Ariane Mnouchkine: Half a Century Building Utopia

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/14/theater/ariane-mnouchkine-archive.html

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PARIS — As international theatermakers consider how to scale down their work for the era of social distancing, some companies are bound to struggle more than others. The revered French director Ariane Mnouchkine, 81, who is currently recovering from Covid-19, has already stated that she won’t consider requiring audience members and her performers to stand, or sit, farther apart than usual. In an interview with the magazine Télérama, she declared that would be “the opposite of joy.”

Instead, her longtime collective, the Théâtre du Soleil, is offering theatergoers a chance to experience some of its ambitious stagings online, many of them too elaborate to tour widely. Since March, the company has added regularly to an archive that now includes more than 100 videos. Most are short features or documentaries, but a sample of filmed productions stretching back half a century aims to capture the sense of utopian togetherness that is central to Mnouchkine’s project.

Still, watching these productions at home confirms that the Théâtre du Soleil hasn’t quite figured out how to translate its ethos for the digital age. While many theaters have been competing for attention during this crisis, with increasingly sophisticated “appointment streaming,” finding full-length productions requires some digging on the company’s unappealing Vimeo page. The video quality also varies. For instance, the first half of “Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir” (“The Survivors of the Fol Espoir”) has a delay of several seconds throughout between sound and image, an instant turnoff.

The technical hiccups are hardly a surprise, since the company famously won’t even sell tickets online. Its website still urges audience members to book over the phone, adding, “We still have human voices!!!” For younger theatergoers, this only contributes to an impression that the Théâtre du Soleil, a mainstay of French theater since the 1960s, is no longer attuned to the times.

However, the newly available films go a long way toward explaining the company’s dynamic history and loyal following. It’s moving to see from the introduction of “1789,” a production staged in 1970, that the experience of attending a show at the Théâtre du Soleil’s home theater just outside Paris has barely changed. The audience, with their flared pants and big hair, can be seen mingling with the performers, just like now. Before the show, the actors put the finishing touches to their makeup in plain view, and Mnouchkine herself is never far away. (To this day, she checks tickets at the door.)

In the wake of the revolutionary events of 1968 in France, Mnouchkine set up the theater, La Cartoucherie, to create “a paradise for the people,” as she wrote in 2009. That philosophy extended to the stories she has chosen to tell over the years, which often center on the power of collective action against oppression, from the rebels of “1789” to the amateur crew struggling to finish a film on the eve of war in “Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir.”

From early on, her approach led Mnouchkine to move away from the traditional proscenium stage. For “1789,” most of the audience stood among five small stages, with the action either moving between those areas or scenes happening simultaneously. The actors played 18th-century entertainers recreating episodes from the French Revolution, with exaggerated mime and, at times, puppetry.

It is clear from the film how engaging this setup was, for both adults and children. The camera often lingers on the audience’s reactions as the actors race among them, and the spectators cheer on the revolutionaries. Fifty years down the line, the way the Revolution is framed seems simplistic, with ordinary people cast as heroes to be admired unreservedly. Yet the Théâtre du Soleil was reacting to the way the events of 1789 were taught at the time, as the story of a handful of major figures. Scholarship has evolved since, and “1789” would probably look different today.

Mnouchkine’s interest in the struggle for democratic rights extends to the rest of the world. The Théâtre du Soleil has positioned itself firmly in the French intellectual tradition of universalism: The company has no qualms about telling stories borrowed from other cultures, with Asian history and theater both prominent sources of inspiration. As a result, Mnouchkine has been at odds in recent years with younger thinkers who warn against the risk of cultural appropriation.

One of the productions the company is streaming, “The Terrible but Unfinished Story of Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia,” is a fascinating counterargument. Inspired by a trip that Mnouchkine and the academic and playwright Hélène Cixous took to Khmer refugee camps at the country’s border in the early 1980s, this historical drama might be frowned upon if it were written today. Not one member of the creative team appears to be of Khmer descent; regardless, they purport to cover over two decades of tumultuous Cambodian history, from 1955 to 1979.

Yet not only was the original Théâtre du Soleil production a success in 1985, but the company worked with Cambodian actors to recreate it in their language between 2011 and 2013. This Khmer version, the only one currently available to watch, is elegant and heartfelt. The cast is wholly committed to Cixous and Mnouchkine’s vision of their own history, especially San Marady in the central role. In a gender reversal, she is a revelation as the eccentric Sihanouk, who went from ruling as king and elected head of state to being placed under house arrest by the brutal Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.

In an ideal world, perhaps Sihanouk’s countrymen would have chronicled his life for the stage, but the fact that the 2011 revival was barred by the local government from being performed in Cambodia shows the subject matter remains a sensitive topic there. While culturally removed from the events, Cixous crafted a truly epic tragedy: The filmed version is a six-hour affair. (It was originally performed over two evenings.)

Such leisurely running times are standard for the company. Unfortunately, what feels like immersion at La Cartoucherie, which boasts a large communal dining area, takes a lot more patience onscreen. If you’re looking for a shortcut to the Théâtre du Soleil experience, your best bet is “D’après la Ville Parjure” (“After the Perjured City”), which is billed as a documentary about “La Ville Parjure,” another six-hour production, from 1994.

Directed by Catherine Vilpoux, it is actually a 75-minute digest of the play, interspersed with title cards providing synopses as well as context, the latter in the form of press clippings. Another tragic retelling of historical events, “La Ville Parjure” was loosely inspired by a French scandal in the 1980s in which hundreds of hemophiliacs were infected with H.I.V. through blood transfusions.

On the basis of “Sihanouk” and “La Ville Parjure,” Cixous, who is better known for her feminist writings, also deserves recognition for her decades-long collaboration with the Théâtre du Soleil. “La Ville Parjure” convincingly weaves contemporary elements into a Greek-style tragedy, in which the Furies respond to the call for justice from the mother of two victims.

As political theater, it pushes the envelope to explore the notion of civic responsibility, which Mnouchkine has returned to repeatedly. The times may have changed, but the Théâtre du Soleil has certainly stayed true to its beliefs.