blending an assortment of thoughts and experiences for my friends, relations and kindred spirit

blending an assortment of thoughts and experiences for my friends, relations and kindred spirit
By Alison Hobbs, blending a mixture of thoughts and experiences for friends, relations and kindred spirits.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Le rôle de l'art dans la vie

I was at the NAC again last week (Centre National des Arts) to see the French Theatre production of Cyrano de Bergerac, for which I was lucky enough to get a free ticket. Before the show, I also had the privilege of hearing Wajdi Mouawad, current director of French Theatre at the NAC (who incidentally keeps a blog), give a talk about the importance of the arts and our support of the arts. Having grown up as a French speaking Lebanese immigrant in Montreal, he spoke in beautiful French, quietly but passionately.

For Wajdi Mouawad there are countless possible answers to "What is art for?" or "What is an artist?" but he was not going to try to answer those questions except by giving us a couple of pictures ("images"). The first picture he wanted us to imagine was that of driving a car along a road in stormy weather, the rain lashing at the windscreen, the night very dark, so that the oncoming headlights dazzle and tire us. To keep us going along in the right direction, we put our trust in the occasional roadsigns and the centre lines. We concentrate on them for all we're worth. Of course those lines painted on the road are important in fine weather too, but all the more so at moments of crisis, when we have to face something terrible, like death. Art is like the road signs and white lines, "une chose visible et précieuse" which will prevent us from coming to grief "quand il ne fait plus beau."

It is at such moments that we are at our most receptive to art. For example, a Mozart concerto.

Dans les périodes de crise, ça vous boulverse soudain...

His other image was that of the little scarab, or dung beetle of the Middle East, that feeds itself from what other animals' bodies have rejected. From their excreta—crotte—the scarab makes a perfect ball that it rolls into a secret place to consume at leisure. This is like Artists (the "naifs", the "pure" ones) who nourish themselves from what others have rejected or found useless.

Un artiste est un scarabée qui trouve, dans les excréments mêmes de la société, les aliments nécessaires pour produire les œuvres qui fascinent et bouleversent ses semblables. L’artiste, tel un scarabée, se nourrit de la merde du monde pour lequel il œuvre, et de cette nourriture abjecte il parvient, parfois, à faire jaillir la beauté.

An Artist such as Wajdi Mouawad will put these things into words to let us see what we may have missed:

...des choses profondes, belles, incroyables, des choses fragiles...

(Exactly the message of Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal !)

One of the audience asked whether Wajdi Mouawad's present place of work, the national capital, had affected his choice of plays for the theatre. Oh, definitely, was the reply; that was a good question. The slogan of this year's French theatre programme is Nous Sommes En Guerre. Apparently, Wajdi Mouawad discussed what it means with his team. We can be at war for the sake of something, against something or with someone. It all depends on our point of view.

En guerre en Afghanistan, en guerre pour conserver le sens des choses ... le théâtre, c'est un geste actif ... pas passif ... On se combat pour rester éveillé...

We fight in order to stay awake.

I like this man, and I really approve of what he says.

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