Interview: Romeo Castellucci

What if our contemporary time arose out of the untimely?  

Whereas so many artists constantly look for signs of the present in repertory theatre, Romeo Castellucci follows the opposite path, with an entirely personal approach to Racine's monumental poem, Bérénice. According to him, the untimeliness of certain theatrical texts is precisely what makes them contemporary, and here, he explains how. 

Bérénice is regarded as the greatest French poetic theatre text. What, in this text, particularly aroused your interest? 

 I have a close, complex and ambiguous relationship with Greek theatre. I cannot say that I love it, just as one cannot say that one loves the force of gravity: it exists, it is inevitable and that is all. On the other hand, I am troubled by, and thus highly attracted to all attempts at reconstituting Greek tragedy by great Western authors. These attempts can be called failures, certainly, but precisely because they fail in their intent, they are great works of art. My thoughts go to Racine, Hölderlin, Alfieri and many other undisputed artists, all of whom tried to reconstruct tragedy and have somehow had to “surrender” before this impossible undertaking. In this sense, too, Racine’s vertiginous writing has always struck me very deeply, with its way of fusing Greek and Christian culture. This is an entirely impossible fusion, clearly, because if there were an afterlife, there could be no tragedy. 

 Is this “impossible” fusion of Greek and Christian culture what first aroused your interest when you chose Racine’s Bérénice? 

 I would say that this impossible combination is certainly the most the most interesting element. But what I find essential today is – if I may say so – Racine’s untimeliness. Paradoxically, the untimeliness of his language, and of classical rhetoric and theology in general, make him definitively contemporary, a reflection of the dysfunction of our age. We can approach our contemporary time through its untimeliness, remaining at a proper distance from one’s own time. Only in this way can we grasp what truly belongs to our age, its dysfunction. We must depart from the well-travelled road in order to better see its horizon.

In this respect, Racine belongs to the future, because he fights language with language: everything is language here, but there is a black abyss hidden beneath that language. Everything that is uttered is said in order to be hidden. Words as vehicles of air. Bérénice, in particular, is probably the most difficult play to stage on this subject, and therefore the most eloquent. Because absolutely nothing happens here: everything is blocked by language. But tragedy consists precisely in this blockage. In my opinion, Bérénice is one of the monuments of human culture, beyond French culture and temporality. Above and beyond space and time, Bérénice impresses me for this reason: everything remains fixed, paralysed, impeded, but its formal beauty is like a luminous and spellbinding crystal. 

Is this power of inertia, in your opinion, a driver of energy?

It is interesting to deal with this question. In my opinion, the force we perceive in this piece is, first and foremost, the force of a brake. Everything is held back or restrained. The Greeks (and St Paul) had a word to express this particular force: katechon (from the Greek: that which holds back). One can thus suspect that there is a hidden abyss, so close, like a feverish veil stretched between the depths and the form, between the plunge and reality. On the one hand, there is the courtly language, an educated form, on the other, in the recesses, there is violence, death and erotic blood. It is crucial for me to work on the relationship between form and chaos, which is essential in Racine. Roland Barthes spoke of a “brouillard de mots”, like a cloud surrounding each of the characters, who are always alone in the end. Bérénice, the character, of is a monument to contradiction, solitude and abandonment.  

You entrusted Isabelle Huppert with impersonating this human solitude. Why did you choose her? 

Isabelle is a synecdoche of the art of theatre, worldwide. She is the actress, by definition. A definitive theatre text requires an actress as radical as Isabelle. Radicality is, on the other hand, the text’s starting point. It will be a Bérénice with Isabelle Huppert, the central light of theatre. The idea is to express the hardcore of theatre with her. 

This is not the first time that you have revisited repertory texts and, often, when you do, the text is somehow sifted through plastic, sound or visual devices or installations that force one to pass through it differently. Do you think this is how you work with this text? 

I think so. There will be the spoken word, naked. But the way in which the word is given will necessarily be twisted.  It is not the word that carries the meaning. This formal and absolute control, the temperature, the strategy of words and of voice will prevent communication, they will hide it. The word will also be rendered through technological devices. Here, my thoughts go above all to the other characters surrounding Bérénice, Titus and Antiochus in particular. 

How is the composition of the characters organised? 

Bérénice is the fixed star, she is the motionless and central point of chaos, the origin of the typhoon that surrounds her. All the characters revolve around her, generated by her. There will be the full text of Bérénice, while all the other characters will be blurred, like ghosts emitting phantom words. We will also be able to imagine that we are in Bérénice’s head, or a person who believes they are Bérénice. This will not be a historical reconstruction. As I said, Bérénice, as a work of theatre, is an ambiguous object. We have seen fantastic neoclassical versions of it, in particular Klaus Michael Grüber’s masterpiece (1984), in which the word was uttered in its elegance, in its coldness, like Parian marble. I found this performance extraordinary, but today, I think it is important to use a different sensitivity. Then again, there is darkness in Racine's clarity... I have some doubts about the wonderful light of his language. There is also much shadow. And it is to this shadow that I will give all its importance. 

Does this mean that we will be immersed in the mental and psychological universe of Bérénice? 

Psychology is indeed a key, but in the sense of a deep psychism, one which eludes all categories, because this is not in the least a “psychological theatre”. We truly enter into the real, into the darkness of the body, into all that remains hidden by the skin. It will be a theatre made of real, fake and phantasmised bodies. 

How will the sound and music work? 

I will work with Scott Gibbons. Music, including sounds and noises, is fundamental because it is the expression of the real and of everything that eludes the naming power of language. We are always “victims” of music, which can break through the hardened defences of consciousness. Our work on the voices will therefore be crucial.