2002 · Savannah Bay · Duras · Vigner (EN)
"All the images seen in the play are at the same time intimate images. Savannah Bay is a work - ours and yours - that does not unveil its secret but hides it, to paraphrase Guibert in Le Mausolée des Amants."
ÉRIC VIGNER
In 2002, Vigner was invited to the Comédie-Française to stage a play by MARGUERITE DURAS - the first play of the author to become part of the theater’s repertory. He chose SAVANNAH BAY, one of her most enigmatic pieces, to open the season on 14 September 2002 at Salle Richelieu and worked with two outstanding actresses - the doyenne of the Comédie-Française, CATHERINE SAMIE, who had also played L'ÉCOLE DES FEMMES and CATHERINE HIEGEL.
"There are artists who take part in inventing the future, and Marguerite Duras is without any doubt one of the most important writers of the 20th century. I would wish that in addition to Savannah Bay, some other works by her were included in the repertoire of the Comédie-Française. Whoever has met this genuinely charismatic artist, through her works or in real life, has experienced the profound upheaval she can cause in each and every one of us. Marguerite Duras is also a woman who throughout her life has written about what love amounts to, and her life, and her œuvre, are engulfed by that feeling. She is a woman who gives what she has to give with force and passion. That her work should as of now form part of the repertory of the Comédie-Française is more than justified; and opening the new season at the beginning of the 21st century with her text is a genuine challenge for those who do theatre today."
ÉV
"Éric Vigner crams the stage with a system of curtains made of three million glass beads that reflect the light, sparkle, dance, open and close as the actors move, conjure up pictures and at the same time invite us to pass around them and through them. An uninhabitable space (even though all the images created are intimate ones), a space of which only the margins can be taken possession of; a place of light, and only of light. Savannah Bay is the light of death, the dazzling light of love."
Martin Bethenod, Vogue, octobre 2002
"You don’t know who you are,
who you were,
you know you have played,
you don’t know what you played,
what you are playing,
you know you have to play,
you don’t know what,
you play.
Nor can you remember
What your roles were,
Nor which of your children are alive or dead.
Nor which are the locations,
the settings,
the capitals,
or the continents where you cried out the passion of lovers.
Only that the people in the audience have bought a ticket and that somebody owes them a performance.
You are the stage actress,
The splendor of the age of the world,
Its crowning achievement,
The glory of its last delivery.
You have forgotten everything except Savannah,
Savannah Bay.
Savannah Bay is you." [1]
"The play is made for these two actresses; we feel at home with Duras, in her company. It is a women’s affair. The two actresses have what it takes, they are intimately familiar with what she wants to convey. Catherine Samie has been with the Comédie-Française for a long time. She is the trustee of the memories - both of the theatre and of life itself - necessary to fill that role. And who else but Catherine Hiegel could have been her opposite number, quite different in nature, belonging to another theatre family - because the relationship of the two actresses is also an affair between families."
ÉV
"Éric Vigner brings forth energy, creates a curtain of moving beads that catch the light, day, night, blood flowing in murmuring streams. A curtain turned actor. Like an iridescent memory, a cruel one, it is thrown across the stage and suddenly falls while intimations of death draw near. Eric Vigner, whose relations with Marguerite Duras were marked by a deep friendship, gives Savannah Bay its rightful place in the repertory of the Comédie-Française, thanks to the unique beauty of a sculpture made of moving beads. We are moved and troubled, discreet witnesses to a love story between an old woman who is no longer alive and a young man who has forgotten nothing."
Laurence Liban, L’Express, 24/30 octobre 2002
SAVANNAH BAY was a co-production of the Comédie-Française and the CDDB-Théâtre de Lorient. The latter organised a major tour of the play throughout France in the 2003/2004 season.
© Photography : Alain Fonteray
Texts assembled by Jutta Johanna Weiss
Translation from the French by Herbert Kaiser
© CDDB-Théâtre de Lorient
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