 Good evening. My name is Judith Rose, and I'm the Deputy Control Counselor of the Pension of the CMDUS and Deputy Director of Vila Mectin from this new control institution, reinventing artists' residencies, and creating a network for arts and ideas spanning France and the United States. We are very happy to welcome you here this evening. And we come together to celebrate the publication of Bernard Marie Contest's 7 Plays, the first collection of his major plays, translated in American English. He said it. Bernard Marie Contest, one of the most animatic French playwrights of the 20th century, is sadly no longer with us. But his poetry and lyricism continued to be a source of inspiration for audiences around the world. We're always happy to celebrate the translation of the works of contemporary French playwrights, particularly when these translations are being published. So I would like to thank the CEO of Center Team, including Frank Lansker, the director. I'm in Hermione, the translator and editor. The actor is here. And all the members of the incredible team who kept Contest's voice alive here in the US and who remained so dedicated to this project. I would also like to thank our team in the arts department, as well as our partner, Face Foundation, for their continuing support in bringing Contest's work to the United States. Thank you all for being with us. And I wish you an excellent evening. I'll now turn the floor to Frank for the introduction of the publicist. Thank you. Well, thank you for this beautiful introduction. And thank you to Villarravertini and the French cultural services for being the most of this beautiful space. Also, on a sunny day, it is a nice and beautiful day for us, it is actually the first live event that we've since two years. Yay. Thank you. Thank you very much. I haven't seen it in years, but thank you all for coming and we would really like to see the cultural services that have been such a fantastic, long-standing program going back over decades and their work here in New York City as an example of our cultural exchange, also called cultural diplomacy. But I just think this truly is a cultural exchange that teaches us that art is important, that it has a place, that it reflects us, shows who we are as our active easy, but it's also something that makes us think who we are, our lives, our families, our relations in our cities, in our countries, but also in the world. And as we know, this is a state of Ukraine. Someone said that the opposite of war is not freedom. It's actually creativity. And what we do tonight, I think, is part of this, and I believe it's an effective cultural services for being such a great institution here in New York City we work with 20-plus organizations in our work at the State College. It's an extraordinary, I think, what France does and what they support, the work of artists and also how high the significance is they push on it and then they also go in the forward with a progressive way of justice or peace. But all right, I would like to thank my colleagues, because in the long run, it looks so wonderful, this movie, when the war is going on soon in August, and you've got to miss it, but also the call. Is it true for you, it's your first event in two years? Do you want to say a word, you know? Come on, say something, you know? She has always been, I've been working for such a long time in New York City on this, it's an extraordinary cultural work, she's not as good as she really should be. Please come and say a few words and say what does it feel? It's 2018 for the performing artists. You know performing artists have been pretty affected by the pandemic, so just thank you very much, I'm very happy that you're here to keep Cortez's voice alive in the United States, so thank you very much. And it's a truly extraordinary work. Oh, she does, you know, often in soccer terms, what happens in the midfield, the little tiny things that you use with law or not, it's going to go, you get one, you leave one, it's a little invisible things. The details, unless you encode it alone, everybody here is also looking for excellence, and we really highly respect it. I would like to say our co-host tonight, we are live streamed nationally, and often we have over 10, 20 countries, and now we have International Views on HowlRound.com, it's a non-profit U.S. national streaming service for theater, non-profit theater, hosted at Madison College. It's a fantastic institution, I encourage you all to go get your work. I would like also to say, Crystal's Views with us here, you did the design for the book, if you will get it. It's $35, and tonight, it got into much better dollars. It costs us, actually, no money to print it, but I say tonight, you are a real contestant who came here, put your life at risk, and it should be, we have orders, and it was an upstairs, yes, it is. So, thank you, thank you all. Now we are going to come to the evening itself. I would like to ask my colleague, and I hope I can also say my friend, I mean, Thani Michael, at CUNY, at the great Lincoln College, and even colleagues, we are from the Lincoln College, as well with us, which shows this is a puncture, and if you can see it, we'll show it to you. In some university, people never go, if never relates to something, they don't. And so, I mean, why don't you tell us a little bit about the contest? Thank you. Thank you, everybody, for coming, and the courage to come here today, indeed. I, first, before I speak about the book, I need to give you time, thanks to a number of people, and a number of enemies, because I won't have time to thank everybody. First of all, I want to thank, also, for the test, the brother of Bernard Moïe, who used friendship and trust, really made this book happen. This book has been for many, many, many years into the making, and we'll get into this, we'll get into this. Thank you, also, Frank, of course, Frank Hancher, who is the director of the Martin and Siebel Theater, and the head of the Siebel Publications. I could not think of a better publication, publishing house, than Frank's, because he totally understands and grasps the state of this book. Thank you, of course, Lila Bertine, and the French Cultural Services for your hospitality. Thank you, Marion, for all of what you've done. Marion started a contest festival almost 20 years ago, 2003. Yes. And three of the translations in this book, the early versions of them, were from that festival. I do want to thank one other person who's not here with us, who's a very close friend of mine, and Ismael Conner, Ismael, if you're watching us, you should be here, a very extremely talented actor, who, in 2003 also, I believe, in 2006, did another festival in Atlanta, that lasted six years, and reopened a lot, too, although his translation from that book is talent-made talent. I want to, of course, name the translators, right, Marion Shrouda, and then Thérèse Zavard, Andy Reagan couldn't be here, but unfortunately, Miquel Atias, who's a jazz musician, is in Bertine, jazz, you know, right now, so you won't be able to be there. So this collection, as I said, really is a collaborative work, and it's a work of love. When I say this, I really mean it. People who work on Kothès, who read him, who stage him, who write on him, who study him, they truly develop a love relationship with him, and that's for the very reason the community of Kothès, the Kothès community is big, I get no stronger every day, I know that some people are watching from France, the stuff. So, yes, Kothès has been translated in 30, over 30 languages, staged all over the world, one of the playwrights will be more staged outside of France, and we are making the point of making this book to give a new momentum for the English speaking world, and this is not the first translation of Kothès. In English, this is what we could say, a second attempt. We can take into, we will talk about why, why we thought that this book was necessary to give it really a second attempt. What I tried to do as an editor here is to provide English speaking leadership, artists' context, there's a very long introduction to the book, there's a quite substantive biographical account about this idea, and I tried to really give access to all the material in French that are not accessible in French. So I hope that this really gives a new force to this studies of production of Kothès, with the new Kothès readership in English. This is a definitive anthology at least for the next 20 years. I think translations would be like every generation, new, but this is a treasured mind, I think, and I think we work on that, and also to translate the big ones, the big plays, and for everybody, everybody knows what Kothès is, but it will be as a tonic cushion, or you know, because even in Paris, and people say he's actually an important playwright in the US, so, but now we come to our evening, we're gonna present you seven excerpts that don't be scared to show off on us. We do a wrestling show, we do one for one, we're gonna play a little tiny festival, but we didn't know all for one, what I'm not telling you about. Why don't we have a sense of Russian work, a great idea of the American idea of the collage, the collage excerpts, and see how they listen to each other, they all talk to each other, and we have a fantastic group among actors with us, Amin also put this together as the director. We have one actor missing, the great Karl Gephardt Raphson, and he knows who he's gonna get you, the character of the Venice Biennial, he's a little center-justice, right? I mean, he did a few works, but he seems to have come around now, in chemistry, so he's at home at four o'clock. He said, I'm terribly sorry, I can't, but believe it or not, Amin, next to me, the translator, and I said, okay, I'll get it also, say he knows the words, they are translate words, they are say good words, and we did not want to give him a way to someone like me, or somebody else, he knows that, so we're gonna have those excerpts then, I mean, I will talk a little bit, and then I'm gonna ask the translator to come with us, have a open conversation, and again, he really would like to thank you, the audience, it's what has been missing so much in our work, and that you take your time to come and listen to, what most probably you already know about, to come to celebrate a book, and it's been, I think it was Jackie Kennedy who said, you did one book in your life, your life already, it's meaningful, so we celebrate this, we celebrate books in the time where it's complicated, you know, because sometimes you can create also a book store, you have a finance family there, but he books so, so this means a lot to us, and this is giving besides that I can hopefully say that it's the beginning of a post-corona or the time after corona, we're gonna start with the night, just before the forest, but let me tell you some quotes, I mean, put some together for me, so it's called, it's called, he was told as he was in young, it's said a lot, he said, I like my job as a writer, because it is essential, making theater is the most superficial, useless thing in the world, and as a result, I want to do it in perfection. He said, if you develop a dysfunctional relation, this language in the foreign country, I write differently, put it this way, in New York, and Paris, they had a very strong relation to New York city, and we will talk about this later, he said, you take a particular pleasure because you are at home. A word itself has no meaning for meaning to appear, that is to be an actual relation of words, a rhythm, and music, music produces meaning. An isolated word, that's not it. Now we come to the night, before the forest, and how mean, put it into the political descriptions, which he was supposed to read before the evening, and they have one of the poems, so let me want to give a little context. The night, just before the forest, is a one sentence monologue, and it made him famous overnight, of what 10,000 words, so one sentence was 10,000 words. With no period at the end, written in very rhythmical and musical way, Cortes compared it to a tune by Johann Sebastian Bach. Written in 77, Cortes considers it the beginning of a strong, traumatic body of work. Of the play here, A homeless man approaches you with a street corner half drunk. He asks you for a light or a cigarette, for money to buy a coffee or a beer, for a room to sleep at night, and most and most, most for most, for love. And we have Amin with us who will read the words. I ran after you, the moment I saw you, turned the street corner. Despite all the pricks left in the streets, in the cafes, in the basement of the cafes, here, everywhere, despite the rain and the wet clothes, I ran, not only for the room, not only for the part of the night, for which I knew the room, but I ran, ran, ran, so that this time, turning the corner, I must, I don't find myself in the street, in the empty of you, so that this time, I don't find only the rain, the rain, the rain, so that this time, I find you on the other side of the corner, and I dare shout, brother, and they're wagging by the arm, brother, and they're approaching, brother, it's one, and they're approaching, brother, and they're wagging by the arm, give me a light, that'll cost you nothing, brother, this nasty rain, this nasty wind, this fucking intersection, there's nothing good in walking around here tonight, for you, or for me, but I don't have any secrets, it wasn't really for a smoke, and then I said, give me a light, brother, it was, brother, to tell you, this fucking neighborhood, this fucking habit of walking around here, way to approach people, and you, you walk around, you're close soaking wet, taking the risk of catch any possible disease, I'm not asking you for a cigarette, either, brother, I don't even smoke, it won't, it will cost you nothing, no lights, no cigarettes, brother, no money, then you walk away, 20 bucks, don't make a difference for me, not tonight, and besides, I've got enough to buy you to buy us coffee, let me treat you, brother, instead of walking around in street lights, so it costs you nothing that I've approached you. Maybe I have my way of approaching people, but in the end, it costs them nothing, I'm not talking about a room, brother, a room to spend the night, because then the nicest guys have their mouths shut, you walk away, let's not talk about a room then, brother, but I have an idea to tell you, come, let's not stay here, we'll catch something, we're short, no money, no job, it doesn't matter, it doesn't make things easy for me, I'm not even looking for one, I'm not looking for a job, it's not really that, it's that, I have this idea, first, that I must tell you, you and me, walking around here in the street, in the city, with no money in our pockets, well, are you coughing, brother? I have enough, I'm not taking that back, not now, because I'm the first impression, it's not the money, it's not you, or me, that keeps us in the name to the ground, so me, I've got this idea, brother, it's for our defense, only for our defense, because that is really what we need to defend ourselves, right? Maybe you think not me, but then, let me tell you, maybe I'm the one who approached you, I'm the one who needs a woman tonight, no brother, I can't say a thing, I'm the one who asks, brother, give me a light, but, the one who approaches, is not always the weak one, and so right away, from there, that you didn't look very strong, walking around all the woods, not very tough at all, while me, despite all this, I'm resourceful, and me, I recognize those who aren't very strong. What has grown, it is true, that today, a lot of our people is black and Arab, there's new blood because of the presence of black and Arabs, there's new blood in the heartland, France, which is a desert, but there, no light exists, and if anything happens, it is always thanks to the immigrants. Come to the second reading, The Battle of Blacks and Dawes. In 1978, Coltex was invited to join the French Larkers, Nigeria, to a French construction camp, to read his stay, on the flight in the news, kills a black construction worker, it's a real event, and throws his body in the source. The worker's name was Mopheon, a Paul, Coltex writes a play, he are called, Battle of Blacks and Dawes, in which the character, although he walks into a French construction camp to recline the body, of his mortal brother, horn, the head of the camp, cannot find the body, and tries to offer money instead, so this is Mopheon, does not understand, my offer will not accept money, and my offer will not forget, about his brother, and we are going to have my co-linear as horn, and crystal, that will be for us, and, what is crystal? It's Maria, and I'm going to go here. Crystal Maria is too, thank you. Thank you, thank you. But why are you being so stubborn, you're such a little thing, I told you I'd get a compensation. Often what little people want, is a very simple little thing, but this little thing, they want it, nothing will change their life, they willingly die for it, even if you killed them, even dead, they still want it. Who was the other, and who were you? A long time ago, I said to my brother, I can feel the cold. He says, that's because there's a little cloud, between the sun and you. I say, how can this little crowd make me freeze, when all around me, people are sweating and burning in the sun. My brother says, I'm freezing too, so we warmed each other up. Afterwards, I say to my brother, but when will this cloud disappear? What will the sun warn us too? He says, it won't ever disappear. This little cloud's following us everywhere we go. It will always be there, between the sun and us. And wherever we went, I could feel it following us, with people all around, making them laughing in the heat. My brother and I, together we froze, and gave each other warmth. And so, under this cloud that took the heat away from us, my brother and I warmed each other up, and we got accustomed to each other. With my baggage, I had my brother scratch it, and I scratched his, whenever his baggage, worried they'd leave both the nails on his head. He'd suck the thumb on my hand in his sleep. The women we took, flown to us. Soon, they were freezing too. We were all so close and tight under the cloud, that we kept each other warm. We got so accustomed to each other, one man shiver would ripple across from one end of the loop to the other. Mothers joined us, and mothers, mothers, and their children and our children, a multitudinous family from which not even the dead could be torn away. That's how close and tight we kept them under the cloud that took the heat away from us. The little cloud had risen, risen towards the sun, taking the heat away from a family that was getting larger, and more accustomed to each other all the time. A multitudinous family, made up of bodies, either dead or alive, or it seemed to be alive, each one more necessary to the other as we watched the borders of the earth still warmed by the sun get further away. That's why I'm here, asking for my brother's body that was torn away from us, because his being gone brings the closeness that kept us warm. Because even dead, we need his feet to keep us warm, and he needs our feet to preserve his. Who have a difficulty in understanding each other, son? I think, however hard we try, living side by side will always be here. They tell me in America, blacks go out in the morning, and whites in the afternoon. Is that what they tell you? Thank you, this was a battle of lives and darts translated by Michael Latius. Now we come to the next reading, The West's Gears. What has lived a lot in New York and lived here in New York? I didn't have the time to dream about Paris. I immediately dreamed and dreamt about New York. In New York in 68, it was really a different world. It was truly like no other city in the world, like a big bag where you put everything that could not fit anywhere else. About the play West appeared, Cortez Horsenblad was New York City at the age of 20, and compulsively returns to the city throughout his life and spends a great amount of time in the abandoned West End piers of Manhattan by the Hudson River where the gay community thrived until the end of the 70s and all the 80s. But the mayor of New York at Koch cleans up the city of the early 80s, slowly bathhouses and destroying the abandoned West piers all of the house for the gay community to take revenge, Cortez, by its West Pier in 83. In it, the mayor features a character as a bankrupt icon who was driven by his secretary to an abandoned warehouse by the river. Inhabited by community of homeless migrants who by the end of the play take revenge on college. At the start of the play, Maurice Koch is returning to the place of his childhood, at the abandoned piers where he grew up in a lower-class household to commit suicide. Monique, his secretary, does not know for a reason why he was forced to try to discredit the warehouse. West Pier, translated by Mario Chavard, Teresa, neighbor that was here, with the post-expert of Scarlet, she was living as Scarlet as... What about me? What should I do? I can't leave no one here and I can't leave without you because I'm the one who knows how to drive. I'm the one responsible for bringing you here and you can do anything by yourself. You're a frickin' goat and you don't even exist anymore. Really? You look like a fool. Even at these latest twig lights on, we could see something. There's something slippery on the ground and I don't know what it is. You know, in my family, I was notorious for my ability to see clearly in the dark. They even quit locking me. They even quit locking me in the basement to frighten me. But I never seen these much darkness before. I should never have left the keys in the car. There would be the eyes in on the gate if someone steals it. Christ! He would check hours to get out of this place on foot with no signs of street lights. Besides, Maurice, I think someone is watching us. I'm sure of it. There used to be street lights here. It was a normal, vibrant, middle-hood neighborhood, middle-class neighborhood. I remember it very well. There were parks with trees. There were cars, cafes and shops. There were old people crossing the streets, children strollers. The old warehouses were used as parking lots and cleaning arcades. It was a neighborhood for artists and retired people and more in an innocent world. It wasn't that long ago. But today, Christ! It doesn't matter who. The most innocent person who gets lost here in the middle of the afternoon could be slaughtered in broad daylight and their bodies thrown into the river without anyone even thinking to look for them here. And why? Because rents are too low. They should have encouraged the landlords to raise their rents. They should have been forced to raise them even if they didn't want to. The roaches, the rats and the roaches have infiltrated this place like conquering soldiers. The walls, the lawnmills have left the walls cracked. The broken windows haven't been replaced. The old people died. So finally the merchants were forced to flee the neighborhood. And today, all this buildings, my folks went lined with buildings. I don't remember the scent. Not a nickel to anyone. Nothing at all. Nothing is disgusting. God knows what is here now. God knows what's watching us. Let's go, Marie. You're insane in a word. You're insane in a word anyway. And I don't intend to talk to myself all evening. Let's go. The engine is running. Don't go over there, Maurice. The ground is slippery, and you are not wearing proper dress shoes. Maurice, Maurice, this world is not for the living. Where are you? I can't see anything. I can't hear anything. The engine. I can't hear the car anymore. Don't leave me alone. Don't leave me alone. Maurice? Maurice, I have seen things so beautiful, so beautiful in Harlem on the west side of the Hudson River on the nights of New York. If I had enough talent to steal a piece of this beauty, I know I would be the most accomplished writer in the world in this century. It is a privileged corner of the world, these warehouses that's the engine. Like a mysterious neglected square in the middle of a garden where the plants would have grown differently, a place where normal water doesn't exist, but where different water, a curious one is created. Now we come to the Solitude of Copperfields. It is this playwright's second kind of New York play in the abandoned west piers of Manhattan. Holtest but business is seen between two men in which one attempts to sell something to another. And it soon becomes clear to Holtest that the seller has no merchant rights and is instead begging for money. And in a truly unique and unparalleled language, Holtest staged a dialogue between a man being accosted by another in the street during twilight. The dealer attempts to sell something to the client, but stubbornly refuses to reveal his merchandise. Is it drugs, sex, or other goods? The client feeling threatened? Denies having any illicit desire yet remains complex. By what the dealer might have told him. At the end of the play, nothing has been bought, nothing has been sold. We have witnessed a poetic battle of Holtest between those two characters of unique relationship. And we have now our guest, Michael Wiener, as the client in Crystal Murray's store, Holtest. At the very least, if it were true that you, the salesman, weren't going to be so mysterious and you refused to show them to me, but let me guess what they are. And then I, the buyer, had a desire so secret that I'm not aware of it. And then in order for me to see that I have one, I would need to scratch my memory, like a scab, make it bleed. If that is true, then why do you keep your merchandise to yourself? Now that I have stopped, now that I'm here, now that I'm waiting, it's like this door net that the striptease clocks will catch you by the yellow book and you go home at night. And what's doing you here? She's here tonight, but if you show them to me, if you gave a name to your offer, this is orless of goods, but name, and therefore submit it to judgment at the very least. If you named them for me, I would be able to say no, and would stop feeling like a shaking tree, round to its roots by unpredictable wind, because I know how to say no. And I like to say no. I am able to blow you away with my coats to make you discover all the ways there are to say no, which begin with all the ways there are to say yes, like the coquettes trying on all the dresses and the shoes, only to buy nothing of you. And the pleasure they find in trying it on only comes from the pleasure they find in refusing them all. Make up your mind. Show yourself. Are you the brute stuffing on the pavement, or are you a businessman? If so, lay out your virtue best first, and then we'll take the time to look them over. It is because I want to be a businessman and no root, but a real businessman that I will tell you what I possess or offer, because I cannot suffer a refusal, which is the one thing in the world a businessman dreads most. Since it is a weapon, he does not possess himself. But the more a salesman is decent, the more the buyer is deviant. All the salesman wants is to satisfy a desire he doesn't already know, while the buyer always trades his desire for the primary satisfaction of refusing what is offered to him. His unspoken desire is elated by the primary satisfaction of refusing what is offered to him. His unspoken desire is elated by the refusal, and he gives up on his desire for the pleasure of humiliating the salesman. But I am not the kind of businessman who shows the price tag to satisfy his client's inclination for anger and indignation. I am not here to give pleasure. Instead, I am here to fill the void of desire, to recall desire, and force it to have a name. Drag it on the ground and give it shape and weight, along with the necessary cruelty involved in giving shape and weight to desire. Because I see yours like saliva spilling at the corner of your lips before you swallow it back and I'll wait for it to spill over your chin or wait for you to spit. And only then I will hand you a tissue to wipe yourself clean, because if I handed it to you, I know you would refuse it for me. And this is the sort of refusal I cannot bear to sell. I find it essential to travel after your studies, not in school. When you travel, you learn things that will remain useful your whole life. If you don't shut that in the face of hating your kid and the small space they occupy the world, they'll spend their lives thinking that's so very important and that their careers are so very important. If you learn this when you travel, when you're young, you won't forget your lesson. For me, when I was 20, it called everything. Now we come to Tabata. In the same poetic style as the soldier in the cotton field that we just heard, Tabata is a very short play, but between 1986, stages two sit-ins and the holidays, we couldn't get it up the stairs. We were 12, but we kept the border of the holidays out. Instead of going out in the streets of Tabata, the Buddha, who secruits himself in his medyar, preferring to fill the beat of our daily holidays, his sister, Mylina Skolce, for projecting a very bad image on her by defying social expectations. This will get translated by Amina Fahri, and we have Marie Crystal Stewart as Parveen, and Mylina, and Amina Skolce. Why don't you go out at night when all the boys your age are already out in the streets, wearing shirts, the crease of their hands ironed out, rowling around the girls. All Tabata is out. All Tabata is crimped up. The boys flirt with the girls, and the girls spent all day doing their hair. And my brother, Scott Grease, all over his paws, filling with his machine. In the morning, instead of taking apart the machine's engine to put it back together in the evening, if you gave me your shirt to wash, your jacket to iron, the button of your pants to sew back on, I would not be humiliated in the evening when the other boys come and ask, where's he? Little Abu, where's he, your brother? Where's our pal? We want to go out with him. Shame on me. He's right here in the courtyard with the dogs, and the old ladies, and the chickens, with a nasty old rat. Or I'll slap you, make dreadlocks, braid your hair, shave your skull, give me your shirt, stop being my shame. In the evening, when the women next door come, when they're stuck up faces, thought to matcha especially, and I ask, your brother, where's he, then, our darling? Where's he? Little Abu, what can I tell him? He's in engine oil. He smells like an old machine. There's buttons missing on his pants. Shame on me. Pull your head out of the machine's butt. Do you think a girl would want to ride on this after spending all afternoon doing her hair? You don't even use it to get out. You only use it to escape this machine at the hour when everyone is out. How do you think that makes me look? At the hour of the evening and in this heat, when you should be drinking beer in the juke joint, when you should be out frowning after stuck up with the next door, you're the disgrace of this corner. When you walk in the streets of Tabata, they're full of dog shit. I don't want to drink beer in the juke joints. They're not even cold and they're both late. I don't like the women next door. They lick, they smell like chicken. And I don't like the way they do their hair and the way they dress. I prefer them in the morning when they prepare the meal. And as soon as night comes, I don't like my towels anymore. I like my bike and I paws full of grease and this filthy rag. I prefer my pants without buttons on them and my shirts wrinkled on. I like the old corduaries and the old people and the goats. A goat smells like a goat. I don't want to smell like chicken. I don't want to smell like meat. I want to choose my food and stay in my corduaries. Leave my pants alone and forget about the women next door. Don't stay here. I don't need you. Go away, my man. When it gets hot like this, next door to a chair. For all other words, it's that it finds one person to another. It is that boy of instinctive mentality. It couldn't be harsh, aggressive, fatal, almost positive with your grandpa. It also suggests irreversibility in blood, the blood of kings, families, or races quietly contained in the valley, and there's no additional meaning or color of value in the stone or the spine of the corduaries, but instead the blood that is drying on the sidewalks. We now come back to the desert, written in 1987. It explains in the provincial town east of France, reminiscent of Mets, where Cortez was born, this kind of desert in the first room. The Arab cafes actually were blown up by white-winged French activists in the 60s. And the supervision of the town's governor of the general Jacques Massoud, all chock-a-dance again. In the beginning of the 19th century, extended to Algeria by a wealthy family during the war. We turn to the town, these two mixed blood children, to reclaim her part of the heritage from Adrian, her brother, transcended by any brave man. And we have Ben Becher as Adrian, and Housifina as Taro as Massoud. Matilda, dear sister, you've come back to our good little town. You've come with good intention. Now that age has never lost a little bit, you should try to avoid quarrels. You're very short. Visit. During the 15 years you've been gone, I've grown accustomed to use them, not quarreling. It's hard to start up again, you know? Adrian, my brother. My intention was out there. And if age has now yielded, I'm happy to hear it. Life will be easier during my very long stay. In my games, age, instead of men with me, has put me on edge. I'll continue calm on my nerves. Everything should be fine. You wanted to escape the war, so naturally you came back to your roots, to your childhood home. And you did the right thing. Soon the war will be over. Soon you'll return to Algeria, the sunny Algeria. You'll have born these uncertain times which affect us all to you. In this world. My roots? What roots? I'm not a tree. I have feet. And there I'm meant for the soil. And after the war, my dear Adrian, I couldn't give a damn. I'm not here to escape the war. On the contrary, I brought it with me into this good little time where I have some old scores to settle. And if it's taken me so long to come back and settle this course, it is because too much misfortune has softened my resolve. But 15 years without hardship has brought back the memories and the wrath and the faces of my enemies. Enemies. Enemies, my dear sister, you. You know, in this good little town, distance has fed your imagination, which has never lagged. Loneliness, an arterious hot sun, has fried your brain. But I believe you should come back to look over your inheritance and then leave. Go ahead, look around. See how well I've taken care of things. Admire how I've improved the place. Once you've had a good look, touch everything, look at your future. But I didn't come here to leave, Adrian. I've come with baggage and children. And I've come back to this house because I own it. Improved or destroyed, I will always own it. I want to settle down in the place I own. You own it. You own it, my dear Matilda. You own it. Well, you're a good mother. I've taken care of it. I've improved this value considerably. So you own it. Very well. But don't start accepting it. Don't start any of your tricks. Well, why don't you make it a bonus? Let's start off with our hallows when we've gotten off to the wrong foot. And then you'll start over, my dear Adrian. Let's start over. And it's over to Zucco. Contest for this man who had Zucco killed for no reason, like on a serial killer. And this is why, for me, he is a hero. He completely matches the man of our century. And the way he commits this murder screams us back to the great mythologies. The admiration, the gaze of all the others towards him. Because he was such a media sensation. The gaze, the admiration. That's what turned him into a hero. They are no heroes whose clothes are soaked in blood. And blood's the only thing in the world that cannot go unnoticed. But at the play, in 1988, an Italian member of Zucco murdered his father, his mother, a police officer, and other civilians. Italy's little and then France's issue of warrants for his arrest. The wanted person posters can be seen all over Paris metro stations. The media and the public become obsessed by this young handsome murder. In his last completed play, entitled The Virtues Zucco, Contest stages the rise and fall of this media-tized assassin. And the following scene subdues from the police. An idol of Paris metro station, a single poster is just in there. An old man who is lost on his way and was not able to exit the station before he closes down. And Zucco, sitting on a bench. Zucco does not reveal his identity, passes himself over to someone else, and by the end of the scene, helps the old man out of the subway station. Translated by Anna Miller. And then that was for The Virtues Zucco, but in the vital media. I'm an old man, and I'm glad myself stayed out there for the reasonable. I was so glad to have caught the last train, when suddenly, at an intersection of this maze of corridors and escalators, I couldn't recognize my stuff, which I use so regularly I thought I knew as well as my kitchen. But I didn't know it hid behind the straightforward route that I use every day. A dark world of tunnels, of unknown directions that I would have preferred not to know. But my stupefied house in my house, forced me to help. And then suddenly, the lights turn off and leave all these little white side lights, whose very existence escaped me. So I walk straight ahead in an unknown world as fast as possible, which doesn't mean a lot for an old man like me. And when at the end of the station's endless escalators, I think I see an exit. Bam! Giant wire gate locks access to it. So here I am in quite a curious situation from the end of my age. I'm just about to ask myness and the slowness of my gaze. Wait for I don't know what. And I don't really want to know what because such probabilities are truly difficult to swallow in my age. But you, young man, whose legs seem very agile to me and whose mind seems very clear. Yes, I can see your clear gaze. It's neither blurred nor foolish. Like that old man might be. It's a possible plea that you, not yourself, get tricked by these corridors and these closed wire gates. No, even a closed gate. A young man with a clear mind like you could get through it like a drop of water through a colander. What makes your tongue about yourself? I don't reassure you. I'm a normal, reasonable young man. Mr. I've never stood out, but what I stood out to you, if I hadn't been sitting next to you, I've always thought the best way to live peacefully was to be as transparent as a pane of glass, like a chameleon on a stone to go through walls that have minor color nor sense so that people's gaze go through. And it sees the people behind you as if you weren't there. It's a tough job being transparent. It's a profession. It's an old, very old dream to be invisible. Well, I'm no hero. Heroes are criminals. There are no heroes whose clothes are soaked in blood. And blood's the only thing in the world that can have no notice. It's the most visible thing in the world. But when everything's destroyed, and the only pin fog of the end of the world covers the ground, there will be blood soaked in the blood of the heroes. I was a student. I was a good student. You never go back after being used to being a good student. I'm enrolled at the university. In the classrooms of the Soul Ward, my seat is reserved. With other good students, among them, why don't stand out? Nothing good changes the course of things. Mr. Ahn, like a train that calmly passes a meadow, nothing can make go off the rails. We can always go off the rails, don't we? Yes. Now, I know anyone can go off the rails at any time. And all that makes me really scared of that. There are things that are scary. You're right. Again, I think these actors are great for us. Since we have seen the video, at least I think so. This is a great thing. I was thinking, this is work, but human relations was to be our way. Who's the dealer? Who's the client? We have to sell. We have to do what we want. Do you know what you want? Do you know what you don't want? Do you know what you don't mean? So that's why we also have this fascination with what people really know about humans and what we love and what we love. I mean, you work over 10 years, I mean, first of all, human relations, we're really attentioned before putting it all together, work with music, with our audience, going again, work, work, work, work. But why is it so necessary? Thank you. First, I want to acknowledge, again, that this is a collaborative work in Malayun and that does all of here. It's really a pleasure to see you guys here. So there are a number of ways to enter this question. One of them being that, as you mentioned in reading those quotes, I guess I've had a very special relationship in New York when he came here when I was 20. And from that point on, he came back compulsively. He said that there are urges that he can fulfill here in this city that he cannot fulfill in other cities. Anybody who lives in New York? Now, you know, as I mentioned, the professor has been translating over 30 languages. He's been, he's still produced all over the world. Now the English translations have been lagging. And the translations, the productions, the productions in English have been lagging in comparison with the other languages. Now there are, I would say, maybe two reasons for this. There's been 2003 Malayun here in a very big festival that will come up for us on top of that. So it's been 20 years. And some of the translations here started 20 years ago and they've been worked through for these years. In the late 90s and early 2000, they had been British, English, British English translations that came out. And they did a good service to go test because they introduced go testing into the English language. Now, the reason why the productions are lagging today in English may be said on the one hand, that go test, as you may have heard, it's nice, has a very specific language that is quite different from what is done here in the US in terms of theater or even in England, in terms of theater. British theater and American theater, as you know, are mostly cloud based. The language is mostly naturalistic of all of them, the majority. And the characters were psychological. All of these are principles that put this work against. And so what this is, characters are not psychological, because we can see for example, they're more strong than we feel. The language is utterly poetic, utterly musical, rhetorical, incantatory, invocatory. And the plots are, you know, sometimes not there, and when they hit was the dealer, nobody knows. But what he does really, he brings out conflicts, tensions that exist often in society and are often addressed. He just brings them out and exposes them, but he doesn't resolve them and they just are there almost in exposure and we have to deal with them. So there is no resolution to this other place. So there is a, let's say, a traditional difference between the American and British and the, we would say French theater, but then again, French theater is not really a good way to explain because what this style is is really unique also in France. And you mentioned in the quote, and it's important, that he is a typical writer-trapper, as in he, these two things go together. And he often says that he writes in countries, in countries whose languages he doesn't understand, so that obscurity cannot contaminate his writing. So his own writing becomes a bit foreign. Tell us a bit, what do you struggle with? What is different between your team and what are some words or sentences? What is the essence you try to capture? How did you solve it? Absolutely. In order to answer that question and their transition from this question to this one, it's saying that these translations is a book that we try to do, we try to do something different from the previous translations that were available in English. In previous translations, it's fair to say that they introduced it in English more but at the same time they compromised on the language. And the language was rendered more naturalistic. There was slang, but there wasn't any slang in French. But that's a kind of magical ability to make something sound provocative or slang-like with the most even French. With the most prominent French. And that's not just in previous translations. And that's a tendency that often comes in with this. People often jump into slang where in fact there is no slang at all. And what we wanted to do, we worked together to go over line-by-line all the translations and make sure that we don't add to the text. When we bring about another trick, so this is an interesting question, another trick that he does that is really thought-provoking is he repeats certain words. He repeats certain expressions almost compulsively through a play or he describes some sort of repetitions of the character. But those repetitions, those words may change meaning in a different context. So often translators as consequence choose a completely different word for that different context to be more creative, but not for this substance. And thus, and just through that repetition, he creates again rhythm. He creates a certain form of emotion. He transmits emotions through with ability and repetition. That was really the most important aspect that we wanted to preserve in this book. I mean, instead of adapting to the short main analysis, he tried for us to present the way it is as faithful as it is because I don't have a new thought, but he really does something unique and he works in itself. What surprised you long time ago? Did you learn? Yeah, I mean, what I am describing here was an early kind of a relationship. And I think that what I learned is as one of the quotes that you read for example, it says that there is no meaning in the word. There is meaning in the repetition of words in the musicality. And a word in itself as the meaning. And really as a translator, but also known as a scholar who wrote the quote on this calendar, as a translator. But I have to say also, I started translating with this in Duda in that the lepers of Gretis came out in 2009 and he marked the letters because he trusted in Shakespeare and he writes that the reason why he started translating was to learn how to write because there was no today it wasn't in school to learn how to write and I must confess it was possible to get my approach to translation but this taught me to learn how to write and to learn and it's really a trouble to ask our translators to join and not be on until it's done. Someone said, the translation of that sounds like a love affair it can be faithful to the text or it can be translated to but sometimes if you're faithful it's a betrayal sometimes a betrayal can be faithful and so it is quite something so translators when we get to Seagull a place to hide an important there is a window yes yes and we need one more chair maybe no come here we'll see one more chair no no it's fine so translation is of significance it's often overlooked it's a work of creation and maybe you can tell us how was it it was long it was long it was long this is also an overhead of working on this text I just want to thank the actors for great work I'm just such a joy to hear it see I fell in love with Coltest the first time I read it and I basically haven't stopped working on it since I'm I mean I talked about the strangeness of Coltest's language not specifically something that attractive to him is how he both builds strangeness in the language and makes words that are familiar to us you'll somehow differently when losing touch with what they do and then bring it back essentially essentially those are your correlations I'm an intro lover of here I I stumbled into this translation through this beautiful woman over here who I did theater together with her in Iowa where I was in college and she was there not in college and we both ended up in New York in 90s and so I think we were both like three years old at that point and Margo said maybe we saw in the loneliness of the cotton fields together at BAM and she became obsessed with doing a production of Coltest and bringing Coltest to New York and she said I want to translate this play you should call me translate this play I'm not so sure about that she can translate this play with you I was an English major I studied French in high school I do not speak French I was in a translated Mariana very well I think but we just sat in a cafe many hours together and I learned Coltest from this woman and everything you said but the language is so true because she was so determined to keep the language true to the tone and that it wasn't natural and she would try to tell me this is what he's saying and I would say well tell me in French is it formal, is it slang what does it seem to you in French and she would describe it in French in English to me and then we would decide on the correct English words I mean that was literally the process line by line it's great to translate in collaboration we encourage it often where we have time also we often ask New York playwright to go over it at the very very end Mariana why did you choose to be such a big part of your life but it's a long affair long very long affair I guess I Coltest for me is an intimate factor so I approach translation from the director's point of view because there are many different ways to translate there are literal ways there are scholar ways there are poetic ways there are many different ways and every way has to be translated so my approach I'm a theater director and that was my love was the Coltest world is one struct for me and more I would say from the stomach it's guts, guts it's treats, it's dirt it's sex and it's all beautiful at the same time very elegant and very eloquent and at the same time it really digs into human choice so that's what I love about Coltest and when I I went to see a guy at his show which was absolutely fantastic that's when I decided I want to live in the city and I want to look at Coltest and that's how it started in 1995 and then it was I directed three plays of Coltest with Sphere, Tava Tava and Illusory to the Cottonfield and then in 2003 with many, many translators we started to do the translations and I have to mention the Ohio theater and the Whitsun Resu and the Grand Businessmen Company and we presented these new plays in the entire basically of Coltest and then the Whites were pulled off so we did another Coltest with you and then I made him alone and he was strong enough and visionary enough to pull it off so that was a very wonderful thing that happened to Coltest because thank you so much Thank you I think we ought to get a microphone because I don't mean anything I'm just saying every generation, every 20 years one has to be translated anyway so I mean it starts in 20 years people will say about this book about what they did in this book you know it has to be different but I don't know if any one of you wants to say how did it feel I thought it was really fun I was telling them that sometimes when you do like experimental abstract stuff it can be frustrating but the sit-ups feel like that like you're right it didn't happen it wasn't like super plotty but that didn't really matter because I could always tell at least for me what the character was trying to get from the other person and as an actor that's all I needed to know to be the seed you know what I mean whereas it wasn't like what those weird plays were and then there's an A then you have to make it be about something this wasn't one of those so I had a lot of fun you guys I'm writing a play about an A that falls to the floor well, hope it's fun and the thanks Frank and thanks Amine and the French cultural services you called for having us here and really thank you to everyone that showed up without you I think it's all about this shared space so keep on going out to readings and support what came across to me while we did this process and more and more on that here Frank Amine and the other translators talk about Coltez is the universality of his work I guess what first peaked my interest was his connection to New York City but more and more it seems we're all looking for some kind of I don't know further understanding and that's really what's coming up the most to me are specific things about the way he writes that are exciting and are visceral but the most thing that came up for me was the universal subjects that Coltez talks about that I think we could all obviously all relate to how we're all in this room together and that's what I would like to keep on pushing out there and support thank you everybody for being here, thank you Amine and thank you so much, Frank and everyone for the friendship I'm going to be very short for me I really wanted to the language and it's my second language so I was like I wouldn't do this but I really loved it and it's very great but very grounded and also it reminded me a bit of Colpez which is not so grounded but there's something of the repetitions and that it reminded me of Colpez just to punctuate Jose's thoughts I'm taking by the mystery of the work I think we can try to frame it as one thing or another thing I'm not so sure I feel like there's plenty of narrative in Colpez's work I feel obviously it's his great deal of poetry I think I hear a little bit of I mean I think like any sort of truly singular canonical writing you could compare that there are echoes of other I mean to me there's a little check off in there that could be a little there's other sort of inflections to his work but at the end of the day he's poetic he's talking about authenticity he's talking about humanity and he's very much grounded he is grounded in a certain way he's palpable, he's visceral he's standing in it and I think that there's plenty for us to do as actors as well in this work and it can really have a there can be a real interactive quality to it let's not be out of the sky I think there's a real earthbound quality to it as well so maybe since we're a little bit up and in town we open it looks like the most intelligent audience actually in two years and anyway it is actually so are there a couple of questions or comments and would that be our number one someone else what would we start number two do thank you for all of this and I mean for bringing Contest to the World I guess my question has to do with Contest is a very gay writer and it's somehow tonight he came out to Strait and if you have some comments I mean don't be shocked it's a it's a theme of the vibe and I guess you don't hear the choice of the audience choice the actors tonight but I mean I felt like I was watching a straight writer kind of the sincere that's the one this is one of the major questions about this I'm not going to tell you I'm still into this I should so in the book I have this introduction for your point especially if you refer to the Solitude play and the Solitude play really started becoming famous after the third production that I believe that Mayon was referring to in 1995 by Xie Wuan Astan Xie Wuan and by that time he was most dead and before the second production Xie Wuan already played it and it was already this wasn't happy about it he wasn't happy because Xie Wuan was trying to pretty much do what he was writing he was trying to emphasize the what he called the homoerotic relations between the characters but for him it wasn't about a certain kind of sexuality it was mostly almost entirely about the notion of desire which comes in the text almost I think also I don't know how many mention of it in the text but here I listen to that in one of the interviews in which he says that he's I'm quoting all this that Mayon's sexuality doesn't define he's not a strong enough pillar for my writing but the desire with this and the desire, the emotion of desire for him runs across forms of sexuality including the love, the shorts play that are love is somewhat controversial because a certain form of sexual desire including between sexes so really it's not just about for him it's not just about although in his life he was very much free especially in New York in Paris there were a little too late for him to have it in New York but he never trusted him and the only reason Chevaux I believe that Chevaux could do his third production we put in so much emphasis on the eroticism between the two men I think that's what this was about because he would not have and he didn't say it so we have two more questions I think this question was one that self-derived to a certain degree one of the things that I love about Mutez and what comes forward in the readings today is that even when he has two people on stages he's writing dialogue he's actually writing monologues for the second reformer to respond so there are like three waves of language that are happening there is his language there is the second reformer's response to the language and then there's like a dialogue and then that goes to the audience so I'm just very interested and grateful to have been able to see that stage tonight and I guess the question would be for the directors and the performers how the time that it takes to actually work with Mutez's language so that you can have that immediacy of response and then to get that way to the audience who will then be the third sector of the scene I would rather answer this one on this one for your response I mean the amount of time that we have is so short and the work that these people have been so great Thanks for the question I try to address that if we aren't let us know I was able to try in terms of the time we just tried it out for all of us and give as much as we can to everyone here the time it is realistically behind the scenes you're lucky if you get a few hours of rehearsal with this it's just the nature of the beast the logistics we were able to sit down for a couple of hours but other than that it's showing up a day of all my peers here and just doing the best that we can trusting each other and that's the technical part of it in terms of the monologues I don't have anything interesting to say not that I've said anything interesting earlier we just have the words and try to communicate action we had a nice discussion about emotions and tones that he tries to evoke sometimes with the repetition that we're mentioned here but for us we were talking for us in life when we talk even now there's psychology going on but we're not aware of it probably we're not in our behavior on what we're doing because we want something like now I want to try to give you the best answer I can so that's as interesting as it gets I think for us we don't look maybe one last question there's also a character who is here that doesn't speak throughout the entire play and it doesn't be like another language so that's an active language how do you fill out your two parts of non speaking and the other thing I can say is that we saw you in the film which I've acted we worked on conjunction along the logs and because and because if this is how we worked the choreography and the tempo through these words and that was a very hard and long I always thought that really quickly to share a famous quote from an interview that requested where the interviewer asked to talk about solitude and the dialogue he said it's not a dialogue it's a monologue can I say one little thing for me there were two things that we mentioned was the repetition and rhythm but also you mentioned something about de-subtachment right or like in terms of the acting that called Tess used to in 2006-2008 in my mind yes I was this famous woman at the end of West Pier when she says that actors should play the text as a little boy who's in front of this classroom and that's he just tells his text thinking that oh I forgot I forgot to go and then suddenly he went into the bathroom so he didn't say hello to me last question so I guess as far as the book how does it relate to other books of his work and how complete is it right that's a very important question he saw it's seven what he himself calls the quote for musical history so after he passed away there were a number of other previous texts that came out very valuable they're not inclusive these texts the ones that are here are the seven plays that he himself basically describes as the major dramatic books now hopefully it needs to be more coming out the interviews are amazing the letters are amazing the previous plays some of them are absolutely fantastic now again this book as I tried to mention tried to present a different approach to translation at the same time I tried to provide a lot of material that wasn't available to the readers and I really hope it really starts a certain form of just polishing so thank you all thanks to the editors thanks to the translators thank you all thank you all all the translators inside we have a little table up there and there is a reception of French books we have a group we have a reception