"People’s Immense Need for Love", based on the work of Sarah Kane, directed by Sylvain Levitte

LE HUBLOT THEATER, COLOMBES

87 rue Félix Faure - 92700 Colombes

Thursday, December 18 - 8:00 PM

Friday, December 19 - 8:00 PM

Saturday, December 20 - 3:00 PM

Saturday, December 20 - 8:00 PM

Sunday, December 21 - 3:00 PM

cast Amélia ANON, Laura BACHOT, Delphine BEREC, Sébastien CHERON, Charlotte DAUTREY, Julie ESCOBEDO, Margaux EYNIUS, Madeleine GOUESBIER, Allan HAUZÉ, Yann LEMAIRE, Louise LUDET, Zita ROUSTAING and Elliot SAUVE

Sylvain Levitte's note :

"Over the past three months, Group 24 and I have immersed ourselves in the complete works of Sarah Kane. We have been trying to inhabit her themes, to trace the evolution of her writing, and to engage with the radical honesty of every line she wrote. Blasted, the play that made her name and caused a scandal in 1995 when she was only 23, sits at the centre of our work. From there, we move through Cleansed and Crave, and finally reach 4.48 Psychosis.

Kane’s writing invites us into four essential areas of exploration:

• the place of the artist in society, and the demand for absolute honesty, an openness to both the inner and outer world

  
  

• our relationship to strangeness, discomfort, and the unreality of the world around us: our partners, the space, the stage itself

  
  

• humour, when everything appears dark

  
  

• the representation of violence and nudity, and the question of touch in theatre, especially within a drama school

  
  

People's Immense Need for Love is an exploration of Kane’s work guided by a phrase from Anatoli Vassiliev, passed on to us by Valérie Dréville, which continues to challenge us: to practise one’s art in the presence of an audience, not for an audience.

We move from moments of intense joy to absolute collapse. That, I believe, is also the power of British writing: its ability to hold contradictory emotions in the same breath. The audience is almost left alone, forced to find their own way through the work, to grasp what is fragile, beautiful and deeply human in Kane’s writing. Violence is the obstacle here, but what every character is searching for is love, survival, and hope.

A final word about humour. It is not always easy to locate in Kane’s texts, yet it is always there. Our task is to uncover it in every line, to reveal its sharpness, intelligence and precision.

For this workshop, I asked Vanasay Khamphommala if we could work with his remarkable translations of Crave and 4.48 Psychosis, which we explore every day with great pleasure. Yejin Choi works alongside me, bringing a specific focus on bodies in space and their relationship to objects. We were also fortunate to spend an afternoon with British playwright Rebecca Watson, for whom Sarah Kane’s work marked a turning point in her relationship to writing and to art.

Shaped by all these encounters, we are very happy to share this work and these performances with you."

Pictures from Julie Berkovicz :