Claude Régy Intérieur

by Maurice Maeterlinck

After having been invited to present Ode Maritime at the Shizuoka Performing Arts Center, a proposition was made to Claude Régy to work with a group of Japanese actors. For this unique collaboration, he chose to re-stage Intérieur by Maurice Maeterlinck, a piece that he previously staged in 1985. Following on from the light-dark territories we encountered in Brume de dieu or La Barque le soir, his work beckons us towards the fringes of consciousness, along on imperceptible line where all representation fades away. We are transported to the threshold of silence, where life and death, words and mutism, terror and grace, mirror each other and become interwound, to the point that our rational certainties are no more than a blur.

On this threshold, a small group of individuals awaits - bearing a message with the power to turn everything upside down, instantly. From the other side - inside - a family goes about its daily occupations, unaware of the impending drama. The piece upsets the delicate balance between the refuge inside and the chaos outside. The characters’ doubts and intuitions are distilled in that delayed instant - like two extremities of the conscience trying to reach out to each other. Through subtle use of lighting, Claude Régy endows the space with this silence, infusing it with the words spoken by the actors. In doing so, we are given us a glimpse of words at their most essential, bordering on the unspeakable.

“We do not know just how far the soul spreads out around man”, wrote Maeterlinck. With Claude Régy, the stage becomes the place where we might sound out this expanse, right up to its confines.