Débris, Dennis Kelly 2003

Entretien :

Metteur en scène Vladimir Steyaert

7 & 8 février 2013 

au théâtre de l'Atelier, 69001 LYON

Entretien du 14 février 2013

« Avec ce spectacle, je veux m’adresser à un large public mais particulièrement à des jeunes. Je suis persuadé qu’un des meilleurs moyens pour faire venir les jeunes au théâtre et leur permettre d’accéder à la culture est de les emmener voir des spectacles où les personnages ont les mêmes préoccupations qu’eux avec un univers qui leur ressemble. C’est pourquoi la présence d’un DJ et d’un VJ me semble indispensable car la musique et la vidéo {que ce soit par les séries télévisées, les films mais aussi les jeux vidéos ou les vidéos en ligne sur internet (YouTube, Daily Motion...)} sont des piliers de l’adolescence et permettent non seulement de se chercher, de se construire et de se trouver mais également de développer un univers et un imaginaire en opposition avec le monde des adultes. Ce texte, en se focalisant sur la parole de deux adolescents, développe de nombreux thèmes et centres d’intérêts liés à cette période de la vie où l’on oscille entre volonté de grandir, prise de conscience de la réalité du monde, et envie de le changer. Sont présents dans cette pièce, plusieurs éléments faisant partie intégrante de la « mythologie » adolescente comme le rapport omniprésent à l’image, la fascination pour la violence, ou encore l’impossibilité de la communication avec les parents et l’ incompréhension voire la colère que cela peut engendrer. » Vladimir Steyaert

This is the story of a brother and her sister who tell their difficult childhood on stage. The two actors express themselves in front of an audience, as if they were in at court; their soliloquies are like testimonies; the statements they give are absurd versions of traumatic experiences (their parents' death, their kidnapping by a pedophile...). It is up to the spectator to untangle the true from the false. Stage director Vladimir Steyaert used eight televisions in order to raise among the audience the following: how television influences children's imagination? How do teenagers regurgitate those information, all this abundance of images? To a certain extent, we have the impression that the girl is creating a story from the images she is seeing on television, and not the contrary: the movie played on TV is not perceive as an illustration of what she says. For each scenario, the television is the third character. Television is so important that at one moment, the girl worried about how they are supposed to raise Debris (the baby his brother has found in a trash) without a television? Here, television substitutes education.

Vladimir chose « Debris » because he liked the text as soon as he read the first pages. He explains that he is fascinated by adolescence, this transitional period between childhood and adulthood. This is the period during which you shape your own personality, you are playing a game full of bad faith, you act like a child when it suits you but at the same time you also want to be considered as an adult when you want more freedom. Vladimir questions the fact that you can be very different from your brothers and sisters even if you evolve/grow up in the same familial sphere, and why those differences appear? This is a period of carefreeness where music has an important place. You build your own references between those of your parents and those of your friends, this is also the period for discoveries, parties...

The images projected on the tvs or in the back of the stage are extracted from TV shows (the stage director worked with a « VJ » a video DJ). The images are mixed and they also used images from surveillance cameras, recordings of the actors (the teenagers tell a story from their childhood and comments on TV what they are acting on stage). This is the way the stage director uses to render those two temporalities. Images of sonograms, the spectator and people in general are obsessed by screens, if there is one, you involuntary look at it (with this choice of staging, video tries not to serve badly the actors)

The question of light is also important. It is complex to use both video and much light. The guy who work the video part is also a musician, it was interesting for Vladimir because he sees video as a music instrument.

The play is build as a fight, they always outbid what the other said, taboos are evoked (religion, pedophilia, death, violence...) the best is the one who shocks the most. All these scenes are bound together, Vladimir uses a play with music, sets, music and costumes in order not to break the rhythm of the play.

The first time Vladimir has staged the play was in 2010. Since then, some slight changes have occurred but not major (the televisions were suspended above the stage, cables were falling everywhere...). If he had something to change today, he will be more confident concerning the actors and the text, it will be more uncluttered, less frontal.

Stage director: Vladimir Steyaert

Actors: Charlotte Duran & Anthony Breurec

Scenography: Rudy Sabounghi

Music: Gio Garcia

Video: Eric Petrotto aka VJ Raize

Lights: Cyrille Chabert

Web: http://debris.pagesperso-orange.fr/