2008 · Othello · Shakespeare · De Vos · Vigner (EN)

IAGO.
"Men should be what they seem;
Or, those that be not, would they might seem none !"
OTHELLO.
"Certain, men should be what they seem." [1]

"I am writing to you from Atlanta, spring 2008, where I just started to rehearse IN THE SOLITUDE OF COTTON FIELDS by BERNARD-MARIE KOLTÈS. Before I came here, RÉMI DE VOS and I finished translating and adapting OTHELLO for our project. Six months of hard work, from the English into the French, in the intention to be close to SHAKESPEARE and to the actors. From KOLTÈS to SHAKESPEARE, while reassociating languages, I do again read OTHELLO in the shadow of THE SOLITUDE."
ÉRIC VIGNER

"Two men who cross don’t have any other choice but to strike out at each other, with the violence of an enemy or the gentleness of a brother." [2]

"Like DANS LA SOLITUDE DES CHAMPS DE COTON, OTHELLO is a story of men - the principal pair of them being Iago and Othello. It is between them that the fight is fought: OTHELLO is a war drama - about the war between Venice and the Turks, a war over the dominion of the Mediterranean basin, a war of religion waged between East and West, a war waged against one’s own self and against others when the others are foreigners who must be annihilated. Going beyond Iago’s personal grievance and his subconscious plan of revenge, which starts with his cry of pain over the injustice that Othello has not chosen him for his lieutenant, the play is about contamination and (infective) doubt. Certainty, the good order of things, the values on which a well-ordered society is built - all this collapses under the blows of a secret war, a dirty and highly personal war, waged by a single, deeply wounded man who wants to destroy the world which has caused him so much pain."
ÉV

IAGO.
"Were I the Moor, I would not be Iago :
In following him, I follow but myself.
Heaven is my judge, not for love and duty,
But seeming so for my peculiar end :
For when my outward action doth demonstrate
The native act and figure of my heart
In compliment extern, ‘tis not long after,
But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve
For daws to peck at – I am not what I am." [3]

"Iago is an angel of darkness, whose form and weight are only due to what others project on him, an agent, a ‘blank space’ which allows all these projections, and the theatre which will expose to view Othello’s conscience and, by ricochet, ours as well. Othello projects something onto this ‘blank space’, of which he is unaware and to which he has not yet had access. Othello has seduced Desdemona and has married her - almost in the way of a social climber. And what he discovers once he has fallen into Iago’s trap, a trap which he accepts unawares, - is love. Before, he didn’t know how much he was in love. And logic requires that one kills the object of one’s love."
ÉV

"The play deals with "seeing" - a desire to see, an incapability, an impossibility to see. It's a paradox play, at any moment... if Othello doesn't want to see that Iago is deceiving him, than maybe because he wants to see something else. There is a dark side in him, like the blind spot we all have in our eyes. He searches for a revelation, something which has to do with his proper origins and the highest form of love, the unconditional..."
ÉV

AN OPERA MADE OF WORDS
"The set design reminds us that ÉRIC VIGNER was a visual artist before he became a director, and this time the visual artist surpasses the actors’ director. Those high mobile panels, those perforations which change their colour according to the lighting, VIGNER uses them with rare intelligence, in opposing black to white, empty space to scenic machinery, and then, when he "turns the colour on", he gives them such a strength as to feed and infiltrate his actors. During their arrival in Cyprus (act II), where the background of the stage gives way to a cerulean blue which is reflected on the gleaming ground of ebony, the light design by JOËL HOURBEIGT makes us assist to a magic dawn which RIMBAUD would not have been able to describe. We drown ourselves in the most beautiful picture which ROTHKO could have painted. The actors’ silhouettes, like Chinese shadows or frail puppets get loose on this firmament of azure, announcing the end of the war. One moment of grace in a world which will soon sink into darkness. MAETERLINCK considered that the big poems of humanity - such as OTHELLO or MACBETH - were not intended for the stage, that the poem was a piece of art that stood in contradiction with the representation. "Any masterpiece is a symbol, and the symbol never bears the active human presence. It would be necessary to completely make us forget the human presence on stage." Thus ÉRIC VIGNER, by assimilating the actors to his set, allows to make forget the presence of man; the " total eclipse of the sun and the moon " takes place, black and white became allies, and it is not the "terror" which was engendered, but the harmony of refined aesthetics, where man sublimated his own nature."
OLIVIER DHÉNIN, LES TROIS COUPS, 14 novembre 2008

OTHELLO.
"Soft you ; a word or two before you go.
I have done the state some service and they know’t :
No more of that. I pray you in your letters
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate
Speak of me as I am : nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely, but too well…" [4]

"There is a rise and a fall. One bright side and one dark side. The set I imagined shows both sides - one side is always the reverse of the other. We travel from black to white, from white to black. There are many different ways to provoke blindness, the darkness as well as a dazzling light."
ÉV