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Marie Brassard
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Marie Brassard
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Anything can happen
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Sound Cyborg
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Marie Brassard
Tout peut arriver | Anything can happen
Je n’ai pas de mandat précis, ni de mode d’emploi au regard de la manière dont les choses doivent être faites. Je sais seulement quelque chose doit sortir de moi et je laisse cela arriver publiquement, devant le monde. Si j’avais à rédiger un manifeste, je l’intitulerais:
Tout peut arriver.
C’est ce que je crois et c’est avec l’ouverture d’esprit que cet énoncé appelle que j’essaie de regarder le monde et d’aborder le métier que je pratique, que j’ai du mal à définir.
Je suis d’abord actrice, mais j’aurais pu être danseuse, peintre, musicienne. Je suis devenue actrice par accident, grâce aux rencontres fabuleuses que j’ai eu la chance de faire, d’autres artistes qui m’ont sauvée, inspirée et qui m’ont tout appris.
J’ai participé à la création de plusieurs spectacles, performances et films. À ce jour, chacun de ces projet a révélé sa nature unique et constitué une aventure singulière et inédite remplie de dangers, d’accidents et de plaisirs. Aucune de ces aventures ne m’a laissée intacte et les cicatrices que chacune a laissées sont devenues à la longue agréables à porter comme des blessures de guerre.
Pendant des années, j’ai été invitée à travailler étroitement avec Robert Lepage. Son goût du risque et son talent de dompteur d’entreprises ambitieuses et impossibles à réaliser m’ont gardée éveillée. J’ai adoré être audacieuse avec lui et à plusieurs reprises, la sportive en moi a été ressuscitée et ma conviction renforcée que lorsqu’on est artiste, être aventurier est un devoir. Depuis, je continue de me méfier du confort qui est, je crois, le chloroforme des riches.
En 2001, en fondant la compagnie Infrarouge, je me suis donné un outil qui me permet de continuer à produire et créer de manière indépendante. Je peux maintenant inviter à mon tour des artistes à se joindre à moi le temps d’un ou de plusieurs projets pour certains. Ils sont écrivains, vidéastes, cinéastes, musiciens, éclairagistes, scénographes, danseurs.
Grâce à leur talent et leur collaboration, j’essaie de mettre au monde les idées étranges ou informes qui germent dans mon esprit. Avec eux, je tente de dessiner dans l’espace des formes qu’on a pas souvent vues.
En donnant au son et à la lumière une place royale, nous créons ensemble des moments, que nous recréons à chaque représentation, qui ne peuvent se partager qu’en temps réel,
here and now.
I don’t have a particular directive or an instruction manual as to how things should be done. I simply know that there is something inside that I have to let out and I let this happen in public, in front of everyone. If I had to write a manifesto, I would call it
Anything can happen.
This is what I believe and these words implore that I approach the world and my profession, which is hard to define, with an open mind.
I am first and foremost an actress, but I could have been a dancer, painter or musician. I became an actress by accident, thanks to the fabulous people I’ve met - other artists who have helped me, inspired me and taught me so much.
I have collaborated on the creation of several shows, performances and films. All of these projects have been unique and singular adventures full of dangers, accidents and pleasures. All of them have affected me in some way, and with time I have grown to appreciate the scars that each has left me with, somewhat like living with war wounds.
For many years, I was invited to work closely with Robert Lepage. His willingness to take risks and talent for realizing ambitious, seemingly impossible projects always kept me awake. I adored being audacious with him, and again and again my pioneer spirit was awakened and my conviction reinforced that it is the duty of the artist to be an adventurer. Since then, I have remained true to my convictions and have avoided the comfort that is the opiate of the rich.
By founding the company Infrarouge in 2001, I provided myself with a platform that allows me to continue to produce and create independently. Now I am in a position to invite artists to join me in working on certain projects. They are writers, video directors, cinematographers, musicians, lighting designers, stage designers and dancers. With their talent and collaboration, I am able to bring to life the strange and undefined ideas germinating in my soul. Together with them, I try to create forms in space that have rarely been seen before.
By giving sound and light a regal position, we are able to create, and recreate at every performance, moments that can only take place in real time, in the here and now.
Biographie | Biography
Pendant plusieurs années, sa carrière a été étroitement liée à celle de Robert Lepage. Sous sa direction, avec d’autres artistes, elle a participé à la création de plusieurs pièces de théâtre et films.
Elle créait en 2001 son premier spectacle solo,
Jimmy créature de rêve,
dans le cadre du Festival de théâtre des Amériques. Il y eut par la suite trois autres créations,
La Noirceur, Peepshow
et
l’Invisible,
dans lesquelles elle poursuivait ses expériences technologiques, explorant les manières possibles d’utiliser le son au théâtre. Entrelaçant les voix et les musiques, traversant les niveaux de réalité, elle nous mène dans un monde où les frontières entre privé et public s’estompent et la relation entre les êtres humains et la technologie devient intime. Son travail particulier, qui a fait d’elle une voix singulière dans le paysage théâtral contemporain, est présenté en anglais et en français et a été accueilli chaleureusement dans plusieurs villes d’Amérique, d’Europe et d’Australie.
Elle est directrice artistique de la compagnie de production Infrarouge.
For many years, Marie Brassard's professional endeavors were closely linked with Robert Lepage. Under his direction, she participated along with other artists in the creation of several plays and films. In 2001, she created her first solo production,
Jimmy,
within the framework of the Festival de théâtre des Amériques. In the meantime, she has produced four other works -
The Darkness, Peepshow, The Glass Eye
and
The Invisible
- in which she has continued to experiment with technology and explore the many ways with which sound can be manipulated in theater. By interlacing voices and music and traversing the planes of reality, she leads us to a world where the boundaries between public and private dissolve and the relationship between human beings and technology becomes intimate. Her unique work, performed both in English and French, has made of her a singular voice in contemporary theater, receiving widespread acclaim in many cities across America, Europe and Australia. She is the artistic director of the production company Infrarouge.
Trois notes sur Marie Brassard | Three notes on Marie Brassard
Source : Paul Lefebvre
Les Cahiers du Théâtre français,
volume 3, n° 1, septembre 2003, p. 6-7. L’ACTRICE Les grands acteurs sont atypiques et Marie Brassard n’échappe pas à la règle. Observez-là: elle joue tout en retenue, avec cette idée simple à concevoir mais si difficile à réaliser qui veut que ce soit le moins qui peut le plus. Pour elle, jouer, c’est nettement faire selon une convention. Elle ne reproduit pas, elle recrée, ou plutôt, elle indique: elle ne crie pas, mais indique le cri. Les gestes sont discrets mais nets, pleins. Pas de petits gestes parasites des mains. Pas de gestes qui font pléonasme avec la parole non plus. C’est comme si elle construisait à partir d’une base neutre, mais c’est sans doute l’inverse: elle travaille à partir d’improvisations. C’est donc que chez elle le processus d’écriture scénique est un minutieux travail d’épuration du jeu, des gestes et des mots. Mais au-delà de cette épuration, il y a fondamentalement un travail de déplacement, de retrait, de soustraction. Hemingway disait que c’est ce qui n’est pas là dans une nouvelle qui en fait la force. Si on demandait à Marie Brassard de jouer le feu, elle ne laisserait entrevoir qu’une fumée très précise. Le théâtre est un art qui s’écrase toujours lorsqu’il veut reproduire de façon illusionniste la surface du réel et qui s’envole dès qu’il arrive à créer des évocations. Le jeu de Marie Brassard est savamment fragmentaire. Elle incarne des esquisses de personnages qui rendent le spectateur actif: c’est à lui de les compléter par son imagination. Rappelez-vous la scénographie de
Jimmy, créature de rêve:
essentiellement une petite plate-forme accrochée côté cour au cadre de scène. Et le grand trou noir de la scène dont l’immensité vide prenait de plus en plus de présence à mesure que se déroulait le spectacle. Marie Brassard joue exactement comme cela. Elle joue la marge pour nous mettre face à la page. TECHNOLOGIE Il en est beaucoup pour qui le théâtre est le dernier et bienvenu refuge de ceux qui croient que seul l’humain (et l’humain seul) peut véritablement représenter l’humain. En particulier l’Histoire humaine. Pour ce, ils bannissent de la scène, autant que faire se peut, la technologie contemporaine et ses apparences. Soit. Mais alors, qui nous montrera les liens entre l’homme et la technologie sinon le théâtre? Il est le seul lieu où l’humain et le technologique peuvent réellement interagir (collaborer et se confronter) l’un avec l’autre, là, devant nous, avec nous. Il y avait ce moment terrifiant dans
Jimmy, créature de rêve.
Lorsque le microphone de l’actrice – qui servait à créer la voix de Jimmy et des autres personnages – tombait en panne, réalisant «la plus grande peur de l’actrice». Non seulement cette panne jouée l’était de façon quasi parfaite (tous les spectateurs, ou presque, même les gens du métier y ont cru au début), mais elle condensait en un moment d’une intensité éperdue la fragilité de l’acte théâtral et, du même coup, la fragilité de l’humanité contemporaine; en effet, nous ne pourrions survivre sans cet entrelacement de technologies qui nous enserre et dont nous savons le mode d’emploi mais que nous serions incapables de créer ou fabriquer de nos propres mains. L’Histoire du point de vue humain est un piétinement – c’est une position que défend Régis Debray qui affirme du même souffle que la seule Histoire qui avance, c’est celle des rapports entre l’Homme et la Nature. Soit: la technologie. Convenons-en: nous n’avons pas appris à embrasser en regardant nos proches, nous l’avons appris en regardant la télévision. Car si Rimbaud a pu écrire que la vraie vie était ailleurs, la majorité des Occidentaux croient qu’aujourd’hui elle est dans la télé. La télévision, figure emblématique de notre environnement technologique, nous a enchaînés dans une nouvelle caverne de Platon: nous croyons que les ombres qui défilent sur l’écran sont la réalité. Marie Brassard n’attaque pas la technologie de l’extérieur. Elle ne l’attaque pas, point. Elle creuse des galeries à l’intérieur. Sans avoir l’air d’y toucher, Marie Brassard nous force à regarder notre monde – notre vie – historiquement. AUTOFICTION Dans Jimmy, le personnage s’était emparé du je, n’accordant à l’actrice qu’un elle occasionnel et quelques mots confus où un je bredouillant ne marquait qu’une impuissance à prendre la parole. Or, si l’impuissance de l’individu face à des forces extérieures qui le dépassent est aussi au centre de La
Noirceur,
le je de la comédienne est cette fois-ci au cœur du spectacle. Or, s’il était clair qu’un spectateur assistait, avec
Jimmy, créature de rêve,
à une représentation, il est difficile de dire avec netteté si le spectateur de
La Noirceur
La Noirceur
. Et contrairement aux fictions (courantes depuis la naissance du romantisme il y a deux siècles) qui entremêlent savamment le fictif et le référentiel afin de légitimer le fictif, La Noirceur ne joue pas sur cette amalgamation facile. Car il ne s’agit pas de (faussement) légitimer la fiction par un ancrage dans le réel mais de permettre à l’artiste de dire sur scène que son je est aussi un autre. assiste à une représentation ou à une présentation. Est-ce que Marie Brassard joue lorsqu’elle prend sa propre voix et qu’elle dit «je»? Ou fait-elle simplement nous parler? Cette histoire d’expulsion due à un nouveau propriétaire qui transforme en condos de luxe des lofts-ateliers d’artistes est la sienne. Mais qu’en est-il de ce voisin? Qu’en est-il de la vieille photo qu’elle trouve dans le loft abandonné de ce voisin et ami? Surtout que cette photo lui sert de déclencheur pour une fiction qui l’aide à transcender la perte de son ami, de son logement, de son quartier? Là, Marie Brassard brouille les pistes, s’appuie sur l’opinion de vérité que provoque tout ce qui a l’apparence d’un récit autobiographique (et qui de fait en possède l’assise) pour nous projeter ailleurs. Ce je autobiographique, appuyé par ces somptueuses images vidéo de Montréal tournées depuis l’immeuble qu’elle doit abandonner, se marie sans heurts avec les autres éléments du spectacle, même cette série de personnages fictifs – s’exprimant eux aussi à la première personne – qui ouvrent et ferment
La Noirceur
. Et contrairement aux fictions (courantes depuis la naissance du romantisme il y a deux siècles) qui entremêlent savamment le fictif et le référentiel afin de légitimer le fictif,
La Noirceur
ne joue pas sur cette amalgamation facile. Car il ne s’agit pas de (faussement) légitimer la fiction par un ancrage dans le réel mais de permettre à l’artiste de dire sur scène que son je est aussi un autre.
Source: Paul Lefebvre,
Les Cahiers du Théâtre français
, volume 3, n° 1, september 2003, p. 6-7.
THE ACTRESS Great actors are out of the ordinary and Marie Brassard is no exception. Just observe the self-restraint with which she performs, the simple idea of less is more, which is so difficult to achieve. For her, performing is clearly being in a certain sense of the word. She does not reproduce, she recreates or more precisely suggests: instead of screaming, she suggests the scream. Her gestures are discreet yet distinct - one could say complete. Superfluous hand gestures or pleonastic verbiage are nowhere to be found in her performance. She seems to construct on neutral territory, yet it is undoubtedly the inverse: the foundation of her work is improvisation. It is in this way that her scenic writing becomes a meticulous purification process of acting, gestures and words. But behind this, there is a fundamental process of displacement, elimination and subtraction. Hemingway said that it is what is absent in a novel that gives it strength, and if one were to ask Marie Brassard to play fire, she would surely embody an incredibly precise wisp of smoke. Theater is an art that always retreats when it wants to reproduce the illusory surface of reality and takes flight as soon as it has created such evocations. Marie Brassard's performance is skillfully fragmentary. She incarnates sketches of her characters, leaving the audience to use their imaginations to complete them in their minds. Just think of the stage design of Jimmy, dream creature, which is essentially a small platform placed to one side of the stage, with the large black void of the empty main stage taking on more and more importance as the story unfolds. And this is exactly how Marie Brassard performs: she begins at the margin to slowly reveal the full page. TECHNOLOGY For many, the theater is the last welcome refuge for those who believe that people - and only people - can truly represent people, and particularly the history of humanity. To do so, contemporary technology is, in as much as it is feasible, all but banished from the stage. So be it; yet where else but in the theater can the links between humanity and technology be shown? It is the only place where people and technology can truly interact (collaborate and confront each other) in real time, right there, before our eyes. In Jimmy, dream creature, there was this terrifying moment when the actress's microphone - that served to create the voice of Jimmy and other characters - stopped working, representing the actress's greatest fear. Not only was this feigned breakdown quasi perfect (nearly the whole audience, even professionals from the scene, believed it to be true at the beginning) but, in one agonizing moment, she also managed to epitomize the fragility of both theatrical performance and contemporary humanity; in all truth, we cannot survive without this interlacing of the technologies that embrace us, which we may well know how to use but are incapable of creating or manufacturing with our own hands. Human history has come to a virtual standstill, argues Régis Debray, who, in the same breath, maintains that the only history that is advancing is the relationship between humanity and nature, namely, technology. Let's be honest: we didn't learn how to kiss by watching those around us; we learned it from TV. For if Rimbaud could write that real life is elsewhere, the majority of westerners today believe that reality is to be found on TV. Television, the emblem of our technological environment, has enchained us in a new Plato's cave: we believe that the shadows that flit across our screens are reality. Marie Brassard does not attack technology from the outside. She doesn't attack it period. She bores into its galleries from the inside. Without us realizing it, Marie Brassard forces us to examine our world and our lives from a historical perspective. AUTOFICTION In Jimmy, the protagonist speaks in the first person, lending the actress only occasional access to herself and a few confused words where a mumbled I becomes an impotent struggle to speak. If the impotence of the individual in face of overwhelming external forces is at the centre of The Darkness, then the I of the actor in this piece is at its very heart. If it is clear that an audience is attending a performance in the case of Jimmy, dream creature, it is difficult to say with any clarity if the audience of The Darkness is attending a performance or a presentation. Is Marie Brassard really acting when she pronounces I in her own voice or is she in fact speaking for us? This story of eviction due to a new landlord planning to transform artist lofts into luxury condos is her own. But what about the neighbour? What about the old photo she finds in her friend and neighbour's abandoned loft? Is it this photo in particular that serves as a trigger for a fiction that helps her to transcend the loss of her friend, home and neighborhood? Here, Marie Brassard clouds the issue, relying on the truth behind what seems to be an autobiographical account (and is in fact its inspiration) to propel us elsewhere. This autobiographical I, along with sumptuous video images of Montreal, filmed from the building she must abandon, blends seamlessly with the other elements of the piece, even with the series of fictitious characters - also narrated in the first person - that introduce and conclude The Darkness. However, contrary to standard fiction (of the kind that has been around since the birth of Romanticism two centuries ago) which skillfully intermingles fact with fiction to legitimize the fictive, The Darkness does not play on this simple blend. Here, it is not a case of (falsely) legitimizing fiction by anchoring it in reality, but of permitting the artist to express on stage that her I is also that of another.
The Actor as Sound Cyborg | The Actor as Sound Cyborg
AN INTERVIEW WITH MARIE BRASSARD Source:
Canadian Theatre Review
, été 2006, no.127.
PAUL HALFERTY: You have said many times that first and foremost you are an actress. What does this mean to you?
MARIE BRASSARD: I think I’ve always been fascinated by the art of acting. And I call it an art on purpose because I believe that nowadays acting is not being considered as an art. People consider actors as employees: they are at the service of the director, or at the service of the writer. They’re basically used as tools. I believe this view of the actor comes from an ignorance of the art of acting. I think that acting is such a complex art, and there are so many possibilities that are overlooked because people ignore those possibilities. And this may be because of T. V. or movies. I think T.V. may be responsible for this leveling – or limiting – of the “ways” of acting. It seems that everything has been brought down to a very basic and ordinary realism. In the movies, they often cast people who are the cliché image of what the character is supposed to be. Its strange that people do this because it is always such a beautiful surprise when you see an actor who has been cast in a strange part for him or her. Very often, when you cast an actor in a role that is not typical for them, it gives results that are so unusual and beautiful and surprising.
This leveling – or limiting – of acting is, of course, due to the financial obligations involved in creating T.V. or movies; people want to make money, so they don’t want to take risks. I want to fight against this. I want to search for new ways of acting. There are so many possibilities and this is for me…I think this is my specialty. This is what I want to explore. And this is, sometimes, what I want to prove.
Even before I was doing my own work, when I was working with Robert [Lepage], I was doing a lot of, we say in French,
rôle de composition:
characters you create that are very far away from you. I’ve always liked to perform characters who are kids, or very old people, men, or girls, no matter the gender or the age, because I think that this is the challenge of the actor. The goal is not to make an interpretation in total realism; rather, it is to have the strength – and the ability – to suggest that something will blossom in the mind of the audience after the play is over.
In this way, the audience has total freedom to continue to develop, in their own heads, the ideas the actors gave them through their performance.
I think this [the art of acting] is a very rich territory that is not being explored very often.
I really feel that when I stage a play, I am putting myself at the centre of the play - but as an actress. So, for me, it is really the actress who is creating something. After that I stage it... I create an environment. In the beginning, there is always this acting thing that, for me, is absolutely primordial. And it’s something that is being slowly forgotten.
It was really great working with Robert [Lepage] because I felt really free; he gave me a lot of space to create. Usually, when you are an actor, you are really dependent. You’re like this little animal waiting for someone to call you, or waiting for someone to cast you in something.
And I think that the actor could – although not all actors want to write or want to direct – develop and suggest a point of view about a character that is surprising and exciting.
PH: And as an actress creating new work, how and why are you employing new media?
MB: For me now, I am using a lot of technology in my work because this is also something I want to fight for, not necessarily to prove, but to fight for. I think that people are sometimes reluctant to use technology in theatre because they think that theatre should be only based on the human voice, that it is a “low-tech” kind of art. I, of course, have nothing against that form of theatre – and it will hopefully survive – but I think there is an urgent need to try to explore and to see what technology can bring to theatre.
Sometimes I think that people in theatre are reluctant because they fear the use of technology will result in creations that are cold; that they will lack some kind of humanity. I believe that this is a ridiculous way to think. If technology is being used in an intelligent way then there is no reason why the creation should be cold. And there is always a human being behind the technology, so it is always the artist behind it that you see. So, if the work is cold, it is not because of technology, it is because the artist suggests something cold – which is not necessarily a bad thing.
As an actress I feel sometimes, “where can you go?” The art of acting has been evolving for a long time, and there are many different styles... you know, you have had the Greek tragedy, the Commedia dell’arte, and the more classical way of acting. But, with all of these, you are always staying inside the same pool of possibilities. Technology is being used a bit more by directors. For example, you have many directors using projections, or light shows, or things which are visually quite elaborate. I am using more sound-related kinds of technology because I am trying to see how that technology can change, transform, and help you to go further in acting.
How can you act with that? And can it help to go further?
Right now, the things I am doing with sound are very, very exciting for me. When I began my show Jimmy, I thought that this would be a one-time kind of experience. But then I became so excited by the technology and it was such a discovery for me. When you work with it live, when you experience it physically, it’s absolutely fantastic because, as an actor, it makes you feel like your bodily capabilities are being enhanced. It is as if you are becoming a kind of cyborg character because you have your human, fleshy capabilities, but suddenly, you also have this machine that adds capacities to your body. It’s absolutely wonderful to perform with. And I love the dichotomy of situations it creates. By using the sound machines, I can have the body of a small woman and play a big man, or an older lady, or a little kid. And I think it’s very troubling when an audience sees that - when the voices don’t relate to the body. I know you can do that without machines; I’ve done it before but not to the same degree. This is for me something that is very, very exciting, and still stands as something that is done live. So it keeps the quality of what theatre is, which means that it happens in the moment, with the people who are there, and it is something that you cannot reproduce. So it’s the same [as theatre that does not use technology] because all the parameters of the machine are not fixed. I mean, I work the machine, but it evolves as I’m working with it, live, in front of an audience. It is extremely exciting.
PH: By filtering your voice through a sound system in performance, and creating this incongruity between the voice of the character and body of the actor, you create a kind of disembodied voice. Because the sound emanates from the speakers, is it like a voice without a body?
MB: It sounds very spiritual when you put it that way. You know, there is this very common expression that the actors are inhabited by their characters, as if there were many people living inside the actor. Maybe this use of sound media makes this appear more “real.” You as an actor, are inhabited by creatures that come out in performance.
The other day, I was talking with a friend in Germany and he said that normally we think that we have a physical body, and that it is a function of the body that the spirit can exist. But he says there are other people who believe that it is the spirit that creates the body in order to exist. And I think that this is a very beautiful way of seeing it. That the spirit creates a body in order to express itself, or be able to experience the world. So, I am using the technology to create a mismatched spirit and body. As if spirits have chosen the “wrong” body, or at least a very strange body, in order to express themselves in a very strange way.
It’s funny, this disembodied idea that you are bringing up, because I had never figured this out, but you’re right, sometimes the voice does not necessarily come from the body. So it means that there is nothing coming out of my body, and, in performance, I think it could feel like this sometimes. It is as if I speak, but the spirit is not in my body but in the air. As if I were a vehicle, or a machine, through which the spirit is passing but not necessarily using.
PH: When I saw
Jimmy
for the first time, in the backspace at Theatre Passe Muraille, a very interesting thing happened. At the moment when Jimmy is chased by the train, and you manipulate the sound of your/his voice to become the train, the sound changed. It transformed for me from being an aural sense to a tactile one.
MB: You could feel the vibrations?
PH: Yes, exactly. Because the Backspace is so small, and the sound was so loud, I could feel the vibrations through the seats; sound became a physical sensation.
MB: It’s a very interesting thing, and it’s an area where I would like to go and explore more. With
Jimmy
, the sound is actually very simple, but with shows like
La Noirceur
Peep Show,
it’s becoming increasingly complex. With these new shows, I am working more with musicians and with sound technicians, which makes a big difference. I’m working very closely with Alexander MacSween, a musician from Montreal, with whom I am exploring sound. and even more with
We are trying to hold regular workshops where we spend time together just experimenting with what we can do with sound. We are trying to make sounds that having nothing to do with a human body. So, I can, for example, play guitar by talking, or I can make the sound of some other musical instrument, or, suddenly, I can be fifty people, or, I can speak backwards or with a stutter... there are many possibilities that we are exploring now that would allow us to go even further than just creating human beings on stage. Through my body there would be not only those voices that relate to characters, but also sounds that have nothing to do with a normal human body. For an actor it is an incredible experience, and I suspect that it can really influence, develop, and transform the possibilities of acting in ways that could become very suggestive and impressive for actors and the audience. If you are playing, for example, a man who becomes a truck, or, you know... a woman who becomes an animal... it can sound so realistic and so powerful. Not only can you have a character that does not fit the body, but you can have a machine that expresses itself through a body, or a group of people expressing themselves through a body – the possibilities are infinite.
And this is when you really enter a world that is surreal. You can make compositions that are totally impossible, but very highly charged with poetical content, and poetical potential. And this is where I want to go because I think it’s extremely exciting and still a very
artisanal
[craftsmanlike] way. Even though we work with machines, it must go through the body - it has to go through us as actors.
PH: I want to come back to an idea we had before about spirits and actors. It positions the actor as a kind of medium in the same way that you use sound as a medium for the creation of characters and performance.
MB: It makes me think about the actor in Greek tragedy because they were performing in open spaces, outside, and they were basically shouting. They were a kind of vehicle for something very, very, very big. And it’s beautiful, you know, I wish I could travel to the past and see how it looked. We will probably never know, but the way they were acting was probably very, very surreal, and very interpretive, which is something we don’t dare to do today. The microphone is still something that is not being used often in theatre. Sometimes a microphone system is used just to amplify the voice a little.
PH: Which is so strange because so many people don’t experience that kind sound as “mediated,” but it is mediated. It is the same thing, just one is trying to be...
MB: Invisible...
PH: ...yes. And in your work you are making it visible.
MB: I like to show the machines in my work. This is something I like because... I am trying to create illusions like a magician. At the same time, I like the audience to see the trick because this shows the playfulness of it. And I don’t know if it’s a question of the use of the microphones, or the machines and all that. It’s a kind of ornament - it’s the medium of the medium. It’s like, when you are a visual artist, you are able to work with so many different instruments, although, the art is coming from you, from your mind, from your heart. And it can come out with paint, or with pencils, or with a computer, no matter the instrument.
Music is also very important to me as well as visual art. But the use of sound is still, I think, under exploited. Because music is a respected art by itself, when it’s used in another medium, especially theatre, it is often used as tapestry, as background, just to help enhance certain kinds of atmosphere, or to give some accent at certain parts of the play – which I think is a boring way of using it. I think there are so many more interesting ways of using sound. As well, sound is so evocative. We always say that images are evocative, but sound is evocative too.
It’s the same as smell: it’s in your memory. Sometimes, for example, I go to the city where I was born and grew up. There is this church there, and at noon there are special bells that ring a special song. When I go there and I hear that, although it has been more than twenty or thirty years since I lived there, this sound still evokes emotion. I’m shivering, you know, it brings me back to those times. So, you realize how sound is a really important element of theatre. And so, for me, my theatre is that very basic expression of the poetry of the text, but combined with that is music and the visual environment.
If you don’t have any poetical support for your
parole,
your use of words, then it becomes like a speech, or it becomes just the transmission of poetry or literature through the voice – which is something interesting, but it is not necessarily theatre. Theatre needs ornament.
Theatre is the combination of many different kinds of arts and artists, because theatre is really the mixed media art par excellence: you have writers, actors, directors, lighting designers, costume designers... It’s an art where everybody is invited.
AN INTERVIEW WITH MARIE BRASSARD Source:
Canadian Theatre Review
, été 2006, no.127.
PAUL HALFERTY: You have said many times that first and foremost you are an actress. What does this mean to you?
MARIE BRASSARD: I think I’ve always been fascinated by the art of acting. And I call it an art on purpose because I believe that nowadays acting is not being considered as an art. People consider actors as employees: they are at the service of the director, or at the service of the writer. They’re basically used as tools. I believe this view of the actor comes from an ignorance of the art of acting. I think that acting is such a complex art, and there are so many possibilities that are overlooked because people ignore those possibilities. And this may be because of T. V. or movies. I think T.V. may be responsible for this leveling – or limiting – of the “ways” of acting. It seems that everything has been brought down to a very basic and ordinary realism. In the movies, they often cast people who are the cliché image of what the character is supposed to be. Its strange that people do this because it is always such a beautiful surprise when you see an actor who has been cast in a strange part for him or her. Very often, when you cast an actor in a role that is not typical for them, it gives results that are so unusual and beautiful and surprising.
This leveling – or limiting – of acting is, of course, due to the financial obligations involved in creating T.V. or movies; people want to make money, so they don’t want to take risks. I want to fight against this. I want to search for new ways of acting. There are so many possibilities and this is for me…I think this is my specialty. This is what I want to explore. And this is, sometimes, what I want to prove.
Even before I was doing my own work, when I was working with Robert [Lepage], I was doing a lot of, we say in French,
rôle de composition:
characters you create that are very far away from you. I’ve always liked to perform characters who are kids, or very old people, men, or girls, no matter the gender or the age, because I think that this is the challenge of the actor. The goal is not to make an interpretation in total realism; rather, it is to have the strength – and the ability – to suggest that something will blossom in the mind of the audience after the play is over.
In this way, the audience has total freedom to continue to develop, in their own heads, the ideas the actors gave them through their performance.
I think this [the art of acting] is a very rich territory that is not being explored very often.
I really feel that when I stage a play, I am putting myself at the centre of the play - but as an actress. So, for me, it is really the actress who is creating something. After that I stage it... I create an environment. In the beginning, there is always this acting thing that, for me, is absolutely primordial. And it’s something that is being slowly forgotten.
It was really great working with Robert [Lepage] because I felt really free; he gave me a lot of space to create. Usually, when you are an actor, you are really dependent. You’re like this little animal waiting for someone to call you, or waiting for someone to cast you in something.
And I think that the actor could – although not all actors want to write or want to direct – develop and suggest a point of view about a character that is surprising and exciting.
PH: And as an actress creating new work, how and why are you employing new media?
MB: For me now, I am using a lot of technology in my work because this is also something I want to fight for, not necessarily to prove, but to fight for. I think that people are sometimes reluctant to use technology in theatre because they think that theatre should be only based on the human voice, that it is a “low-tech” kind of art. I, of course, have nothing against that form of theatre – and it will hopefully survive – but I think there is an urgent need to try to explore and to see what technology can bring to theatre.
Sometimes I think that people in theatre are reluctant because they fear the use of technology will result in creations that are cold; that they will lack some kind of humanity. I believe that this is a ridiculous way to think. If technology is being used in an intelligent way then there is no reason why the creation should be cold. And there is always a human being behind the technology, so it is always the artist behind it that you see. So, if the work is cold, it is not because of technology, it is because the artist suggests something cold – which is not necessarily a bad thing.
As an actress I feel sometimes, “where can you go?” The art of acting has been evolving for a long time, and there are many different styles... you know, you have had the Greek tragedy, the Commedia dell’arte, and the more classical way of acting. But, with all of these, you are always staying inside the same pool of possibilities. Technology is being used a bit more by directors. For example, you have many directors using projections, or light shows, or things which are visually quite elaborate. I am using more sound-related kinds of technology because I am trying to see how that technology can change, transform, and help you to go further in acting.
How can you act with that? And can it help to go further?
Right now, the things I am doing with sound are very, very exciting for me. When I began my show Jimmy, I thought that this would be a one-time kind of experience. But then I became so excited by the technology and it was such a discovery for me. When you work with it live, when you experience it physically, it’s absolutely fantastic because, as an actor, it makes you feel like your bodily capabilities are being enhanced. It is as if you are becoming a kind of cyborg character because you have your human, fleshy capabilities, but suddenly, you also have this machine that adds capacities to your body. It’s absolutely wonderful to perform with. And I love the dichotomy of situations it creates. By using the sound machines, I can have the body of a small woman and play a big man, or an older lady, or a little kid. And I think it’s very troubling when an audience sees that - when the voices don’t relate to the body. I know you can do that without machines; I’ve done it before but not to the same degree. This is for me something that is very, very exciting, and still stands as something that is done live. So it keeps the quality of what theatre is, which means that it happens in the moment, with the people who are there, and it is something that you cannot reproduce. So it’s the same [as theatre that does not use technology] because all the parameters of the machine are not fixed. I mean, I work the machine, but it evolves as I’m working with it, live, in front of an audience. It is extremely exciting.
PH: By filtering your voice through a sound system in performance, and creating this incongruity between the voice of the character and body of the actor, you create a kind of disembodied voice. Because the sound emanates from the speakers, is it like a voice without a body?
MB: It sounds very spiritual when you put it that way. You know, there is this very common expression that the actors are inhabited by their characters, as if there were many people living inside the actor. Maybe this use of sound media makes this appear more “real.” You as an actor, are inhabited by creatures that come out in performance.
The other day, I was talking with a friend in Germany and he said that normally we think that we have a physical body, and that it is a function of the body that the spirit can exist. But he says there are other people who believe that it is the spirit that creates the body in order to exist. And I think that this is a very beautiful way of seeing it. That the spirit creates a body in order to express itself, or be able to experience the world. So, I am using the technology to create a mismatched spirit and body. As if spirits have chosen the “wrong” body, or at least a very strange body, in order to express themselves in a very strange way.
It’s funny, this disembodied idea that you are bringing up, because I had never figured this out, but you’re right, sometimes the voice does not necessarily come from the body. So it means that there is nothing coming out of my body, and, in performance, I think it could feel like this sometimes. It is as if I speak, but the spirit is not in my body but in the air. As if I were a vehicle, or a machine, through which the spirit is passing but not necessarily using.
PH: When I saw
Jimmy
for the first time, in the backspace at Theatre Passe Muraille, a very interesting thing happened. At the moment when Jimmy is chased by the train, and you manipulate the sound of your/his voice to become the train, the sound changed. It transformed for me from being an aural sense to a tactile one.
MB: You could feel the vibrations?
PH: Yes, exactly. Because the Backspace is so small, and the sound was so loud, I could feel the vibrations through the seats; sound became a physical sensation.
MB: It’s a very interesting thing, and it’s an area where I would like to go and explore more. With
Jimmy
, the sound is actually very simple, but with shows like
La Noirceur
Peep Show,
it’s becoming increasingly complex. With these new shows, I am working more with musicians and with sound technicians, which makes a big difference. I’m working very closely with Alexander MacSween, a musician from Montreal, with whom I am exploring sound. and even more with
We are trying to hold regular workshops where we spend time together just experimenting with what we can do with sound. We are trying to make sounds that having nothing to do with a human body. So, I can, for example, play guitar by talking, or I can make the sound of some other musical instrument, or, suddenly, I can be fifty people, or, I can speak backwards or with a stutter... there are many possibilities that we are exploring now that would allow us to go even further than just creating human beings on stage. Through my body there would be not only those voices that relate to characters, but also sounds that have nothing to do with a normal human body. For an actor it is an incredible experience, and I suspect that it can really influence, develop, and transform the possibilities of acting in ways that could become very suggestive and impressive for actors and the audience. If you are playing, for example, a man who becomes a truck, or, you know... a woman who becomes an animal... it can sound so realistic and so powerful. Not only can you have a character that does not fit the body, but you can have a machine that expresses itself through a body, or a group of people expressing themselves through a body – the possibilities are infinite.
And this is when you really enter a world that is surreal. You can make compositions that are totally impossible, but very highly charged with poetical content, and poetical potential. And this is where I want to go because I think it’s extremely exciting and still a very
artisanal
[craftsmanlike] way. Even though we work with machines, it must go through the body - it has to go through us as actors.
PH: I want to come back to an idea we had before about spirits and actors. It positions the actor as a kind of medium in the same way that you use sound as a medium for the creation of characters and performance.
MB: It makes me think about the actor in Greek tragedy because they were performing in open spaces, outside, and they were basically shouting. They were a kind of vehicle for something very, very, very big. And it’s beautiful, you know, I wish I could travel to the past and see how it looked. We will probably never know, but the way they were acting was probably very, very surreal, and very interpretive, which is something we don’t dare to do today. The microphone is still something that is not being used often in theatre. Sometimes a microphone system is used just to amplify the voice a little.
PH: Which is so strange because so many people don’t experience that kind sound as “mediated,” but it is mediated. It is the same thing, just one is trying to be...
MB: Invisible...
PH: ...yes. And in your work you are making it visible.
MB: I like to show the machines in my work. This is something I like because... I am trying to create illusions like a magician. At the same time, I like the audience to see the trick because this shows the playfulness of it. And I don’t know if it’s a question of the use of the microphones, or the machines and all that. It’s a kind of ornament - it’s the medium of the medium. It’s like, when you are a visual artist, you are able to work with so many different instruments, although, the art is coming from you, from your mind, from your heart. And it can come out with paint, or with pencils, or with a computer, no matter the instrument.
Music is also very important to me as well as visual art. But the use of sound is still, I think, under exploited. Because music is a respected art by itself, when it’s used in another medium, especially theatre, it is often used as tapestry, as background, just to help enhance certain kinds of atmosphere, or to give some accent at certain parts of the play – which I think is a boring way of using it. I think there are so many more interesting ways of using sound. As well, sound is so evocative. We always say that images are evocative, but sound is evocative too.
It’s the same as smell: it’s in your memory. Sometimes, for example, I go to the city where I was born and grew up. There is this church there, and at noon there are special bells that ring a special song. When I go there and I hear that, although it has been more than twenty or thirty years since I lived there, this sound still evokes emotion. I’m shivering, you know, it brings me back to those times. So, you realize how sound is a really important element of theatre. And so, for me, my theatre is that very basic expression of the poetry of the text, but combined with that is music and the visual environment.
If you don’t have any poetical support for your
parole,
your use of words, then it becomes like a speech, or it becomes just the transmission of poetry or literature through the voice – which is something interesting, but it is not necessarily theatre. Theatre needs ornament.
Theatre is the combination of many different kinds of arts and artists, because theatre is really the mixed media art par excellence: you have writers, actors, directors, lighting designers, costume designers... It’s an art where everybody is invited.
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