Interview with Gaële Boghossian

Each year, you adapt and edit texts from very different backgrounds: L’Homme Qui Rit (2014) – Alice (2014) – Faust (2015) – La Religieuse (2016) – George Dandin (2016) – Double Assassinat dans la rue Morgue (2017) – L’Île des esclaves (2017). How do you choose the works you want to approach? Are there any similarities between them?

The common point is always a political message, political in the original sense of the Greek word, “polis”: the city. For me, the stage is a vital platform in today’s world when the media are becoming increasingly obscure and unreliable in the eyes of the population, and where social networks overwhelm minds with clichés and poorly digested populism on subjects too complex to be discussed without thought and profound argumentation. The stage is a political act in the strongest and broadest sense. This in no way excludes lightness, but the challenge it represents holds us accountable to make it rigorous and meaningful exercise. These great works by visionary authors in their societal analysis are extremely readable bridges between our past, our present and our future. They constitute the basis for very pertinent reflections on the evolution of humanity thanks to the hindsight necessary for the observation they present.

In a few words, tells us about the essence of Le Château

The character of K arrives at a hotel announcing himself as a surveyor hired by the village castle but the question of his employment as a surveyor appears extremely vague. Everyone seems to be aware of his arrival but everyone tries in their own way to contain him in their territory. Some seek to create alliances with him, others establish a “security perimeter” from which he cannot escape. K is looking for answers. To do this, he will put in place all sorts of strategies to reach the one who seems to hold power in this place, a certain Klamm, a mysterious figure that everyone fears without really knowing his identity. K will get lost in a dream of integration into a human society, a quest for identity and social advancement to the point of madness… The theme of memory is extremely present, as well as that of the alienation of the individual from the bureaucratic machine. But the story that touches me deeply is that of the eternal figure of the stranger who struggles in a society of which he wants to be a part at all costs but of which he does not master the codes and of which he will be eternally excluded whatever he tries to build.

Kafka often tells stories of men in modern society. In your opinion, is Le Château also a portrait of today’s society?

Undoubtedly. This work reflects a hierarchical, compartmentalized society, where incommunicability is the secret of an administrative dictatorship pushed to its paroxysm. The human being is crushed, drowned, annihilated. He struggles in an unfathomable labyrinth where each step forward is one more step entangled in the web of a society that will surround him until he suffocates, entangled in merciless immobility.

According to your interpretation of the work, have you established a link between the play The Castle and Prague Castle, the residence of Czech power since the 9th century?

Not particularly. I have focused on a universal vision that would bring together different possible interpretations of the work: a metaphorical vision of the state and administration, a mystical vision, and an autobiographical vision. Each of these visions is legitimate but incomplete in itself. Weaving the web of this plurality of visions has led to an extremely dense and dreamlike universe where reality and dream dialogue in a frantic ballet.

Kafka’s universe is often shrouded in a sinister, nightmarish, sometimes crazy atmosphere. In which universe did you want to anchor your adaptation?

For my part, Kafka’s universe is imbued with a humor of the absurd, it is a sharp criticism of our dehumanized societies. The situations there are disproportionately incoherent, close to madness. Drama contains humour, and humour contains drama. It is a situational humour that echoes the intimate experience of each of us… We laugh at what we recognize, what we have been able to experience a thousand times without having the filter to put it at a distance. The question here, as Kafka did in his writing, is one of exorcising our demons in a journey towards a spot where our reflection is both significant and de-dramatized.

Kafka’s story is inhabited by many characters. Are they all present in the room and on stage?

For the most part. For scenographic reasons, some have been coupled or put aside but a large number of characters remain present, symbolizing the multiplication of Kafka’s own personality, the incarnation of his fantasies and demons, and the crowd that leads him to an abyss that always keeps him on the margins of society.

Since its inception, Collective 8 has placed a high priority on the use of video and music. How did these elements serve this last creation?

The multimedia process is particularly rich in this creation. The creation of an opaque and luminous world at the same time, this flight towards absurd and insane situations… immersion is all the more necessary for a detachment of the intellect and to dive into the sensory, the sensual, and the release of a mind that allows an analysis under a sensitive and unrealistic angle.

The settings of your previous shows are often spectacular, almost dangerous. What did you imagine for this last show?

The scenography symbolizes a perilous ascent into a hostile universe. Huge steps represent the steps of power, disproportionally large, high and wide, as far as the eye can see, as if this world were only made up of landings to cross, to climb. Artistic direction is built on the eternal alternation between ascension and fall of the myth of Sisyphus. The entire scenography represents a “realistic place”: an old warehouse where men and women would have been locked up, taking what is most precious to them in their suitcases: sentimental objects. Le Château / Das Schloss was written in the midst of the rise of anti-Semitism, long before the horror. The reference to this place refers to the Jewish genocide in particular but also in a more universal way, even today to all those eternal foreign men and women in a foreign land in search of shelter, a society of Men which may not exist (and is the Great Question of our times!), a refuge, an identity which they are denied and whose price they must pay.