Build a contemporary repertoire by reactivating on stage works created one, two or ten years ago: this impulse came from dancers and choreographers, Pina Bausch in the lead, who never stopped replaying, at more or less intervals regular, some of their works. Then the theater took over in a movement closely followed by the Autumn Festival, which definitively confirmed the trend by devoting, in its brochure, several pages to the revival of shows born under its wing. “It’s not just a question of listing programs but of promoting our repertoire and taking on this gesture within a festival which is nevertheless interested in new forms,” explains Francesca Corona, artistic director of the festival.
Far from it the desire to distort the vocation of an event which, since 1972, has shaken up everything we think we know about innovation. The Autumn Festival remains the place for the emergence of the never-seen before. But this temple of fidelity, which willingly repeats its invitations to beloved creators, also wants to become a place of memory. Not a museum of curators pulling dusty archives out of their drawers, but a living place where the immediate past, present and near future forge alliances, which will draw “a more complex and ambitious cartography”, according to the director.
Francesca Corona therefore advocates for a mixture without hierarchy of the old and the recent: “Automne is capable of following the evolution of an artist while making him appear in a constellation of different creators. It’s a way of repositioning it and rearranging the relationships between the works. It is also a way of traveling with directors, performers, visual artists or choreographers, of checking the changes in the world around us as well as those of an audience whose tastes or desires are transforming. »
Even if the association of the two words “repertoire” and “contemporary” sounds like an oxymoron (the first term referring to a corpus that we imagine to be classic or even heritage), the director does not see, in this pas de deux, any contradiction: “The shows that are being made before our eyes constitute the repertoire of the future. We must be aware that everything that is developed today is destined, sooner or later, to belong to history. »
“The pandemic has blurred the rules”
So enter into history, thanks to the 2023 edition of the Autumn Festival, eleven works already shown within it and which return to take a tour of the track under the gaze of another audience. Among the lucky ones are Jérome Bel with tg Stan, Nacera Belaza, Nicolas Bouchaud and Eric Didry, Fanny de Chaillé, Lionel Dray, François Gremaud, Nach, François Tanguy, Gisèle Vienne. As well as Camille Dagen, whose project, Duration of exhibition, saw the light of day in 2018: “He is the founder of my company Animal Architecte. From the beginning, we said to ourselves that it would be funny to do it again when we were very old,” underlines the director. She was 25 at the time. She has five more now. It’s enough to take the measure of the time that has passed and check what has (or not) resisted it: “I see in certain sequences a form of simplicity or naivety”, smiles Camille Dagen, who wards off the risk of expiration by rewriting, each time the game is restarted, part of the Exposure Duration. “It’s an object that welcomes modification. He moves in close combat with the actors, which gives him a sort of permanent youthfulness. »
How does contemporary repertoire age? What does it say about the metamorphosis of aesthetics? What does he say, finally, of a time when representations, elaborated over months, often have the lifespan of a disposable handkerchief? “Spending so much time on a creation only to have it thrown offstage so quickly is absurd. The theater ecosystem needs to be rethought. Subsidies are often linked to production. We always have to create something new. The system is governed by these bad habits. But since Covid-19, perceptions have changed. The pandemic has blurred temporalities and upset the rules. We no longer consider old and new in the same way,” notes Francesca Corona.
With two shows co-opted – Another History of the Theater and Le Chœur – Fanny de Chaillé hopes that this affirmation of a repertoire at Automne will make it possible to raise the question of the obsolescence of the plays: “We are asked to create at a maddening pace at the moment when the movement should be slowed down. However, not producing every year is nothing serious. I don’t need to do more than I already do. » Some of his pieces have never stopped touring. She follows them one by one. Which implies rigorous logistics and the availability of interpreters. Fanny de Chaillé therefore manages the agendas and keeps shows on the grid that “still have something to say”. The matter is not easy. Resumption involves reworking. Theater, even repertory theater, is not an art that is duplicated mechanically like a photocopy.