She sees it as “the most difficult thing that [she has] had to do so far in this profession”. With the obligatory passages: “anxieties, nightmares where we forget the text, panic of not being up to it…” In rehearsals, he kept the phlegm of the director who has seen others: “It’s going to be fine! Together, Lyna Khoudri and Pascal Rambert, one of the most fashionable actresses of the moment and the prolific playwright, produced Perdre son sac, a monologue of three quarters of an hour which, after having been performed in Tangier, Rabat, Casablanca and Rennes, is given in Paris, at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, until February 18, in a diptych with Ranger, another play by Pascal Rambert, interpreted by Jacques Weber.
In this 2019 text, originally written for the Franco-Swiss actress Lola Giouse, the heroine, a window cleaner who went through a preparatory class, evokes her precariousness, her revolt, this capitalist world where it is impossible to navigate, but also his taste for women, in an uninterrupted breath. “Social determinism exists you go back to your niche you think you’re climbing the social ladder but no you’ll always be a girl falling asleep in front of the cable dressed in a Mickey T-shirt,” Rambert writes in a casting without punctuation – his signature.
“I was living in Brooklyn at the time of writing and was intrigued by a woman I saw outside a Van Cleef store
” Who is this girl ? »
Played everywhere, publishing faster than his turn, Pascal Rambert has also drawn on the vast documentation that the student projects in which he participates allow him to constitute, from Princeton University to the National Theater of Strasbourg or to the Manufacture of Lausanne. . “I have seen over time, speaking and interviewing young actors from all over the world, the coming of gender questions, the precariousness of over-educated people, the feeling of losing ground, all these worries of youth which form an era. »
It was while attending a performance of Ier Acte, a program of the National Theater of Strasbourg imagined by Stanislas Nordey with the aim of diversifying the profile of young recruits, that Pascal Rambert met, in 2015, Lyna Khoudri, the one of the participants. “For my promotion, Pascal was a god, and his play, Clôture de l’amour, which we had chosen to play between excerpts from Lagarce, Koltès or Racine, a hit, says the actress with twirling enthusiasm. I see us after the performance, surrounding him and drinking in his words, as if he were a guru. »
When the young Franco-Algerian – whom the cinema has not yet caught up to awarding her a César for best female hope in 2020 – goes on stage to read a text of her own on the dark years in her country of origin , the “guru” is amazed: “Who is this girl? “He entrusted her with a monologue in 2017 in Actress, a choral piece, already at the Bouffes du Nord, of which he is an associate artist, offered her other projects, but the filming now held her back. “Pascal’s poetic logorrhea is one of the things that made me want to do theatre. Declining for lack of time, I said, “Please don’t forget me!” “says Khoudri.
A naturalist piece
Losing your bag therefore seals a reunion expected on both sides. For his actress, the director imagined a stripped-down setting, a simple blue tarpaulin in front of which she moves. “Raw, frontal, for an action that is done in the street and which suits Lyna, whose game is very intuitive, not at all damaged by technique”, he underlines.
With his taste for naturalism, he gave only a handful of indications, like a chemist, on the rhythm of diction: “10% longer”, “5% shorter”… Nothing on the intentions, psychology. “He swears only by the real, appreciates Lyna Khoudri. In the flow of the play, I never cry when a stage direction nevertheless indicates that the character is crying. But Pascal does not claim it from me. Forcing, for him, has no interest. It is up to her to interpret with her present state, her strength, her breath. “That’s what I learned about Actress Audrey Bonnet, whom Pascal so often directed. She made me understand that you have to allow yourself on stage to be yourself. »
Pascal Rambert is about to write a new text for Lyna Khoudri, tailor-made – “one of those love letters for actors that I can’t manage to address face-to-face in life”, he summarizes . Way to continue the conversation. “I could only do theater with him and I would be delighted,” says the actress. After sleepless nights struggling to memorize gulps of text without a period or comma, she asked him only one thing with a smile: “This time, please, not a one-on-one monologue.” -stage ! »
