Heiner Goebbels Liberté d’action
A concert staged from texts by Henri Michaux
[Music]
Liberté d’action: an opportunity to celebrate the thirty-year-long collaboration between Heiner Goebbels and the Festival d’Automne. Since La Jalousie in 1992, it has culminated in thirteen works, theater plays or concerts.
An avid reader, Heiner Goebbels drew his inspiration from authors such as Alain Robbe-Grillet, Heiner Müller, Elias Canetti, Samuel Beckett, Gertrude Stein, etc. This time, he calls upon Henri Michaux’s corrosive sense of humor: “I don’t know what is more fascinating to me: his poems, his paintings, or his drawings. For anybody who is exposed to Henri Michaux, it is a pleasure, it lights you up!” The stage is reduced to a bare minimum: two pianos, one on either side, a table in the back with sound and electronic tools. Virtuoso actor David Bennent has the stage to himself as he conveys to us Michaux’s text, in French and in German. The two pianists of the Ensemble Modern, long-time performers of Goebbels’ work, deliver a score written specifically for them.
Traveling, why should that be of any interest to me?
That is not it.
That is never it.
I can arrange their country on my own.
The way they do it, there are too many things that don't carry.
Henri Michaux
