That which we see is not the code to what we don't see. That which should be seen is exactly what we see, what we can see.
François Tanguy. Those who saw Les Cantates (2001) and Coda (2004) at the Odéon theater, already know : performances at the Théâtre du Radeau, as precious as they are rare, they cannot be missed. Since 1983, the plays performed in the theater have allowed us to dream of Kantor, Bob Wilson, « a Beckett who seems to have lost his words » (Françoise Collin). From time to time we could hear echoes of Buchner or Dante, Kafka or Holderlin, Walser, Villon or Lucretius, we cross paths with the echoes of Berg, Schubert, Kurtag or de Berio. But with the passing of time, and despite the multiplication of choral « voices », of musicians or poets, all assembled on the same "staged immanence", it appears more and more clearly that this theater looks like nothing else. It resembles itself. With Ricercar, this uniqueness seems to reach a new culminating point: through its mysterious and intense softness, its power of evocation, its luminous ampleness, this most recent work, while fitting in perfectly with past creations at the Radeau theater, is in fact, one of its most accomplished. In order to reach, according to Tanguy, « theatricality that is far from spectacle », all one needs is « raging, unbridled matter that rains down upon theatrical space and time », simple, pared down, fairground props, a dirt floor under a carnival tent. A space with chairs and tables sitting on saw horses, lamps with lampshades and a few boards and white frames, stretched with translucent screens haphazardly operated by a couple of figures wearing bowler hats or outdated dresses. Digging into and cutting up the space that they transform, bathed in an intimate glow whose silence may remind us of Edward Hopper or Georges de La Tour, this tribe of anonymous ghosts is going to unfurl a labyrinth of canvasses that appear like so many waves. What the audience is given to feel can no more easily be explained than the music from which Tanguy often borrows certain titles like Le Chant du bouc (The song of the Billy Goat), Choral, Orphéon (town band), Coda and today...Ricercar. This latter term Tanguy reminds us, « implies, in its instrumental form, the expression of polyphonic development (...) whose vanishing line develops with each haphazard intersection, reversal and mutation of different motifs or subjects... »
That theater, doesn't represent anything, doesn't take up or replace anything. Its sole goal is to clean up our vision, lead it back to the threshold of its very own enigma. Softly, carefully taking its time, this is how it finally reaches our own time, our most secret edges, following over the last quarter century, a work that is exemplary, demanding and fully and patiently, contemporary.
