Pascal Rambert Répétition

Known for works such as After/Before (2005) and Clôture de l’amour (2011), Pascal Rambert, the author-director and Artistic Director of the Théâtre de Gennevilliers has often described his works as assemblies of bodies and arrangement of voices, rooted, in a radical way, in the contemporary era. For this reason, it might come as a surprise to some to hear that, Répétition, his latest creation, leaves behind the present day and takes us back to Russia at the start of the XXth century, and to the crumbling away of the grand ideologies and toppling of a world order. A word of caution, though: it would be unwise to imagine for one moment that Pascal Rambert would relinquish his DNA as conceptual creator and plunge headlong into naturalistic drama. Faithful to his passion for “real time”, (in which the time a fiction lasts and the duration of a performance are one and the same), combined with his way of blurring the distinction between fiction and reality, he anchors himself in the world of Chekhov, but gives us every indication that the drama in question is unfurling in the “here and now”.
Accordingly, the four characters in Répétition get mixed up with the actors that interpret their roles. In a rehearsal room, Emmanuelle - actress (Emmanuelle Béart), Audrey - actress (Audrey Bonnet), Denis - writer (Denis Podalydès) and Stan - the director (Stanislas Nordey) watch as their artistic structure implodes. The end of a world... That is the story. Unless what are hearing about, through these individuals, is the fall of the Balkans? Or perhaps the current crisis in Europe? Pascal Rambert’s piece is open to interpretation. As he himself says, in Répétition, his thoughts were about “what our hopes were for Europe, and what has become of them today”.