The place within

Deux tréteaux, un planche ! - March 12, 2016

“Dadme cuatro bastidores, cuatro tableros, dos actores y una pasión” - Lope de Vega

Give me four trestles, four boards, two actors and a passion

It is probably because Molière did not demand more, as stated on the Comédie-Française website, that Alain Cuny attributes this quote from Lope de Vega in a video that fuels my musings. The actor talks about an imaginary dialogue by Reverdy, where after the grave Picasso exchanges with a fellow traveler. “- What are your landscapes?” to which Picasso replied, “- It's the desert. The hot, burning, arid, dry desert,” astonishing his interlocutor and earning this final reply, “The desert is everywhere I go.”

For Alain Cuny, “the place is where one knows how to bring it,” it is “the place one has within oneself.” Already enough to ponder, but we would like to find this imaginary dialogue by Reverdy. Google is your friend, as they say in Indonesian (Google adalah teman anda), but wrongly for now. Google offers only a quote, certainly relevant, but not the dialogue itself.

"As soon as I arrive somewhere, it's instantly as hot as in Spain. As for the desert, I've never left it, not for a second in my life." - Picasso

This place is not here τό θέατρον, but the one “within oneself,” that the actor has when performing. It may also be the one J.M.G. Le Clézio talks about when referring to the one who writes. In any case, it makes one think

"Apprendre, sentir, ce n’est pas chercher à s’approprier le monde ; c’est seulement vouloir vibrer, être à chaque seconde le lieu de passage de tout ce qui vient du dehors [...] Être vide, non pas comme on est absent – le gouffre, le vertige avant la chute – mais en étendant son corps et son âme pour couvrir l’espace." - L'Inconnu sur la terre, Le Clézio

To learn, to feel, is not to seek to appropriate the world; it is only to want to vibrate, to be at every second the passage of everything that comes from outside [...] To be empty, not as one is absent - the abyss, the vertigo before the fall - but by extending one's body and soul to cover space.

Sometimes this place strongly evokes the feeling of another board, that of surfing, when it catches the wave, when finally, despite the speed, the risk of wiping out - finally losing balance - one feels in a place where the laws of physics ensure a certain stability, like when, after a lot of paddling, the theater emerges.

Notes:

Poétique du texte offert Jean-Michel Maulpoix

Give me four trestles, four boards, two actors and a passion |  Gib mir vier Böden, vier Bretter, zwei Schauspieler und eine Leidenschaft | Doneu-me quatre cavallets, quatre fustes, dos actors i una passió | Dê-me quatro bancos, quatro tábuas, dois atores e uma paixão | Trei scânduri, doi actori, o pasiune