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“SPIRAL - DO THE BABIES LIKE TO GO TO A SPECTACLE?" - Lecture held at the Glitterbird seminar i Oslo, 25th of June 2004
I am from the other side, where the true and the false merge
in order to tell different love stories.
I sleep, I am dead, I am a model, I actually am, I am a brown bear,
I am on the screen, I am in my mother’s stomach…
I am fine.
The theatre will start.
I face them, from the other side.
The babies, will they like the spectacle I have conceived, written, repeated, constructed and dreamed for them?
The babies, do they like to go to the swimming pool? The babies, do they like to eat pumpkins? The babies, do they like to go to the doctor? The babies, do they like to go to the kindergarten? The babies, do they like to leave their beds? The babies, do they like to change their habits? The babies, do they like to go shopping? The babies, do they like to listen to poetry or music, music of musical words with meaning? What do I know about what the babies like or don’t like? In what way have they made me understand what they like and what they dislike?
I have often observed the babies while watching the spectacle that their parents have decided to let them see and share with them.
I have seen the very small children filled with wonder, astounded, surprised or astonished, attentive and curious, offering the intensity of their look to the actors in front of them. I have often noticed the size of their eyes when staring wide-eyed so not to miss anything. I have also seen those being on the verge of tears and those keeping them away in order to see better, in spite of the fear that we are proposing to them. The sensitive and the extra-ordinary spectators with such a subtle and attentive listening.
I have seen those who cried, and I have seen those who laughed without restraints in any case, in phase with their emotions. The small spectators, delicately incorrect, and yet so present.
During the last years, I have seen a lot of these small spectators. They grow in number because the practice is more and more widespread. Sitting, standing, on their four legs, in a comfortable deckchair or in the arms of a warm adult, I have contemplated them. They are strained or relaxed and then enter into a daydream aroused by the spectacle, or they gallop towards unknown lands, to the places where their unsatisfied curiosity starts.
I have seen those who rested for a long time, even a long time after the spectacle was over, in quietness, a well-being or a silence that did not scare or bother anyone but the parents presented.
I have asked myself what kind of a spectator this little child is, and how conscious he can be of the things going on in front of him, before his eyes, in a space given as a scene. I have also asked myself what kind of right the adults have to interfere with the lives of these small children, to disturb in an unusual time, to take them away from their ordinary time, in order to propose to them this extra-ordinary time: a suspended space-time, a place of dreams, risks and adventures that they still have not been introduced to?
No baby has ever told me if he liked the spectacle, and nobody has told me what the baby thought, which part he or she particularly appreciated and how the actor, the musician or the dancer had succeeded in polishing their play in this or that part of the piece. Nobody has told me that the theme of the spectacle was not for them, or on the contrary, completely adapted to their age. Nor has anyone told me that it was important to show the children the contemporary works interpreted by professional artists already from the youngest age.
Nobody has developed an arena for criticism…ready to appear in a serious magazine for adults or children!
All in all, none of these small children have said anything, and I found myself lonely with this desire, this will to show the spectacles to all the smallest children. Then, all the artistic teams I work with, only creating for this chosen public of small children.
Then, I asked myself if I liked to go to a spectacle, and when did I go there for the first time?
Besides, when had I for the first time seen and heard these voices, these faces, these images that came to me?
When did I start to dream, nested in an armchair at night, or lying on a small bronze cushion, well-being in the warm and ready to live on these moments? I remember that for me, every day of a spectacle is a ceremony; every representation is a celebration and an adventure where the result does not matter as long as I leave, as I vanish…?
It seems to me that the spectacle is both an intimate act where every person maintains a passionate, occasional, heart-breaking or delirious relation and a public act where the theatre is also a collective adventure. If I take risks, I am not alone. I have arms where I can take refuge, a neighbouring hand to press or to take; glances to exchange, words to put on emotions or lyrics to exchange.
I do not always know if the babies like to go to a spectacle, but I do know that I have loved to take my children to a spectacle, and that this is the case for other parents too.
I know that the artistes love this public between 0 and 3 years of age, this full public, but still so special. I know how the artistes love to invent, to make, to construct, to transmit and act as well as possible for this public. I also know that numerous kindergarten teams and teachers welcome spectacles for the children.
I would not allow myself to give a whole speech about something I am not competent in, but I wondered if it was not in this mix of the adults’ desires and love for art and all its forms, as varied as inventive, that we may find the babies’ love for art.
Furthermore, I also know, as Giorgio Strehler said it, that:
“the theatre is the heart of civilisations,
that it is the great place of sociability,
of confrontation, of dialectic,
of emotion, a great find of
the homo sapiens”
The spectator takes the risk of dreaming, then to live his dreams. The sensitive relation that each small child (baby) or an older child keep with the spectacle obey individual, mysterious and complex laws which are dependent on their past, but also and in particular, on their everyday universe.
This sensitivity is created at home, in the kindergarten, but also in a spectacle.
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