Femme Non-Rééducable (2015 & 2016)

English Title

Woman Who Cannot be Re-educated/Rehabilitated

Director

Maïa Sandoz

Playwright

Stefano Massini

Year

12 July 2015, 8.30pm, Festival Contre Courant, Avignon

5 March 2016, 4pm, Théâtre des Quartiers d'Ivry, Paris. (Antonin Artaud Auditorium)

Form

Play reading

Duration

Production details

Theatre L’Argument

Mise en scène:
Maïa Sandoz

Avec

            Adèle Haenel
            Élisa Boureau
            Aymeric Demarigny

Paul Moulin

Création lumière:
Bruno Brinas

Musique:
Christophe Danvin

Scénographie et costumes:
Maïa Sandoz & Catherine Cosme

Synopsis

“In 2005 Vladislav Surkov, the very powerful secretary to Vladimir Putin signs a circular in which he notes that the enemies of the state divide in two categories: the enemies with which we can reason and those with whom we cannot.

Journalist Anna Politovskaïa was certainly of these.

Femme Non-Rééducable is a testimony on the itinerary of this "ordinary" woman who never ceased to denounce the atrocities of the camps and Chechen by describing objective facts and who paid for it with her life.”

Translated from Festival Contre Courant 2015 program

From the Director, Maïa Sandoz

“I read this piece one night of insomnia, I found it immediately powerful: the subject which she broached, but especially by the proposal of theatre which was made to me, suddenly, to me, in particular, in the middle of the night...

I found my obsessive (infinite) quest for truth, freedom and these questions of time, of relation to reality which already crosses my previous shows.

In his play, Massini deploys a radical dramaturgy. Each sequence carries a name: The Ambush, Chechnya, Human Fagot, Grozny's Glock, punch in the mouth, tired. Fragments of memory, therefore. Notes for the future, the text of Massini is a retrospective journey, a memory…a memory.

That of Anna. Not our memory for her, but hers for us. Her memory is the main character
in the play. It looks like her: precise, rushed, unvarnished, desperately ironic, orderly.

But like all memories, it has its flaws, its accidents, it breaks up with a punch in the face, big and small shocks, physical, psychological, ethical traumas.

There will therefore be several voices, two actors and two actresses taking charge
collectively the memory of Anna.

Each sequence imposes its own rhythm, its own style, its own musicality, his own address. In turn, there are stories, dreams, hallucinations, dialogues the very interior of the story, bringing out characters, then embodying actors of the conflict, giving them a name and a face…

There will be special treatment for each of them. Different levels of incarnation,
different "inner shows". A very rich variation for the four performers. Because the
memory involved is not only semantic (the circumstances geopolitics of the Chechen conflict) it is also perceptual… We will put in place, with Christophe Danvin a sound device that will support these perceptions (memories of perceptions) of places, sounds, music evoked in the play.

The light, frontal device sets up a press conference table, 4 chairs and 4 microphones. Obviously, the actors have a few things to say and are ready to answer questions. It’s a starting premise, evolving.

Massini's purpose is universal because through the memory of this courageous and
determined woman, he lets us understand the brutal mechanism of human barbarities.
It is not a theater of denunciation, it is not a manifesto. The play takes on the
appearance of documentary theater, but Massini's poetry emerges through the rocking of
time spaces that punctuate the story. It is the words, the words that make spaces emerge
and go back in time.

Anna Politkovskaia limited herself to telling the facts, crudely naming barbarism. With great delicacy and rigour Massini personifies his memory. We will try to rock the perception of the reality of the spectators ... by keeping in mind this delicacy and this barbarism.

I have a great fascination for the ethical monsters that sometimes are women and men and a great aversion to tyrannies, whatever they are.

Finally, a woman who cannot be rehabilitated is essential because she brings humanity
back there where we tend to forget that it exists…

…at the heart of the fight.”

Maïa Sandoz

(translation)

Adèle’s role

Reading from the writings of and interviews with the journalist Anna Politovskaïa. (Please tell me if you know more so that I can improve this page. D)

About the play

“Too distant or too long, there are wars that interest no one.

In Grozny, the war is officially over, but behind the machine guns and tanks, Russia is still there. The only Russian journalist to have covered the war in Chechnya, Anna Politkovskaya, who cannot be re-educated, the title given to her by the Russian general staff, is not here to judge. The facts speak for themselves. Regularly threatened, she constantly returns to the field, reporting the words of those who testify at the risk of their lives and hers.

In October 2006, Anna Politkovskaïa was found murdered in the stairwell of her Moscow building.

The play is a succession of sequences written from notes, interviews, correspondence, articles. Written with respect, dread and lucidity on two camps who are tearing each other apart. Devastated Grozny, the insane happiness of having running water, waking up in a hospital bed after an attempted poisoning…

Stefano Massini makes Anna's voice heard and imposes a poetic and radical language, an emotional weapon offensive.”

Translated from the programme of Theatre L’Argument, 2016

"I’m just telling the facts. The facts: as they happen, as they are. It may seem the simplest thing here, it is the most difficult. And it costs a crazy price. What price? The price you pay when you no longer practice a trade, but you go to war. You fight. You feel like a fighter.”

Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was an icon of the Russian independent press. She went regularly to the combat zones in Chechnya and to refugee camps in Dagestan, then in Ingushetia, denouncing the barbarity of the Russian army and the inhuman conditions of the populations victims of this war. Her field investigations and her unclassifiable status in a rather apathetic Russian press, practicing self-censorship, made her, during her lifetime, a recognized and acclaimed journalist abroad. In 2006, she was assassinated in Moscow. In the form of a newspaper, Stefano Massini recounts, without pathos, the words of the journalist. He uses notes, interviews, letters. We are reading it as a press conference, because it is urgent to remember the courage of this woman and her fight for freedom of expression.

Maïa Sandoz
Translated from the Season Guide for the Theatre d'Ivry

Notes

This is another play by Theatre de L'Argument, the theatre troupe that Adèle is a member of, and she is again directed by her friend Maïa Sandoz. This play is set up like a press conference, with the four actors seated at a long table draped in a white cloth and facing the audience; each with a microphone and water bottle.

The play was performed at the summer festival Festival Contre Courant, on a river island at Avignon and again the following year at Theatre Montfort in Paris, with the same performers.

Theatre L'Argument was an associate artist of the Festival Contre Courant in Avignon in 2015. The festival is held on the Ile de la Barthelasse, just opposite Avignon, where it is an almost free festival, which was born in the wake of the education movement, and is held every year. The festival, supported by the works council for gas and electricity, welcomes 4,000 people every year. The festival is very family oriented, with lounge chairs inviting you to relax on the grass and there is a little tavern there that contrasts with the busy-ness of the city.

I am loving learning about Theatre de l'Argument. It looks like such a fabulous group of people who are doing amazing theatre works to rave reviews, as well as being politically active and into sustainability. So much to love about them!

[When I get to Paris after this current crisis is over (written 1 July 2020, as parts of my city are being put back into hard lockdown) I will be checking out what they are performing. D]