INTO THE UNKNOWN

PJ HARVEY: I Want Absolute Beauty. Let us start with the title. How did you choose it? 

IVO VAN HOVE: It comes from one of your interviews. I found it such a beautiful thing because it gives hope and future. Through all your songs shines always some kind of future, even when things are messy or if we have to fight for things that we desire. It's never disastrous. There is still a surge for beauty. 

PJH: That's lovely to hear, Ivo. What both of us strive for is to make something of beauty. And by that, I mean something that touches and moves people, something that's pure. It always comes back to beauty and to love. This is the force that drives me to find that essential part of why we're here and what we can make of the time that we have here.  

IVH: I know your work very well but I listened to all your albums again. I picked songs that I have immediate connection with. And through this process a story, a kind of storyline, evolved. I jumped between your albums. And sometimes, without me being aware of it, I organised the songs in the exactly same order as you intended. I selected 28 songs from various albums of yours and one poem for I Want Absolute Beauty. It’s still going on and we will continue during the rehearsals in Bochum. Through this exploration it became clear to me what your songs are about. Men are very central. But there is also you centrally there as different sub-characters. 

PJH: As a writer I'm quite used to projecting into another character in order to explore some emotion or some journey. So I cast characters in my head and then move into them to become them. They might be male as well as female or they may be animals. It's leaping with the imagination into different conditions and different bodies so that you can explore the world in different ways. It's very freeing. I'm interested how much you chose the songs based on knowing rough outline of the narrative you were following already? 

IVH: Usually I'm very rational but in this case I let it go and I follow my instinct and impulses.  

PJH: I really believe in things like that when different paths come together at the right time. It feels like I Want Absolute Beauty was meant to happen because again, when you were in London for a short time, I happened to be there too and the dance collective (LA)HORDE who is now part of this production were performing at the Southbank Centre. So we saw them together. Just chances like that that suddenly happened.

IVH: The same goes to casting Sandra Hüller for the main part. The lucky thing was that I knew her already. We worked together on a play some 10 years ago in Munich. I knew that she could sing because she had been singing with somebody who made sound designs when I worked in Germany. So I knew she could sing. You were very specific about the type of voice that you envisaged singing your songs. And you were immediately convinced when I suggested Sandra.

PJH: Sandra is a force. And there's something extremely charismatic and forceful and very emotionally moving about whatever she seems to apply herself to. So I just knew that she would make the songs her own in the character she is on that stage at that time in a way that would be utterly convincing. And I think that is what was needed. I think often technically trained singers can somehow bypass the real emotional raw core which often isn't technically very perfect. I'd rather hear someone sing from the soul slightly out of tune than I would hear someone sing something perfectly with what I feel like there's no soul at all.  

IVH: How would you describe the feeling when you're about to hear your songs and your lyrics in another interpretation? 

PJH: I love when I've finished a piece of work and I put the songs out into the world that they're no longer mine and I don't feel I have to try and control them or hold on to them. They're out in the world for others to take, use, interpret, read their own lives through. And that's a wonderful reward for me to see the pleasure, exploration and what people confine through those works that I've just helped to put out into the world for others to use. Now it will become - how shall I call it, Ivo? A music theater piece? 

IVH: I still am searching for a right word for that. It will combine music, theater, dance, video. I believe that pop and rock music tells very important stories today. It's not only the classical music that is full of meaning and value. Pop and rock can have that too and be also entertaining so it can move people. With Ruhrtriennale I try to widen the view on what music theater can be today. There are a lot of concept albums written in the 70s or by artists at this moment that bring important themes. I want to seduce other directors to go into that world and develop characters and storylines out of that music which tell something about people today and tomorrow.

PJH: A View From The Bridge was the first production of yours that I saw in London a long time ago. I was absolutely astonished. I'd never seen anything so powerful before in my life. What I found so beautiful was the kind of the simplicity of it and yet the power that emerged from that. I felt like you would stripped everything back to what was the absolute minimum that was needed. And then when you did use a bold stroke, it really was bold. Ever since then, I've followed what you have done. And over the years, we've become friends. I was absolutely overjoyed to be able to work with you on All About Eve that we created for the West Ende in 2019. It was the first time that I'd written songs for actors to sing. It  was a doorway into the theatre world for me. And I love working with theatre almost more than anything else at this moment in time because I find it so freeing. What I love about your work is that you’re not afraid to experiment and go into it fearlessly in order to pursue what you want to try out. 

IVH: Working on I Want Absolute Beauty feels to me out of my comfort zone. There is an actress on stage but not a one line text just the songs and music. For me, that’s a new way of telling stories on stage.  

PJH: The only way we break forward and make great work is by going into the unknown, which is often fearful. But you've got to have the faith and just do it.