“The more ‘real’ the acting, the greater the illusion.” So wrote Diderot in “Paradoxe sur le comédien” in 1773. If theater should translate to an audience an emotional quality, argued the French philosopher and playwright, then the actor should avoid any involvement with his character so that the audience might represent those emotions for themselves. Diderot’s paradoxical lesson as interpreted in 2003 by a trio of ingenious actors from three of Flemish Belgium’s most innovative companies (Matthias de Koning of Maatschappij Discordia, Peter van den Eede of Compagnie de Koe and Damiaan De Schrijver of Tg STAN), takes on new meaning: “the more real the illusion, the greater the acting”... and the fuller the audience’s pleasure thanks to this eminently amusing gem in the rough of theatrical discourse.
The treatise seems made for these actors forged in the current of avant-garde Flemish theater begun in the 1980s, which seeks to abolish the fiction of traditional theater and to replace it with an actor trained to serve the text, and fully conscious of that role. Its mantra: never become the character. The show offers the dizzying experience of seeing actors act at acting, but rapidly dissolves into hilarious farce, from a sparkling donning of wigs through a seemingly inexhaustible repertoire of gags and “special effects” designed to strip bare theater’s illusion. Flimsy props, forgotten lines and cranberry “blood” aside however, it is in watching the three become hopelessly entangled in the theories they are meant to demonstrate that the play rises above mere slapstick to engage the question at the heart of the exercise: when does fiction become reality and reality fiction?
To Dec 23, Mon-Wed, Fri-Sat, 9pm, Théâtre de la Bastille, 76 rue de la Roquette, 11e, M&Mac251; Bastille/Voltaire, 12.50E/19E, tel: 01 43 57 42 14 or Festival d’Automne: 01 53 45 17 17
