NATHAN
Burned beyond human recognition, Nathan Bénédict, a handicapped genius from a family of depraved intellectuals, can at last stage the grotesque American saga of his pitiful ancestors.
All that’s left of him is a brain, a heart and two lungs kept alive in a saline solution. Nathan Bénédict, proud to have so gloriously succeeded at self-immolation, has connected his brain to the hospital computers. He is thus able to compel characters and actors to recount the history of America through the prism of a grotesque saga riddled with incest, murder and treachery, the story of his family of worthless, depraved intellectuals.
The passionate Emmanuel Schwartz portrays a baroque world, first seen in his Chroniques, in this theatrical saga marked by searing intensity. In this cruel theatre, anything brought into being is promptly destroyed, just as America systematically destroys its past in order to dwell in a perpetual present. Assuming the megalomania of his main character, the playwright and director desires, like Artaud, to bestow on language its possibilities of physical vibration and its power to destroy.
PRODUCED BY ABÉ CARRÉ CÉ CARRÉ
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BYEMMANUEL SCHWARTZ
WITH LARISSA CORRIVEAU + FRANCIS LA HAYE + DOMINIQUE LECLERC + ALEXIS LEFEBVRE + JEAN MARCHAND + MARIE-FRANCE MARCOTTE + BERNARD MENEY + ÉTIENNE PILON + ÈVE PRESSAULT + MANI SOLEYMANLOU + GUILLAUME TELLIER + FANNY WEILBRENNER
DRAMATURGY ALICE RONFARD
SOUND DESIGN FRANCIS LA HAYE + EMMANUEL SCHWARTZ
LIGHTING DESIGN MARTIN SIROIS
COSTUME DESIGN FRUZSINA LÀNYI
COPRODUCTION FESTIVAL TRANSAMÉRIQUES + CANADA’S NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE (OTTAWA)
WRITTEN BY PAUL LEFEBVRE
TRANSLATED BY NEIL KROETSCH
PREMIERED AT CANADA’S NATIONAL ARTS CENTRE, OTTAWA, MAY 2, 2012
EMMANUEL SCHWARTZ (MONTRÉAL)
ABÉ CARRÉ CÉ CARRÉ
Singular Artist, Singular Vision
An actor, musician, director and playwright, Emmanuel Schwartz has, since graduating from the theatre program at Collège Lionel-Groulx in 2004, been simultaneously pursuing a series of radical artistic adventures in collusion with artists such as choreographer Dave St-Pierre, director Denis Villeneuve, writer and director Olivier Kemeid, director Marc Beaupré – Schwartz’s performance as Caligula mirroring contemporary nightmares – and the writer and director Wajdi Mouawad, with a memorable performance as Wilfrid in Mouawad’s Littoral. An atypical artist with a fiery creative drive, in his work Emmanuel Schwartz aims to harness the ancient power of myths so as to reveal the underpinnings of the civilized conflicts woven into contemporary life.
