At the TNP, popular national theater of Villeurbanne, ten years following the original creationDominique Blanc resumes the piece Pain from the novel by Marguerite Duras. The timeless strengths of the text and the actress are confirmed
In 2008, in close collaboration with Thierry Thieû Niang, Patrice Chéreau took over this text and entrusted its interpretation to Dominique Blanc. Over the years, Marguerite Duras’ text has become a companion for Dominique Blanc.
First want to work with Dominique Blanc once more, want to share something, to make this something exist. Want to confront this terrible text. To remember that: the Resistance, the Liberation, the camps, this unthinkable period that we have forgotten. And then the incredible return of this man from whom Marguerite Duras separated and whom she loves, the horror of the wait, the splendor of his own resurrection – which is also a bit of her own work. Crazy hope. Transmit all this, humbly, to spectators. Patrice Chéreau in 2008, during the creation of La Douleur
A wonderful recovery
More than ten years following the original creation that WholeCulture had praised, Thierry Thieû Niang, choreographer and artist associated with the TNP, takes over the staging alone. The scenography is delicate, but intense. Dominique Blanc knows that staging offers and obliges. The story takes place in Paris during World War II. After years, Marguerite finds an old diary in which she had written her fears, her worries and her almost incessant desires to find her husband prisoner in a concentration camp. Pain tells the story of the days following the liberation in the spring of 1945. Marguerite Duras recounts the unbearable wait for Robert, the return, the love, the loss of love, the convalescence.
A partly falsified history
It is from newspapers that Dominique Blanc lines up carefully in front of her that this love novel is written. Feeding on her notes and historical facts, Duras reconstructs followingwards what she has experienced from afar or near. Duras has certainly fixed reality. Robert had left her in 1942, the year she had her child who died at birth. At the time she was no longer Robert’s wife for a long time. Robert was having an affair. They weren’t together anymore, but they were called the Antelmes, and they lived in the same apartment, Robert’s.
On the concentration camps Duras also shows approximations. However, we would risk the anachronism to be terrified to see the 6 million deaths of the Holocaust dissolved in the eleven million victims mentioned by Duras in his text. We will also be careful not to criticize the romantic vision of ancestral communism which wanted absolute horror to be guilty only of the dark side of humanity, erasing the real culprits, anonymizing the executioners. Nevertheless: the duty of memory remains fully accomplished.
Dominique Blanc in the center of the text
The tension between the sobriety of the scenic device and the intensity of the words sparkles in us. How captivates us this body which throbs entirely towards this thing so simple and so tragic that is pain. We walk through the vertigo of the text with blind confidence in Dominique Blanc, a powerful actress. And it is a beyond of love that seizes the room. A place where love and hate, momentum and disappointment, life and death merge. Marguerite’s pen is as usual, rough, rough and moving. From this pen she dissects a longing, a dying love, a pain. She dissects the pain. And Dominique Blanc lives the text, embodies the disorder, legitimizes the literary gesture. She is bright.
Pain, by Marguerite Duras taken from the staging by Patrice Chéreau and Thierry Thieû Niang
Schedule of performances
• Wednesday, September 28 at 8:30 p.m.
• Thursday, September 29 at 8 p.m.
• Friday, September 30 at 8:30 p.m.
• Saturday, October 1 at 8:30 p.m.
• Sunday, October 2 at 4 p.m.
• Tuesday, October 4 at 8:30 p.m.
• Wednesday, October 5 at 8:30 p.m.
• Thursday, October 6 at 8 p.m.
• Friday, October 7 at 8:30 p.m.
• Saturday, October 8 at 8:30 p.m.
• Sunday, October 9 at 4 p.m.
Tours 2022-2023
• from September 29 to October 9 October 23 to 24, 2022, Théâtre National Populaire de Villeurbanne
• from October 19 to 21, 2022, Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand national stage
• October 25, 2022, L’Archipel – Paris
• 8, 9 and 11 November 2022, Théâtre d’Avranches
• November 18, 2022, Aurillac Theater
• November 20, 2022, Gulf Scenes, Anne de Bretagne Theater – Vannes
• from November 23 to December 11, 2022, Athénée Théâtre Louis-Jouvet – Paris
• from 13 to 18 December 2022, Théâtre des Bernardines – Marseille
• May 23, 2023, Maison des Arts du Léman – Thonons-les-Bains
• May 30 and 31, 2023, La Coursive – National Stage La Rochelle
• June 2 and 3, 2023, National Theater of Nice
• June 6 to 8, 2023, MC2 Grenoble
Photo credit © Simon Gosselin
