L’expérience du réel au cœur du triangle littérature, théâtre et performance. Édouard Louis en scène

Abstract

Experiencing the Real at the Crossroads of Literature, Theatre and Performance. Édouard Louis on Stage
The hotly debated performance of Thomas Ostermeier’s stage version of Edouard Louis’s History of Violence points to a confusion concerning the role of the author, the status of the text, of its performance and of the role played by theatre in today’s society. It raises a threefold question: what is the relationship between literature and reality, what defines an author (whether writer or stage director) and what does it mean that contemporary literature should be so intent on self-writing? E. Louis is particularly clear about using fiction to write about truth, but then truth all too often is construed as fact, and therefore as antithetic to fiction. He claims to explore a form of confrontational literature. In T. Ostermeier’s staging he becomes the actor of his own text which only compounds the text’s powerful ambiguities. Together, Louis and Ostermeier create a dynamic recomposition of the political and the intimate.