Talk about irony: At a moment when all things French are out of favor—the congressional cafeteria still serves Freedom Fries—three theatre groups have come together to produce "Koltès New York 2003," a month-long tribute to Bernard-Marie Koltès, the adventurous and lyrical Gallic playwright who died of AIDS in 1989 at the age of 41.
And yet, to In Parentheses Theater Company, Dangerous Ground Productions, and Soho Think Tank, there's perhaps no better time than the present for a group of not-for-profits to mount Koltès' plays all in one shot.
If anything, it's a deeply shared passion for Koltès' work that has bound Marion Schoevaert, a founding member of In Parentheses, and Doris Mirescu, artistic director of Dangerous Ground Productions, from the moment they met two years ago. "We learned we both loved one writer in the whole world," Schoevaert says—a man Mirescu calls "a great, revered theatrical poet who was very intellectual, very dark, and though his subjects are serious, very funny."
Trouble is, Schoevaert says, Koltès very much remains unknown on these shores, despite his growing posthumous reputation in foreign theatre circles. She cites several reasons, beginning with the fact that "he was a French writer, and it's always hard to bring new writers, let alone foreign writers, to this country." More than that, even when his plays have run here—BAM presented "In the Solitude of Cotton Fields" in 1996 and Horizon Theatre Rep did the play last summer in the Vanderbilt Hall of Grand Central Terminal—limp British translations have stymied interest.
"He's sort of a mythical figure in Europe and the world—a theatrical language revolutionary," Mirescu says. "His work is like a mixture of hyperrealism, the abstract, and the poetical—a theatre with everything from mythology to socio-economics to political violence, all about people searching for common ground and common language. But the challenge his work has always faced is that the only translations weren't very good."
So when Schoevaert began planning a Koltès festival with Mirescu, they agreed to commission all-new translations "so professionals and the public can get a chance to get to see and know this extraordinary writer."
Just imagine, they say, a few of the wild plotlines and themes that run through the Koltès oeuvre. "West Pier," translated by Marion Schoevaert and Theresa Weber and directed by Jay Scheib, concerns a suicidal venture capitalist with $10 million in his pocket who wishes to be "filled with cement" and plunged into the East River. And perhaps only a playwright as world-traveled as Koltès could write "Battle of Black and Dogs," translated by Michaël Attias and directed by Mirescu—a "metaphysical Western" set on an African construction site.
However fantastical his plays—and however often critics and scholars might compare his output to Beckett and Genet—Schoevaert and Mirescu knew that Koltès' work needs funding above all. So, while the translators and directors met weekly (the remaining festival productions are "Roberto Zucco," translated and directed by Daniel Safer, and the aforementioned "In the Solitude of Cotton Fields," translated by Lenora Champagne and directed by Schoevaert), the organizers wrote grant proposals, mailed pitch letters, and hoped against hope. Then came Sept. 11.
"We wanted the Koltès festival to be something more than a French import," Mirescu says. "And the sad thing is that because of the political climate we raised almost no money from American funders." Instead, Etant Donnés—the French-American Fund for the Performing Arts—came through, along with the American Association of Teachers of French, the Beaumarchais Foundation, and cultural services officials at the French consulates of Chicago and New York. Only the Laura Pels Foundation is a major stateside supporter.
Still, sometimes benefactors emerge from unlikely places. Robert Lyons, owner and operator of the Ohio Theatre and its resident group, Soho Think Tank—with which Schoevaert is affiliated—found Koltès to be "an amazing writer from the first time I read him, so when the idea for this festival was brought to me, I very much wanted to be a part of it." Schoevaert, Mirescu, and Lyons declined to disclose the specifics of their arrangement, but one can be sure that Koltès himself would respect the cooperative spirit evident in this salute to his work.
Asked to describe the audience for the festival, Lyons turns out to be deeply perceptive of the marketplace. "There's a huge cult following for Koltès—the people who know about him love him," he says. "That's why part of the idea of this festival is to also offer free readings on Monday nights, an all-day symposium, and to do the four productions in repertory. For the small core of people who are crazy about him, here's an opportunity to dive into his whole body of work. But there's a second audience for this: Anyone who would want to be part of a critical mass that's forming around Koltès as he finally breaks into the public consciousness. He's studied in academia, he's produced all over the world—it's time for all that to happen here.
"And there's one more thing," Lyons continues. "If the mainstream of this country is busy trashing the French right now, then it's exactly the right time to produce a brilliant, dissident French writer—someone with an alternative world view. I mean, isn't that what downtown theatre is supposed to be doing?"
"Koltès New York 2003" runs through May 31 at the Ohio Theatre.