, with whom he stages Le Cuisinier de Warburton by Annie Zadek (1980), Savage passions based on Sofocle’s Elettra and on several texts by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Pier Paolo Pasolini (1982) taken from the Italian author’s work, L’opera da tre soldi (The Three Penny Opera) (1983) by Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill, to mention some. Later on he was appointed director of the theatre of Lione and staged several texts, such as La Maman et la putain (1990) by Jean Eustache, L’Eglise (1992) by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Impressions-Pasolini inspired on Pier Paolo Pasolini and Les Marchands de Gloire (1993) by Marcel Pagnol. In the same year he was appointed director of the Théâtre National de Strasbourg (TNS) where he directs, in particular, Roberto Zucco (1995) by Bernard-Marie Koltès, Oedipus Tyrannus (1998) by Sofocle, Phaedra (2000) by Yannis Ritsos and still in the same year, Catégorie 3:1 by Lars Norén. The latter marks the beginning of his collaboration with the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers where he becomes director in 2002. Among his latest works, we wish to point out: Mitterand et Sankara by Jacques Jouet and Détails by Lars Norèn.
location: Real Albergo dei Poveri
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