Avignon Festival : Maldoror, Julien Gosselin Dives into the Literature of Evil

“A Waffen-SS Lost in the Jungle”

Everything begins, exactly as with the previous play by  Carolina Bianchi, with a text to be read that takes the form of a disclaimer. This book is dangerous, in the harmful sense of the word. So, what does it contain?
For now, the sets are neatly arranged stage left and stage right. We can guess the shape of houses, and not all the screens are yet visible. Then, Julien Gosselin, current director of the French National Theater Odéon pulls out all the stops and begins to blend, as he does so well, cinema and theater.
As a reminder, we last left Gosselin with one of his greatest masterpieces, Le Musée Duras, performed in Paris this season, where he reveled in displacing us, both in our bodies and our gaze. He does the same in Maldoror, exploiting the notoriously difficult space of the Cour d’Honneur of the Palace of the Popes in Avignon like never before. Let’s just say that, from floor to ceiling and even beyond, he pushes the idea of digging into his subject as far as it can go.

“We Are in Conversation with the Devil”

So, what is it about, since “questions” is the theme of this festival?  It is about a specific literature: the literature of villains.
He summons Nazi Literature in the Americas and Distant Star by Roberto Bolaño, putting them in dialogue with a great 19th-century French poet, who influences the Surrealists : Lautréamont.
On stage, we find the troupe of Julien Gosselin once again: Guillaume Bachelé, Rita Benmannana, Joseph Drouet, Denis Eyriey, Carine Goron, Jeremy Lewin, Jeanne Louis-Calixte, Cyril Metzger, Victoria Quesnel, Achille Reggiani, Lucile Rose, Maxence Vandevelde, joined, as always, by camera operators Jérémie Bernaert and Baudouin Rencurel, as well as musicians Guillaume Bachelé and Maxence Vandevelde.
Very quickly, a repetitive ballet takes shape: an author’s name appears, followed by a staged scene. Most often, it’s an encounter in the original language (German, English, Spanish…) with someone who knew the writer. They all have one thing in common: they are Nazis, linked to the disappearance of the two Grimadier sisters in Concepción, Chile, in 1973, where unrepentant former SS officers were hiding out. Watching the actors slip from one language to another is nothing short of fascinating.

“There Was a Need for a Myth”

If the names are fake, the banality and reality of the violence are real. In his powerful mash-up, Gosselin is never literal. He walks us between the 19th and 20th centuries to plunge us into the power of the written word.
As is his habit, he shatters the fourth wall by inviting us onto the stage. His camera eye is as sharp as his directorial eye. He knows exactly how to film so that the audience members present on the stage become the crowd witnessing an encounter between a former collaborator and an archaeologist seeking answers to her questions. What became of the twins? If they are dead, the culprit must be found.

“The Desire to Read and to Fuck Is Infinite”

In this river-play lasting 5 hours and 45 minutes, the actors give it their all. They never let our attention slacken, right up to a climax of pure contemporary theater: a classic gesture taking the form of a monologue, embodied to perfection by Victoria Quesnel, who truly glows in this production. Like Bianchi, she too delivers a declaration of love to poetry as a vital, redemptive act.

Maldoror is a true epic, but one without heroes or heroines. Literature alone is the star, even when it does harm. Gosselin restores its nobility and it is something he has been doing since his adaptation of Michel Houellebecq’s Particules élémentaires. His talent lies in devoting nearly six hours of performance to the written word, weaving through admirably orchestrated screens. Maldoror tells of monsters, all the better to reaffirm our need for literature which is the only thing capable of dismantling them.

Cult.news will cover the whole festival in French and English, you can fond all our articles in Our Avignon dossier

And here is the outline of the article in Corean :

줄리앙 고슬랭의 **〈말도로르(Maldoror)〉**는 제80회 아비뇽 페스티벌의 개막작으로, 로베르토 볼라뇨와 로트레아몽의 작품을 엮어 문학 속 악(惡)의 본질을 탐구하는 5시간 45분 분량의 대작이다.

무대는 연극과 영화, 라이브 카메라를 결합한 고슬랭 특유의 미학을 극대화한다. 칠레 군사독재 시기와 나치의 기억을 배경으로, 허구의 작가들과 실재했던 역사적 폭력이 교차하며 인간이 어떻게 악을 만들어내고 기억하는지를 질문한다.

배우들은 강렬한 앙상블을 선보이며, 특히 마지막에 빅토리아 케스넬의 독백은 작품의 절정을 이룬다. 이 공연에는 영웅도 해답도 없다. 대신 문학만이 인간의 가장 어두운 면을 직시하고 해체할 수 있는 힘을 지녔음을 보여준다.

평론은 이 작품을 단순한 역사극이 아니라 문학 자체에 바치는 장대한 찬가로 평가하며, 악을 응시하는 것이 결국 인간성과 예술의 필요성을 다시 확인하는 과정이라고 결론짓는다.