I wrote Architecture for Audrey Bonnet, Emmanuelle Béart, Anne Brochet, Marie-Sophie Ferdane but also for Jacques Weber, Stanislas Nordey, Laurent Poitrenaux, Arthur Nauzyciel, Denis Podalydès and Pascal Rénéric.
After Clôture de l’amour for Audrey Bonnet and Stanislas Nordey, after Avignon à vie for Denis Podalydès, after Répétition for Emmanuelle Béart, Audrey Bonnet, Stanislas Nordey and Denis Podalydès, after Argument for Marie-Sophie Ferdane and Laurent Poitrenaux, after De mes propres mains and L’Art du théâtre for Arthur Nauzyciel, after Une vie for Denis Podalydès. And after a wait of 25 years, – time is wonderful – I say to Jacques Weber “I want to write for you, I want all these names without forgetting Pascal Rénéric and Anne Brochet, to come to work together, a tightly-knit group in this new play: Architecture.
Architecture is a brutal family story.
A total collapse. Between the early days of modernity, WW1 and Anschluss. A period of 30 years, full of hopes and expectations, floundering in the most dreadful bloodbath. A time when language itself cannot express anything, when it dies.
The story of an exceptionally brilliant family firmly grasped by the violent hand of a demented father. All of them are brilliant; the sons, the daughters, the sons and daughters in law. All the men are architects, composers, philosophers, writers, scientists, all the women are philosophers, writers, actresses, painters; all of them have devoted their lives to thinking and seeking beauty. Each and everyone will die ruthless deaths, violent deaths, at war, or throwing themselves out of a window, or at the hands of their own father, of madness, of hunger, of despair, by handfuls in trains or in the camps. Each of them will have fought for more intelligence, more knowledge, more justice and a better grasp of the world. All will die. All without exception. In spite of their knowledge of the world, of language, of philosophy, of literature, of art and science they will not be able to prevent horror from spreading all over Europe, covering it in a shroud of blood and shame.
Architecture shows how the most beautiful structures happen to collapse and crush dead their brightest children; Architecture is a memento mori for the present; if the most brilliant men and women have failed to prevent the bloodbath, what shall we do in the face of barbarity and bloodbath if we have to face it as unprepared as we are nowadays?

Pascal Rambert

Interview of Pascal Rambert by Marie Plantin

The cast, a close-knit guard
Your project is to bring together on stage most of the major actors you have directed along your career.
How did you happen to think of it, to get them all in the same story?
I first thought of writing Architecture in 2014 as I was working on Répétition with Emmanuelle Béart, Audrey Bonnet, Stanislas Nordey and Denis Podalydès. This is when the idea sprouted in my brain; at the end of the stage performances, I told them we would do it together when I was free to work on it. And then the idea grew as I was working on Argument with Marie-Sophie Ferdane and Laurent Poitrenaux and then Arthur Nauzyciel and I naturally included him in the project since we were working together on De mes propres mains and L’Art du théâtre. So the project matured for a certain number of years, long enough to be able to combine the agendas of everyone. But the spark that lit the whole project was Jacques Weber. The play has been built around his character. I have known him for ages and started thinking of writing for him around twenty years ago. And then I was able to involve Pascal Rénéric too. So the cast built itself rather naturally like a jigsaw puzzle. In fact, it is a condensed reflection of all my previous casts. It brings together all the actors I have worked with in the past eight years or so, and as we fortunately got on well, it encouraged me to go forward. All the more so as they all have professional links which makes it easier to work together. For instance, Marie-Sophie Ferdane and Audrey Bonnet have played in La Comédie Française and Denis Podalydès is still there. Arthur Nauzyciel has directed Marie-Sophie Ferdane in La Dame aux Caméliias and La Mouette. Emmanuelle Béart has been directed by Stanislas Nordey, etc. etc. There are strong links between them.
Far from me the purpose of having a casting of stars. We just want to work together because our collaboration is friendly and fruitful. That’s all. We have built a kind of temporary group without sticking the label “collectif” on it. This is how things are going between us.

Performing in La Cour d’honneur
Architecture will open the Festival of Avignon in the Cour d’honneur. It is a privilege. Has this any influence on the writing of the play?
Actually when I started writing Architecture, I didn’t know we would be in the Cour d’honneur. When I discovered it, last autumn, I had already written almost half of the play. So I started working on it again, as if going upstream; and I changed its structure almost completely. Because writing for the Cour d’honneur is not like working for any other place. Beyond its architecture, beyond the space, the sky, what is different is the audience which is extremely miscellaneous. Naturally the top professional audience is present, there are also the regular theater-goers who are faithful to the festival, but there are also many people who are just here by chance, because for instance they got seats through their works council or friends; consequently one addresses a very numerous and heterogeneous public, and this one must take into account; so, the challenge was to write for a large and mixed audience while remaining faithful to myself, to what I am used to writing; I had to pay attention to this unusual circumstance, the fact that I am staging a play for a public who does not necessarily know my previous works, which is a challenge. I didn’t want to be in the same radical position as in Clôture de l’amour for instance. One cannot do anything too puzzling in the Cour d’honneur, something radical which would leave half of the spectators stranded, nonplussed. This is not my purpose.

Title
Why did you choose this title? What does it stand for?
Architecture, for me expresses doubt in front of what has been built; the main idea of the play is that all the things one believes in, these things which seem so strong, well-built, well planned, all these things which are meant to remind us that we are not savage, that we live in a well- structured, wellbuilt world, with a high level of language, of grammar, of political organization, of artistic and social achievement, through the links which tie a family, a country, a continent together, these things that one takes for granted, indestructible, can be swept away. They cannot prevent us from being engulfed in chaos. The first and second part of the play have a slow pace, whereas the last part is short and abrupt, because what I found astounding, along my numerous readings over the years concerning this period, is the speed, the accelerated pace of the desintegration process which happened in a very short time.
How people who had a comfortable position in society, well-off people were suddenly deprived of all their belongings, treated like dogs and killed. Their fate was sealed overnight for some of them, and this brutal, historical annihilation leaves me utterly nonplussed. It is something my generation has never had to face, so it is hard to imagine; but when I work abroad, for instance in China, with actors whose grand-parents are still alive and have lived through the Cultural Revolution (1970, not so long ago), I suddenly realize that this radical upturning of society is possible. When I am in Zagreb or in Sarajevo, the war happened in 1992, the people I am talking with were 20 or 40 years old, it is a fairly recent event. The only possible outcome was a short and brutal end reflecting what happened in history.

The fighting process
Most of the time, your plays are more or less based on fighting processes. Where does Architecture stand concerning the fighting process?
The fights which take place in Architecture are less frontal than what I usually show on stage. They tend to spread in circles as when you drop a stone into the water and the ripples spread in circles over the surface of the water. In many scenes, the actors play facing the public, particularly the scenes on boats. While I usually play with a very closed fourth wall, here the stage is much more open towards the spectators. I could actually say that Architecture stages a constant and multiform fight, involving two, three, four or more characters, inside, with the ball scene as a climax, where the nine characters interact at the same time; but actually this is not new; I have already done it in a different way in my previous plays.

Satellite plays
Your plays seem to be closely linked to one another, like satellites, you mention this about Actrice.
They truly exist as single plays but inside a global frame gathering all your work, past and present pieces in the making. Can you tell which play or plays Architecture is linked with?
I did not do it on purpose, but the more I think of it, the more I realize that Architecture is a sum of my other plays. In the way the characters communicate, in long soliloquies followed by excessively short and brisk dialogues, in subjects, themes, it draws on both my earlier and my more recent plays. Once I had finished writing it, I realized it contained parts of Clôture de l’amour, of Répétition, of Soeurs, in the way people interact, in the chaotic web of feelings. And then there is this deep furrow I have been digging relentlessly since the beginning, De mes propres mains, L’Art du Théâtre, Répétition or Actrice and even in Teatro, the play I have just created in the National Theatre of Lisboa, the process of the play within the play.
It is my little hole I am digging, and the more I dig, the deeper I reach. In some plays it is anecdotal, in others much more at the core of the play, but it reappears constantly. Another leitmotiv in my work since the beginning is family relationships. I explored them first in 1989, so it is a long story, in Les Parisiens, which is a family story, with different generations and conflicts. Besides, I presented it in Avignon, so, we have come full circle. And the subject reappeared recently with Ghost, the play I presented in Taipei, adding the presence of ghosts, like in the Asian Drama, dead people coming back to life; which already happened in Argument and now also in Architecture. So many old themes crop up again in this play. Architecture mixes my past and presents works since it resounds with echoes of Mont Vérité, the play I have just finished for the “Printemps des Comédiens” in Montpellier, staging the TNS students. Somehow, I have been writing the same unending sentence since I was eighteen; because my writing is carried by a stream, the psychic stream. The stream of consciousness, so everything is linked. There is no hidden text in my plays, no sub-text, everything is said and said bluntly, nobody spares anybody.

The connection to history and time passing
Architecture takes place at a precise time of the XXth century history and it spans over a rather large period on the time-spectrum. Considering this, what are your plans for the stage-setting?
For me, Architecture is not a historical play in the true sense of the word, it is not my purpose. Beside, time flows very quickly, taking dramatic short-cuts, as in the Asian Theatre where one says “I am going to the village”, takes a step forward and there we are. These are dramaturgic devices that I like very much. I think I ultimately belong to this very simple theatre and on the stage of the Popes’ Palace I didn’t want to have any videos, flashy lights and all that stuff. For me, the Cour d’honneur is the simplest place for a drama performance, with people talking to each other on an almost vacant stage. It is my definition of the Cour d’honneur and I stick to it. The time of the play spans over a period of 30 years or so. It starts around 1911, just before the start of WW1and finishes around the time of Anshluss, on the brink of WW2, when people start being deported to camps. Which implies changes in the settings and costumes to indicate the change of time, particularly in the furniture, from Biedermeir style at the start of the play to the Bauhaus. But I don’t want to write a play which would only deal with the past.
For me what is interesting is the tension between the past and the present, it must connect the past with what we are living today, it must ring a bell. And this friction is made possible on stage.
At the end, when the actors take out their laptops, their Macbook pro, and start reading the stage directions for the play they are writing, there opens a gap in time, a time hiatus, the spectator sees what he has just seen from a different angle, realizing that what has been shown may refer to their forefathers’ lives, their grand-parents, great grand-parents … or maybe a mere invention of their imagination; besides, there are 9 Revox on stage from the start, which is absolutely anachronistic. So from the clash between ancient furniture and Revox on stage at the same time, the spectator guesses that he is not facing a strict chronological story.

A total show, including dancing, singing and music
Architecture includes in its matrix singing and dancing interludes, giving the play the turn of a “total show”. Is this what you intend to do?
The idea comes from Nos parents, a play which is dear to me, that I created in Lausanne with the students of La Manufacture. And as I consider that it is fundamental for apprentice actors to have a go at all the disciplines, I included singing and dancing. So I had imagined what I called moments of “tuning” when suddenly everyboby gathers on the stage, starts dancing or singing and then comes back to the flow of the text. I thoroughly enjoyed these moments, when the actors gathered in a circle, started singing together, and then resumed their own parts in the flow of the story. I felt there was a better harmony, the actors listening more to each other. So I wanted to do it again in Architecture. It allows me to introduce the avant-gardist compositions produced by Denis, Pascal and Audrey. And the brief interludes staging micro dances indicate the passage of time since they refer to different periods. Tarentelle, group dances, ballroom dances which were popular then. So the songs, pieces of music and dances reflect the historical change as much as the furniture and costumes.

The pillars of Architecture
What is the incentive which urged you to write Architecture?
Three things have prompted me to write Architecture. The actors themselves, physically, since I write for them individually. I write to measure somehow; my second source of inspiration is in my readings and travels; as I work a lot abroad, in contact with actors from all countries, I am impregnated by the outside world. These forays into the foreign world have left substantial marks on me. For instance, I know the Balkanic world particularly well, having spent a lot of time in ex-Yugoslavia, as well as Greece, Germany where I work regularly, and I knew that Architecture would be set in this XXth century Europe.
I have been interested in the Austro-Hungarian world for twenty years or so. Add to this the influence of overseas and my readings. I read a lot of biographies, I love that, and for Architecture, my readings on the family of the famous Austrian philosopher Wittgenstein have been decisive. Which leads me to my third pillar, language. My characters are strongly confronted with the problem that we face today and which urged me to write Architecture: the introduction of doubt concerning language which is at the core of Wittgenstein’s philosophical stance, enacted by Stan in the play. This is a very true reflection of what is happening today, with the distortion of language, the fact that there is a loss of meaning in what is said, false news, “fake news” etc. the word no longer expresses the world as it is. And as a writer, I have a duty to use the right word with the right meaning when I write, when I put a word beside another, I do it very carefully. There are two levels of interpretation in play-writing: one for the actor who must absolutely, concretely understand the written text to be able to act it in space – say that it is both a special interpretation which goes through his body and a mental interpretation because he needs to understand every word he says when he pronounces it – and for the spectator who has to interpret through his own conscience, which implies that the meaning must be open enough to avoid locking up. So what has to be set up is a circle of interpretation. Writing a play is not just like writing ethereal poetry, it cannot be vague, there is a double responsibility both towards the actors who deliver the text and to the audience who receives it.

Enjoying pleasure from words, dying from words.
Language is the core of your theatre, its very purpose, one could even say it has a performative function. Using words to hurt, to destroy the adversary or to save oneself, to get pleasure, to exist.
It is exactly at the heart of what I am doing, language is the matrix, the very mould of my theatre. Even if the body is truly important as the vehicle of the language. There is this iconic scene when Emmanuelle repeats “say the words otherwise we are dead”, a transformed quotation from Pina Bausch, I couldn’t indeed give a play in the Cour d’honneur without sending her a secret sign since my first experience as a spectator in the Cour d’honneur is Nelken which made me so happy and made me cry so much. This is very intimate but it had to be expressed. And then I like the idea when facing some 2000 spectators, the idea of having a very sexual relationship through the language in this scene, to show that sexual pleasure is in the brain, it is my theory and it is not the first time I am saying it, it was already in Le début de l’A, in Clôture de l’Amour, in Repetition and in Actrice. Sexual pleasure comes through the brain. And finally, one comes to the theatre to enjoy the pleasure of words.

Violence
Violence is at the heart of your writing and it culminates here, but always through the language.
I think that the purpose of the play is to give a real account of what violence does to the body. How it transforms the body; how an educated, structured, cultured mind can be annihilated. How reason is defeated. One can use words to say anything, use words to say the opposite of what they really mean. This is what violence can do to brains and bodies. And this violence can either be intimate, in the family circle, or set in a period of history.

Pain and Catharsis
Suffering is a central feature in all your plays as a whole, particularly in Architecture. Would you say that your theatre is cathartic?
Let’s say that people in my plays receive violent blows, stabbing, they are attacked in their beliefs, they fight and are shattered, they fall on their knees. My plays are always about people who fall on their knees, they do all they possibly can and there comes a moment when they can only collapse at the end of the fight. I look at the world with emphatic eyes. I am often confronted with my travels through the Asian world with Guan Yin, the goddess of compassion in China. She is named Kannon in Japan.
She is the one who listens to the complaints of the world, the goddess of mercy, in fact, the figure of the Virgin; it is not by accident that I meet her wherever I go, under the shape of statuettes, in the countries I visit. I think I look at my characters in the same way, I don’t look at them from above – no irony, no second degree, I hate that – I love them deeply. I always speak about people who are suffering, I don’t know where it comes from and why I inflict this on my actors, but I am romantic, sentimental and I admit it thoroughly. Let’s say that it is a way for me to take on and make mine some of the sufferings which pervades the real world, to give it a shape and this shape may have a cathartic virtue.

The characters
In your plays, the psychological springs and relational problems of the characters seem to reflect broader issues. As if they carried much more than their own personal life stories. Is it so in Architecture?
Yes, somehow. The couple Audrey/Denis could represent Shonberg’s couple at some stage in his life. Stan, as I have already mentioned, conjures up the figure of Wittenstein, the philosopher. Behind every character, behind every form of art, there is a model. Indeed, I have tried to write a condensed version of history, the history of a period we are all familiar with. I picture people who have a passion for their art, their work, and all of them, men and women, are outstanding individuals. Marie-Sophie is a psychiatrist, on the wake of Konrad Lorenz who took a major part in the invention of ethology, a new science in the making at that time. Emmanuelle is obviously a very brilliant writer of erotic poetry. These are active, strong women, they are composers, violin-players and writers … This is the circle of people I wanted to write about because they fitted in well with the intention of the play.

The great Jacques
Can you say a few words on the part played by Jacques Weber? What does it refer to?
In Architecture, Jacques Weber is an Austro-Hungarian architect who covers the Empire and Europe with his buildings, some kind of Zeus, or Jove, who crushes his children under his overwhelming force. If Denis/Pascal and Audrey have stuttered, stammering problems, it is due to the fact that they are not able to speak in front of their father. As for Stan, he is unable to come out with his homosexual love. At first, Jacques is a kind of King Lear, sharing his heart, his feelings between them all. With Stan, he wages aesthetic contests. Jacques draws in the old sickening neo-classical style, buildings which spread all over Vienna and Trieste. He is a kind of warden of tradition, whereas Stan has a house built for his sisters, a lofty white house, as Ludwig Wittgenstein did, though he was not himself an architect. A huge house which, by the way, can still be visited in Vienna.

Avignon
You seem to have a recurrent appointment with the Festival, it is a long story…
I was invited to Avignon for the first time exactly 30 years ago, with Les Parisiens, a very long seven hours play. Then came Gilgamesh, in 2000, After/before in 2005, Clôture de l’amour in 2011 and Avignon à vie in 2013 in the Cour d’honneur. For me, there is a real, evident and beautiful story born here, still alive and going forward. It is not a detail. Otherwise, I would not have reoriented the writing of Architecture to make it specifically suitable for the Cour d’honneur. The simple fact of imagining this brilliant cast of actors on this unique stage fills me with boundless joy.

Pascal Rambert, biography