The performances of David Noir's show "Les Justes" have been stopped by decision of Pierre Cardin
les Inrocks.com | Fabienne Arvers | Unfair Decision for David Noir
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Unfair decision for David Noir

 

Planned from 5 to 29 June, the performances of David Noir, author and director of Les Justes, were stopped on 14 June by decision of Pierre Cardin, director of the Petit Espace Pierre Cardin in Paris. David Noir has the floor.

You were scheduled to perform Les Justes at the Petit Espace Pierre Cardin from 5 to 29 June. Eight days later, Pierre Cardin cancelled all the performances and asked you to leave the theatre during the day. What happened?
At the beginning, it was a commission from Pierre Cardin to inaugurate this hall, the Petit Espace Pierre Cardin. He's a man who doesn't have much time: I met him to talk about our project, I showed him photos of our previous show, The Puritansand the texts of the play. He saw only 25 minutes of the Just on 5 June and waited a week to fire us, but then manu militari.

You had signed a contract. How is this sacking negotiated?
As far as contracts go, it's more like the Prince's doing. We have a standard contract: 50 % of the receipts for us, 50 % for Pierre Cardin. There is a clause in the contract that stipulates that in the event of termination, the theatre owes us money in proportion to the admissions and fixed costs of the show. We asked to play until the end, which they refused. So we are asking for compensation that we are currently evaluating, which will be about 100,000 francs.
But it is a loss that is difficult to quantify: we are at the end of the season; after eight days of performances, a dynamic has been set in motion among the actors... Not to mention the conditions of reception at the theatre: we had no dressing rooms, the only ones available being occupied by Thierry Harcourt's troupe, which is playing Tristan and Isolde. We had thought of installing ourselves in the toilets, but Pierre Cardin refused to put locks so as not to make holes in the wall. To say...

Why did he not like the show?
I quote: "I cannot be associated with this show, as I am the president of pedofolio. Nice slip of the tongue. In fact, I felt sorry for him. It's not very flattering to be censured by Pierre Cardin, who is neither very intelligent nor very analytical, especially when it comes to thinking about the performance. I'm not interested in staging, but I am interested in thinking about representation. In fact, at the end of PuritansI really wanted my next work to be... an asshole filter. The subject of the show is obviously not paedophilia. I think what shocked him were the slide images projected and commented on, Godard-style, by a caricatured and rude TV presenter. Yes, they are pornographic, scatological images, but they are not there to glorify them. That's not what the show is about. Through TV and the media, it is about questioning this terrible need to always find a scapegoat rather than reconsidering society and what is wrong with it. We could talk about Just of a cheap Fellinian aesthetic, with a random sequence, like in video games. Here, it is the audience that draws cards from which the actors start: whatever the entrance door, it 'fictionalises' in one way or another, with deliberately outré, clownish acting. It's true that I don't like realism. In the theatre, when you play with fake blood, what I like is to play the pain. Which is, compared to film tricks, really a question of representation. The RighteousIt is the mirror of a certain social ambivalence. I think it is necessary to go to extremes, against the consensus, which was already the case with The Puritans. Nowadays, we can talk about a lot of things, everything in fact, as long as we are serious, but as soon as we enter into a form of derision, nothing works.

Fabienne Arvers
18 June 2001

David Noir

David Noir, performer, actor, author, director, singer, visual artist, video maker, sound designer, teacher... carries his polymorphous nudity and his costumed childhood under the eyes and ears of anyone who wants to see and hear.

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