FRANCE – AVIGNON
First performed at the Printemps des Comédiens in Montpellier last June, but designed for the courtyard of the Lycée Saint-Joseph in Avignon, “Extinction”, inspired by his experience in Berlin, marks the return of the prodigy of a theatre of images, light and sound.
Five years after presenting his impressive adaptation of Don DeLillo (Joueurs, Mao II, Les Noms) at the Festival d’Avignon, Julien Gosselin returned to the Cité des Papes with Extinction. A composite portrait of twentieth-century Europe, based on texts by the Austrians Arthur Schnitzler and Thomas Bernhard (including Extinction), this new show is also the result of a residency the director carried out in Berlin, at the prestigious Volksbühne Theatre. There, he had already created Sturm und Drang (Storm and Passion), another show based on texts by Goethe and Thomas Mann – and presented as the first part of a history of German literature. “Extinction” is the second.
As always, Julien Gosselin offers us a grand spectacle. The director invites us both to join an electro-music concert, where we can get up on stage and dance with the actors as they lose themselves in the mass of spectators, and to witness the joyous decadence of Viennese high society in 1913, unconsciously hurtling towards the apocalypse. Finally, in a verbose lecture in Thomas Bernhard’s deliciously extreme, nihilistic style, one of the characters, played in German by an actress from the Volskbühne, shares his hatred of twentieth-century Austria.
Each part has its own style, from an impressive sound and light installation to the total sobriety of a stage surrounded by a few chairs. In between, Julien Gosselin’s signature set-up has been honed over several shows: a hyper-realistic, film-studio-style set, almost invisible to the audience – here reproducing the interior of a mansion. Actors in costumes move and play, followed by several cameras that offer the spectator a film played, shot and edited live. By using the codes of cinema in this way – and Julien Gosselin has fun using staging effects worthy of a Netflix series – the director cleverly questions the visible and the invisible. What this wealthy bourgeoisie wants us to see, and what it prefers to hide. Thus, in an amusing play of contrasts, the only rooms in this large house that are visible to the viewer are the most intimate: the bedroom and the bathroom.
With “Extinction”, Julien Gosselin continues in the vein begun ten years ago at the Avignon Festival with his adaptation of Michel Houellebecq’s Les Particules Elémentaires: using all the theatrical means at his disposal to offer a show that is primarily visual, but never gratuitously aesthetic. So, when he uses the codes of cinema (and not just video), he offers as much the illusion of film as the truth of its making. In this way, Julien Gosselin’s theatre is never anything other than a total spectacle.
To be seen at the Berlin Volksbühne from September 7, and at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris from November 29 to December 6, 2023.
Pierre Charpilloz