Actor-Network Dramaturgies: The Argentines of Paris (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History) [1st ed. 2023] 3031325222, 9783031325229

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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE HISTORY

Actor-Network Dramaturgies The Argentines of Paris Stefano Boselli

Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History Series Editors

Elizabeth Osborne Florida State University Tallahassee, FL, USA Shannon Walsh Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA, USA

Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History is a series devoted to the best of theatre/performance scholarship currently available, accessible and free of jargon. It strives to include a wide range of topics, from the more traditional to those performance forms that in recent years have helped broaden the understanding of what theatre as a category might include (from variety forms as diverse as the circus and burlesque to street buskers, stage magic, and musical theatre, among many others). Although historical, critical, or analytical studies are of special interest, more theoretical projects, if not the dominant thrust of a study but utilized as important underpinning or as an historiographical or analytical method of exploration, are also of interest. Textual studies of drama or other types of less traditional performance texts are also germane to the series if placed in their cultural, historical, social, or political and economic context. There is no geographical focus for this series and works of excellence of a diverse and international nature, including comparative studies, are sought.

Stefano Boselli

Actor-Network Dramaturgies The Argentines of Paris

Stefano Boselli Department of Theatre University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Las Vegas, NV, USA

ISSN 2947-5767     ISSN 2947-5775 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History ISBN 978-3-031-32522-9    ISBN 978-3-031-32523-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32523-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: KTSDESIGN/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To Rosella and Nina

Acknowledgments

In a study that highlights the multiplicity of agencies converging to create theatre performances, works of art, and our collaborative reality, I am intensely aware of the several “actors” who aided me in researching and completing this work. First of all, an early version of this project could not have materialized without the generous resources offered by the Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. They provided opportunities, time, and support for extensive research in Argentina and France over three summers between 2017 and 2019. In particular, my dissertation advisor, Jean Graham-Jones, made available her in-depth knowledge of the Argentine context while suggesting refinements to the focus of each chapter, especially when the extensive information I had obtained on the Argentines of Paris networks risked becoming overbearing. I am deeply indebted to my other dissertation committee members, Peter Eckersall and Marvin Carlson, for their pointed theoretical and historical insights along the way and for actively facilitating access to essential sources of funding. Thanks also to my colleague Jennifer Joan Thompson, who first sparked my interest in actor-network theory. At the Graduate Center, most of the funds that allowed me to travel to and sift through Argentine and French archives came through the following grants and awards: the Early Research Initiative Knickerbocker Award for Archival Research in American Studies, twice; the Provost’s Pre-­ Dissertation Summer Research Award; the Rosette Lamont Fellowship; the Center for Latin American, Caribbean & Latino Studies Summer vii

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Research Travel Fellowship; the Doctoral Student Research Grant; and the Cohn-Lortel Theatre-Going Award. My thanks go to the numerous librarians who facilitated my investigations and even to those who unknowingly and patiently collected materials over a long period of time. In Buenos Aires, in particular those at the Biblioteca de la Universidad Torcuato Di Tella; the Centro de Documentación de Teatro y Danza, Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires; the Núcleo Audiovisual Buenos Aires, Centro Cultural San Martín; the Archivo Histórico del Teatro Nacional Cervantes; the Biblioteca Nacional Mariano Moreno; and the Biblioteca del Congreso de la Nación. In Paris, especially at the three sites of the Bibliothèque National de France; the Archives nationales at Pierrefitte-sur-Seine; the Inathèque; the archives at the Théâtre de la Commune, Centre Dramatique National, Aubervilliers; the Bibliothèque-musée de l’Opéra; and the Théâtrothèque “Gaston Baty” Études théâtrales at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris 3. I am of course profoundly grateful to those Argentines of Paris who responded to my queries and granted me interviews, especially director Alfredo Arias and designer Juan Stoppani, who spent a considerable time speaking with me, but also Larry Hager and Rodolfo Natale, who offered more details on specific episodes. To all other artists, for the several interviews they granted to others. My editorial contacts at Palgrave have helped refine the final manuscript. I want to thank commissioning editor Eileen Srebernik, series editors Elizabeth Osborne and Shannon Walsh, production editors Karthika Devi Ravikumar, Sathiyavathi Pajaniradj, and their team, and especially the anonymous reader who provided invaluable feedback. Finally, I am grateful to my colleagues in the Department of Theatre at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas for allowing me to use research time to complete this project. On a more personal note, this book is dedicated to my mother, Rosella, and my grandmother Nina, who first connected me with Argentina by emigrating there from Italy right at the time when the artists I speak of were beginning their careers. I also want to thank my father, Leonardo, for supporting me financially until the time I could walk on my own: the scholar who wrote this book would not exist without that commitment. And Giordano Fusco, who made his transatlantic move from Italy to the States at the same time as me and whose ongoing friendship has made my life lighter in countless practical ways over the last twenty years.

Praise for Actor-Network Dramaturgies “A rich, engaging and beautifully written exploration of stagings produced by Argentines who chose to settle in Paris in the 1960s. Boselli’s monograph is not simply a repositioning of iconic directors such as Jorge Lavelli, Jérôme Savary, and Alfredo Rodríguez Arias, but also an exploration of a wider group—including artist and playwright Copi, costume designer Juan Stoppani, set designer Roberto Platé, and performers Facundo Bo, Marucha Bo, and Marilú Marini—as a means of exploring the different networks through which they collaborated. In tracing the ventures these artists generated, this important monograph asks pertinent questions about nationhood, exile, intercultural collaborations, non-human agents, global and local exchange, and the political, social and cultural agents that shaped their navigation of intersecting cultural spaces.” —Professor Maria M. Delgado, The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London, UK “Spanning two hemispheres and two mega-cities, Stefano Boselli’s pioneering book manages to map, with great precision and inclusivity, the complex exchanges that make TransAtlantic cultures possible and sustainable. Adapting and refining the foundational principles of actor-network analysis, Boselli captures the creative and political transactions connecting Argentinian playwrights, directors, and performers living in France to funding resources, human and non-human agencies, policies, fashion, or set designers. What’s truly significant about Boselli’s research is that he manages to keep all these elements not only together—which is already quite a feat—but also in perpetual motion (as they are experienced and assembled). His meticulously detailed presentation of both the macro and micro factors involved, and his vision of intercultural relations as a flowing process that is constantly redressing its own forms posits the possibility of a richer methodological template breaching the gaps between sociology, performance studies, affect studies, and theater historiography. Last but not least, his book proposes a dynamic approach to diaspora studies, showing that geography is defined by our collaborations as much as by the lands we leave behind or the new lands we inhabit.” —Leo Cabranes-Grant, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

Contents

1 Introduction:  Theatre Actor-Networks Between Argentina and France  1 2 Copi,  Savary, the Grand Magic Circus, and Other Actors: The Actor-Network Dramaturgy of Good Bye Mister Freud 19 3 A  Tale of Two (and Other) Cities: The TSE Group from Buenos Aires to Paris 93 4 The  Argentine Network in Paris: Lavelli, Copi, the TSE Group, and Other Stealthy Actors at the Top of French Decentralization173 5 Conclusions:  Developing an Actor-Network Dramaturgical Vision253 Synoptic Chronology of Relevant Events, 1930–1993263 Index275

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About the Author

Stefano Boselli  is Assistant Professor of Theatre History and Dramaturgy in the Theatre Department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and Resident Dramaturg at the Nevada Conservatory Theatre. His book chapters and articles are published or forthcoming in the volumes The Routledge Companion to Theatre-­ Fiction and Pirandello in Context and in the refereed journals Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture, MLN (Modern Language Notes), PSA Pirandello Society Annual, Quaderni d’Italianistica, Polymath, Italica, L’anello che non tiene, Testo a fronte, TSJ Translation: A Translation Studies Journal, and Journal of Italian Translation.

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Theatre Actor-Networks Between Argentina and France

A Study in Human/Non-Human Relationships This work investigates key theatre productions written or directed by Argentines who left Buenos Aires for personal, artistic, and/or political reasons and established themselves in Paris. Case studies refer to the lives, visual art, theatre companies, official appointments, and transatlantic networks that contributed to their creations between the 1960s and 1990s. Although others will be mentioned briefly, my main focus remains on a cluster of theatre practitioners who more frequently connected with each other around playwright, performer, and graphic artist Copi (nom de plume of Raúl Damonte Botana). These included director Jorge Lavelli, director and performer Jérôme Savary, director and visual artist Alfredo Rodríguez Arias, costume designer Juan Stoppani, set designer Roberto Platé, and performers Facundo Bo, Marucha Bo, and Marilú Marini. As these artists became part of the larger group of intellectuals commonly

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Boselli, Actor-Network Dramaturgies, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32523-6_1

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known as “the Argentines of Paris,” their individual experiences renewed a historically privileged relationship between Argentina and France.1 In fact, what I propose here is fundamentally a “study in relationships” at all levels of scale. For example, I examine connections between playwrights and directors but also between larger organizations and the productions supported by their funds or among human and non-human actors, including microbes2; I observe how theatre groups form, operate, intermingle, and change over time; I describe how official cultural policies favor certain associations, such as the French state’s openness to nominating Argentines as directors of national theatres. All these relationships constitute the threads of a web that warrants detailed tracking in that it demonstrates the vibrant interconnectedness of theatre with the material world, of aesthetics with politics and reality. In order to make sense of this intricate web of relations, I mainly draw on critical theories developed by sociologists Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law on actor-­ networks; artist and philosopher Manuel DeLanda on assemblages; and social anthropologist Tim Ingold on the meshwork. All are in some way

1  For the influence of the French political and cultural models on Argentina, see at least Denis Rolland, L’Amérique latine et la France: acteurs et réseaux d’une relation culturelle (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011). For a detailed study on cultural and economic exchanges between Argentina and France, see Hebe Carmen Pelosi, Argentinos en Francia, franceses en Argentina: una biografía colectiva (Buenos Aires: Ciudad Argentina, 1999). Jason Weiss speaks of several Argentine émigré intellectuals in The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Writers in Paris (New York: Routledge, 2003). 2  In line with most of the critical theories I refer to, the term “actor” is here reserved for entities that express agency, or what semioticians such as Greimas would designate as “actant,” whereas “performer” is used for actors who appear on stage. For the concept of actant, see Algirdas Julien Greimas, Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method, trans. Daniele McDowell, Ronald Schleifer, and Alan Velie (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 197–221. Anne Ubersfeld has applied Greimasian notions to the theatre: see, “The Actantial Model in Theatre,” in Reading Theatre, trans. Frank Collins, ed. Paul Perron and Patrick Debbeche (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 32–71.

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related to the rhizomatic philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and stem from a posthuman perspective.3 As a consequence of my emphasis on theory, networks and assemblages guide the structure of this work to a higher degree than biography or artistic trajectory, even if I do follow a chronological order within each chapter. Hence, this is not a linear biographical or historical study that recounts in detail what transpired between the 1960s and 1990s. Since it

3  Major similarities exist, in my opinion, among these theories beyond their idiosyncratic terminological distinctions, although emphases vary. John Law sees little difference between “actor-network” and the original French term “agencement,” somewhat limited by its English translation as “assemblage” that masks the sense of an ongoing process. See John Law, After Method: Mess in Social Science Research (London: Routledge, 2004), 41. For a more nuanced comparison, see Martin Müller and Carolin Schurr, “Assemblage Thinking and Actor-Network Theory: Conjunctions, Disjunctions, Cross-Fertilisations,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 41 (2016): 217–29. Ingold, who borrows the term “meshwork” from philosopher Henri Lefebvre, understands it as another, finer and less tangible level of the French “acteur réseau,” translated as “actor-network” in actor-network theory (ANT) texts. He then proceeds to dialogically expose differences in his witty “When ANT Meets SPIDER: Social Theory for Arthropods” in Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (New York: Routledge, 2011), 89–94. Preference for one or the other theory really depends on the object of study, and I alternate foci as I shift between looking at the arc of whole lives of individuals and theatre groups or, instead, more local material circumstances. To my knowledge, actor-network or assemblage theories have so far been employed in only a handful of studies dedicated to theatre topics and from angles quite different from mine: see, for example, Marcela A.  Fuentes, Performance Constellations: Networks of Protest and Activism in Latin America (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2019); Leo Cabranes-Grant, From Scenarios to Networks: Performing the Intercultural in Colonial Mexico (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2016); Marlis Schweitzer, Transatlantic Broadway: The Infrastructural Politics of Global Performance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Christopher B.  Balme, “The Bandmann Circuit: Theatrical Networks in the First Age of Globalization,” Theatre Research International 40, no. 1 (2015): 19–36; and David Worrall, Celebrity, Performance, Reception: British Georgian Theatre as Social Assemblage (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013). For a genealogy of posthuman research in a performance studies context, see “Performance and Posthumanism: Co-Creation, Response-Ability and Epistemologies” in Christel Stalpaert, Kristof van Baarle, and Laura Karreman, eds., Performance and Posthumanism: Staging Prototypes of Composite Bodies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), 1–17.

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would be impractical to aim for a complete survey of events, I chose instead a smaller number of productions that were noteworthy on their own but gain even more significance through the lens of theory when viewed as emergent outcomes of more complex networks. For instance, Chap. 2 treats Good Bye Mister Freud as the effect not only of Copi’s and Savary’s biographies and artistic formation but also of the fraught relationships among politicians and national states that influenced the two artists’ movements around the globe and their eventual meeting. In similar fashion, Chap. 3 speaks of Copi’s Eva Perón directed by Rodríguez Arias in Paris not just as a convergence of artistic trajectories, but also as a momentous event for the careers of the playwright, the director, and his fellow TSE group members, paradoxically aided by a constellation of hostile actors in Argentina and France. Finally, Chap. 4 views Copi’s La nuit de Madame Lucienne (The Night of Madame Lucienne) and Cachafaz as coproductions certainly involving the multiple actors interpellated by Lavelli’s and Arias’s national-level theatres, but also as the outcome of stealthy disease agents that modified the shows’ final cast by impacting the original performers’ bodies. In sum, these and the other case studies are remarkable not just as evidence of intercultural creative collaborations,4 but because they serve to illustrate how actor-network and assemblage theories can significantly broaden the scope of theatrical analysis tout court. One of the chief reasons is that these theories expand the researcher’s vision by revealing a larger set of actors well beyond the individuals involved in the conscious

 The complexity and variety of assemblages mean that it is rarely possible to limit their components to one or even two nationalities. While I stay focused on Argentine persons, I do, however, introduce actants of other nationalities at the artistic, bureaucratic, and organizational level inasmuch as they represent the necessary support for theatre productions by Argentines or for crucial events in their careers. 4

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planning, rehearsal, and execution of a staged production.5 In fact, my overarching question is: how can the theatre-making process be both minutely and globally observed, in its dependence not only on multiple human actors such as playwrights, performers, directors, designers, and producers but also on non-human ones such as set pieces, costumes, places of performance, particular cities or neighborhoods, national and international contexts, funding streams, or even normally invisible microbes? Indeed, once the complexity of agencies at work is taken into account beyond the threshold of intentional creativity, history itself can be regarded as an actor of a theatrical poetics on a global scale. To better understand the underpinnings of what I call an “actor-­ network dramaturgy,” it is now worth articulating in more detail the notion of agency in the context of actor-network theory (ANT), which in turn helps establish the uninterrupted continuity of the aesthetic with biography and history at large.

Towards an Actor-Network Dramaturgical Vision One of the most advantageous postulations of ANT is “the radical indeterminacy of the actor.”6 Freed from an essential ontological status, the actor depends instead on the associations it enters into and, therefore, “is 5  Theatre scholars in the field of rehearsal studies have taken steps in the direction of piercing the phenomenological opacity of performances that conceal their production process by speaking of the collaborators involved in the creative process rather than solely of the director as auteur. For instance, Susan Letzler Cole peeked into the “hidden world” of directors at work; Gay McAuley employed ethnographic techniques for the thick description of the creative process; and Jen Harvie edited with Andy Lavender a collection investigating contemporary, more collective theatre-making techniques. See Susan Letzler Cole, Directors in Rehearsal: A Hidden World (New York: Routledge, 1992); Gay McAuley, Not Magic but Work: An Ethnographic Account of a Rehearsal Process (New York: Manchester University Press, 2012); Jen Harvie and Andy Lavender, eds., Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2010). Although fascinating and valuable, these and similarly descriptive studies are often limited to a humanist view that both accords agency exclusively to people and restricts their actions to the explicit aesthetic realm. In other words, these analyses tend to accept artists alone as actors and only once they consciously decide to begin preparations to stage a particular work. 6  Michel Callon, “Actor-Network Theory—The Market Test,” in Actor Network Theory and After, ed. John Law and John Hassard (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2005), 181.

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also, always, a network.”7 In other words, any entity—including texts, humans, animals, machines, groups, or institutions—is an actor-network inasmuch as it can connect with or disconnect from other actors. As a consequence, all actor-networks are isomorphic, their shape resembling a star that is “made to be an individual/subject […] by a swarm of other agencies.”8 The dynamic is complicated by the fact that each actor-­network is also in competition with every other, and what may appear to be a blackboxed, punctualized, simplified actor—all ANT terms that indicate the concealment of agencies into a condensed, opaque “package”—is in fact the result of a constant struggle, each actor subject to what others are doing as they either enroll into or withdraw from reciprocal associations.9 This power struggle, remarks Law, “tells empirical stories about processes of translation,”10 referring to the etymological meaning of the word (from 7  John Law, “Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering, Strategy and Heterogeneity,” Systems Practice 5 (1992): 384. 8  Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 213. Accepting ontological equivalence and isomorphism of these actor-networks does not, however, preclude acknowledging differences between micro and macro, where importance is relative not to literal physical size but to quantity, intensity, and density of associations and translations. Even if ANT does not decide a priori on the relevance of actors based on their physical dimension, it does acknowledge differences in scale. “We end up with actors of different size even though they are all isomorphic, because some have been able to put into black boxes more elements durably to alter their relative size.” Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, “Unscrewing the Big Leviathan: How Actors Macro-Structure Reality and How Sociologists Help Them to Do So,” in Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro and Macro-Sociologies, ed. K. KnorrCetina and Aaron Victor Cicourel (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 285. In this book chapter, the authors employed Hobbes’s powerful image of the social contract to illustrate how an actor gradually increases its size through constantly enrolling other actors and becoming their spokesman. Unlike Hobbes, of course, ANT’s “monsters” are the result of an assemblage of human and non-human actors so that the social contract is seen as “merely a specific instance of a more general phenomenon, that of translation.” Ibid., 279. For the term “monster” in an ANT context see John Law, ed., A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination (London: Routledge, 1991). 9  Law succinctly describes this struggle as “the core of the actor-network approach: a concern with how actors and organizations mobilize, juxtapose and hold together the bits and pieces out of which they are composed; how they are sometimes able to prevent those bits and pieces from following their own inclinations and making off; and how they manage, as a result, to conceal for a time the process of translation itself and so turn a network from a heterogeneous set of bits and pieces each with its own inclinations, into something that passes as a punctualized actor.” “Notes,” 386. 10  Ibid., 387.

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Lat. translatio), which implies movement and transference. Indeed, among the several definitions of ANT that have sought to more precisely unpack its successful acronym, “sociology of translation” best captures the active movement of transformation implied by associations as they become channels for the displacement of materials, energies, money, knowledge, etc. in an intricate network of competing actor-networks.11 Ultimately, without translation there would be no actor-networks. If the network is fundamentally a continuum of actors performing associations and translations, in this universe of omnipresent “drama”—i.e., etymologically, action—it makes no sense to distinguish artistic action from action per se. This blurring of the boundaries between life and artistic creation has been variously elaborated in studies that meditate on the arts, performance, and the dramaturgical process.12 Once the borders between art and the real world become porous, there is no theoretical limit to the scope of action, and agency can exist even in the absence of an explicit artistic teleology. For instance, philosopher and social theorist Michel Foucault, focusing on how objectives emerge in the historical process, maintains that “people know what they do; they frequently know 11  Impatient with the independent life acquired internationally by the ANT acronym, its theorists have frequently sought to push back against facile misunderstandings of its components. At some point, Latour famously decided it was time to put four nails in the name’s coffin by stating that “there are four things that do not work with actor-network theory; the word actor, the word network, the word theory and the hyphen!” Latour, “On Recalling ANT,” in Actor Network Theory and After, ed. John Law and John Hassard (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2005), 15. 12  For instance, philosopher Jacques Derrida reflects on the notion of parergon: “neither work (ergon) nor outside the work [hors d’oeuvre], neither inside nor outside, neither above nor below, it disconcerts any opposition but does not remain indeterminate and it gives rise to the work.” The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987), 9. Performance studies scholar Fred Moten sees the parergon as “the exteriority that interiority can’t do without, the co-operator.” In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 247. In turn, performance and visual arts scholar Shannon Jackson observes how “performance both activates and depends upon a relational system, […] exposing the dependencies of convivial and expressive spheres.” Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (New York: Routledge, 2011), 30. Finally, in the field of dramaturgical scholarship and practice, Peter Eckersall, Paul Monaghan, and Melanie Beddie conceive “dramaturgy as a deterritorializing factor in the connections that artistic production makes with social life.” “Dramaturgy as Ecology: A Report from the Dramaturgies Project,” in New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice, ed. Katalin Trencsényi and Bernadette Cochrane (New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014), 20.

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why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does.”13 Very much akin to ANT, Foucault’s genealogical thought thus helps understand “intentionality without a subject, a strategy without a strategist”14 and how actions chronologically preceding the aesthetic ones can still be seen as pushing towards a theatre production, even without full awareness of the push itself.15 Once the life-art continuum is acknowledged, not all network theories work equally well for both terms. While ANT’s tendency to emphasize the concrete aspects leading to the formation of converged actor-networks may be ideal for describing tangible theatrical productions, several corrections have been proposed in order to soften the impression of a certain managerial determinism arising from too schematic depictions of the network influenced by the science and technology fields.16 In particular, Ingold, who sees lines of flow as the true essence of what he calls a “reticulate meshwork,” recuperates Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “lines of becoming” as more appropriate descriptors of how life really evolves.17 In essence, the notion of line of becoming indicates a sustained direction that can be perceived within the meshwork/network,18 and it is crucial to be reminded that such invisible flows underpin the lives of families, authors, directors, theatre groups, and productions, even when a snapshot is taken to facilitate their analysis as local and material actor-networks. Thus, for 13   Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinaw, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, with an afterword by Michel Foucault (Brighton, UK: The Harvester Press, 1983), 187. 14  Ibid. 15  John Law comments on consonances with the French philosopher’s work and sees actornetwork theory “as an empirical version of post-structuralism [so that] ‘actor-networks’ can be seen as scaled-down versions of Michel Foucault’s discourses or epistemes.” “Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics,” in The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, ed. Brian S. Turner (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2009), 145. 16  “The managerial, engineering, Machiavellian, demiurgic character of ANT has been criticized many times.” Latour, “On Recalling ANT,” 16. Among ANT theorists, Annemarie Mol and John Law suggested a “fluid space” made of flows of substances not yet defined as objects or entities. “Regions, Networks and Fluids: Anaemia and Social Topology,” Social Studies of Science 24 (1994): 641–71. 17  Tim Ingold, Lines: A Brief History (New York: Routledge, 2007), 81. For Deleuze and Guattari, “a line of becoming has neither beginning nor end, [… it] has only a middle […]. A becoming is neither one nor two, nor the relation of the two; it is the in-between, […] the line of flight or descent running perpendicular to both.” Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 293. 18  “life is open-ended: its impulse is not to reach a terminus but to keep on going.” Ingold, Being Alive, 83.

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instance, I speak of Savary’s, Arias’s, or their companies’ trajectories over time as lines of becoming, but I frame the individual artists and their productions as actor-networks. Such snapshots capture fleeting moments of strength of these actor-­ networks, demonstrated by their relative, although always provisional stability within the constant flux of translations.19 According to Callon, this stability is the result of convergence, “a combination of alignment and coordination” that allows translations to be successful and leads to a situation “in which the activities of actors fit together despite their heterogeneity.”20 When Callon adds that “strongly convergent networks only develop after long periods of investment, intense effort, and coordination,” these definitions could very well apply to theatrical “machines” at the time of production, rehearsals, and public performance.21 A theatre production is, after all, the visible manifestation of convergent networks that ultimately translated several actors into a shared space and time of performance. Concurrently, a production is also a fitting example of the ongoing instability of an actornetwork, since—to give just one example—the actual number of performance dates often depends on the show’s ability to galvanize fresh external enrollments of favorable critics and paying spectators. Ultimately, a production itself can be seen as possessing autonomous agency at a different scale than its components, an aspect that has been developed more in media studies in reference to recorded footage but not yet in theatre studies.22 Viewing productions as actor-networks steers one away from privileging the playwright, director, or creative team as the sole driving forces at work. It becomes the first step towards extending the meaning of agency to non-human entities, including material actors and larger historical events. The focus can then shift from gauging a show’s success or failure on aesthetic judgment or social efficacy alone to unpacking notable nodes in the weave of actions that converged to assemble the ­production. As a consequence, even a fundamentally unsuccessful production can provide intriguing insights about its extended assemblage  “strength […] resides in the power to break off and to bind together.” Callon and Latour, “Unscrewing,” 292. 20  Michel Callon, “Techno-Economic Networks and Irreversibility,” in Law, A Sociology of Monsters, 148. 21  Ibid., 140. Even if the term “machine” resonates primarily with theorizations by Deleuze and Guattari, ANT uses it occasionally. For Law, “the actor-network approach is thus a theory of agency, a theory of knowledge, and a theory of machines.” “Notes,” 389. 22  See Markus Spöhrer and Beate Ochsner, eds., Applying the Actor-Network Theory in Media Studies (Hershey, PA: IGI Global, Disseminator on Knowledge, 2017). 19

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process. For instance, in Chap. 4, my interest in Copi’s Cachafaz lies not so much in the final artistic result but rather in the significant changes in its assemblage, determined by Alzheimer’s agency over its originally cast star performer or in the convergence of heterogeneous producing partners of strikingly different political persuasions. Given that the network extends in all directions without either a focused teleology or definite origins that constrain the scope of action, it is the production itself, as a provisionally stabilized network, that supplies the investigator a posteriori with a unique perspective that interpellates or, in ANT parlance, “problematizes” the actor-networks of which it is an accumulation.23 On the one hand, the production’s actor-network provides clues about its past, i.e., the complexity of its genealogy; since the effect is known (the performance), one can more easily seek out the causes, or rather the empirical stories involving actors that enrolled and translated other actors to create the “performative Leviathan” under scrutiny.24 On the other hand, its present is complicated by several levels of scale, a depth that is best described by the image of Russian nesting dolls. Even when the actor-network appears as a black box, explains Callon, it still “contains a network of black boxes that depend upon one another. […] The solidity of the whole results from an architecture in which every point is at the intersection of two networks: one that it simplifies and another which simplifies it.”25 A theatre production is, therefore, an assemblage simplifying other assemblages. 23  Similarly, from a playwriting perspective, David Ball suggests that the best way to analyze a dramatic work’s action is backwards: “a play is like a series of dominoes: one event triggers the next. […] Going forwards allows unpredictable possibility. Going backwards exposes that which is required. The present demands and reveals a specific past.” Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983), 13–16. 24  Latour notes that “if one is capable of explaining effects of causes, it is because a stabilized network is already in place.” “Technology is Society Made Durable,” in Law, A Sociology of Monsters, 130. 25  “successful translation quickly makes us forget its history. […] Behind each entity there hides a set of other entities which it more or less effectively draws together. We can see and know little of them before they are unmasked.” Michel Callon, “The Sociology of an ActorNetwork,” in Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology, ed. Michel Callon, John Law, and Arie Rip (London: Macmillan, 1986), 28–32. ANT sees individuals as assemblages as well. Law argues that “what counts as a person is an effect generated by a network of heterogeneous, interacting, materials. […] people are who they are because they are a patterned network of heterogeneous materials.” “Notes,” 383. Latour, in turn, extends the notion considerably: “ANT is not a theory of the social, any more than it is a theory of the subject, or a theory of God, or a theory of nature.” “On Recalling ANT,” 22.

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This architecture puts the playwright and director in a perspective of ontological equivalence with other actor-networks at lower and higher scales. If they maintain relevance and take up more space here, it is usually because they are among the most powerful translators that contributed to the performed show. For instance, in this respect, Copi, Savary, and their artistic association seen in Chap. 2 could be called “obligatory passage points”26 in the trajectory to Good Bye Mister Freud, although by no means the only actors bearing on the final production.

Structure of the Work Having underscored the potentially infinite extension and depth that networks exhibit, my aim is here to illuminate a broad selection of those actors likely to intervene in relation to theatre productions at several levels of scale, from national states engaged in war or cultural endeavors down to microbes bent on undermining the human body of artists. This typology is foregrounded through case studies that primarily involve the collaborative relationships established by a single Argentine playwright, Copi, with the three stage directors who most directly influenced his theatrical career, in order, Savary, Rodríguez Arias, and Lavelli. A focus on these directors then entails a wider examination of other artists involved in their groups, companies, and productions. Throughout, I also shed light on the co-functioning of human and non-human actors, an aspect of theatrical assemblages that is often the least explored despite its verifiable impact. The description of these actors is the result of a combination of interviews with those artists who responded to my requests for contact and of methodical sifting through a large number of archives. In particular, the Bibliothèque national de France, the Inathèque video repository, the Archives nationales, and the Théâtrothèque Gaston Baty in Paris, together with the Di Tella Institute and the Mariano Moreno National Library in Buenos Aires yielded most of the materials employed in this study. One of the problems I encountered with this group of artists is the creative license they often take in shaping their autobiographical narratives or simply the blurring of details through memory. Hence, I cross-referenced a large amount of printed, audio, and video documents: interviews by the artists 26  Michel  Callon, “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay,” in The Science Studies Reader, ed. Mario Biagioli (New York: Routledge, 1999), 70.

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themselves, different perspectives on the same events by other authors, academic studies, full video recordings of productions when available, video clips, news broadcasts, newspaper reviews, press clippings, evening programs, collections of photographs, and even financial data. As a result, I was able to corroborate numerous details in terms of actors, their motives, and their precise situations, while framing other elements as less objective projections. Although my general aim is a thick description of the extended chain of events and multiplicity of actors engaged in the dramaturgy leading to certain theatre productions, for reasons of space each ANT analysis has to make choices in order to cut the network to a manageable size. Thus, while in Chap. 2 I focus in great detail on two individual artists as assemblages produced by lineage, family, and education, in Chap. 3 my attention shifts mostly to the life of a theatre group, and, as a consequence, I omit much individual biographical material that would become overwhelming if multiplied by six artists. Instead, I delve more deeply into the notion of the city as assemblage, with its specific streets, neighborhoods, and theatre buildings that constitute the extended stage on which these human actors operated. Then, in Chap. 4, I privilege theatres as institutions, so that Lavelli or Arias are viewed less as individual artists or even group leaders and more as spokesmen for the larger actor-networks they represented. Throughout, I seek to expand my analysis to the influence of non-human actors in a sustained effort to perceive and make perceive the continuity of action that necessarily underpins any artistic endeavor. In more detail, Chap. 2, “Copi, Savary, the Grand Magic Circus, and Other Actors: The Actor-Network Dramaturgy of Good Bye Mister Freud,” analyzes the production of Good Bye Mister Freud as a case study to illustrate the weave of human and non-human actors influencing a theatre production, well beyond what is normally included in performance analyses. By tracking the lineage of action through the aesthetic realm and into the real world, it extends the reach of dramaturgy—the collaborative process of theatre-making—from a specific show into the network of genealogical descent, international politics, and historical events. Oscillating between more fluid and more materially tangible notions of the network, I track longer segments of vital lines of becoming and pause at certain nodes to better perceive the makeup of actor-networks such as national and political actors, families, identities, skills, artistic groups, a theatre troupe, money, and even alcoholic beverages, all eventually subsumed into a complex theatre production. Ultimately, I argue that each of those

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actor-­networks left traces of their agency in the production itself, even if those traces could not immediately be appreciated by the spectators at the time of the performance. Overall, I thus lay out what I consider the outer boundaries of ANT applied to theatre performance. Adopting the widest possible view, this chapter explores the far reaches of the network by extending analysis both into the past beyond the artists’ lives and into the future beyond the closing of a show’s run. This approach reveals how actor-networks interact in unpredictable yet momentous ways on a large scale. Being able to appreciate these material connections has the advantage of grounding even the most superficially flashy, postmodernist-style show such as Good Bye Mister Freud into the flow of history: by detailing the lineage of action, I demonstrate how France and Argentina themselves became contributing actors to this Copi-Savary-Grand Magic Circus production. Chapter 3, “A Tale of Two (and Other) Cities: The TSE Group from Buenos Aires to Paris,” follows the theatre group TSE, headed by artist-­ director Alfredo Rodríguez Arias, along the rhizomatic pathways that transported artists, sensibilities, and repertoires between global cities. I concentrate on three pivotal nodes of this theatre company’s life, all interacting with the city network in particular ways. For TSE, the first is the ebullient period of the group’s formation in the 1960s, especially tied to a bohemian downtown neighborhood of Buenos Aires, the so-called manzana loca (crazy block). The other two nodes correspond to productions twenty years apart, based on plays penned by Copi: Eva Perón (1970), the company’s first truly sensational show in Paris, and Les escaliers du Sacré-­ Cœur (The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur, 1990), a queer tragicomedy in verse. These two productions evinced an arc of progressive integration of the Buenos Aires group into the cultural fabric of Paris. In general, this chapter illustrates how intercultural bridges between cities are actually built out of chains of very material translations. It is because of a sequence of minute associations and innumerable events of translation over a long period of time that these artists found themselves rooted in the French capital. During the second half of the 1980s, Lavelli, Arias, and Savary were appointed to prestigious positions at the head of French publicly funded theatres. Chapter 4, “The Argentine Network in Paris: Lavelli, Copi, the TSE Group, and Other Stealthy Actors at the Top of French Decentralization,” mainly focuses on Lavelli as both stage director and artistic director of the Théâtre de la Colline, a role that entailed institutional collaborations with Arias and the TSE group. Given the richness of

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material that Lavelli provides in the area of institutional action, in this chapter I take a more intense interest in the public networks that bolstered theatrical activity, especially the state-backed process of decentralization that gave birth to non-profit theatre in post-WWII France. It was thanks to this larger network that Lavelli was able to present Copi’s metatheatrical The Night of Madame Lucienne (1985), first at the Avignon Festival and then at the Théâtre de la Commune at Aubervilliers. The same network then provided the chance for Copi’s Une visite inopportune (Grand Finale, 1987) to become the playwright’s greatest posthumous success. Finally, it was only under the aegis of a national theatre that Lavelli and Arias could gather enough funding for Arias to finally stage Copi’s Cachafaz (1977) at La Colline in 1993. For these three productions, I also underscore the action of the AIDS virus and Alzheimer’s disease, non-human agents that, although invisible to the eye, nevertheless exerted a very tangible impact. Most importantly, this chapter shows the interaction of Lavelli and Arias/ TSE on two occasions that evidenced with particular clarity the existence of an Argentine theatrical network in Paris. First, for The Night of Madame Lucienne Lavelli was hosted at Aubervilliers and cast one of the historic TSE members. The second collaboration returned the hospitality, with Arias directing a troupe at Lavelli’s artistic home. It is owing to these Argentine directors’ focus on contemporary playwriting that Copi was able to shift from more marginal venues to the Théâtre de la Colline, a national theatre. Chapter 5, “Conclusions: Developing an Actor-Network Dramaturgical Vision,” recapitulates the methodological gains acquired by mapping the transatlantic peregrinations of these Argentines of Paris so that this approach can be deployed and mobilized in the field of Performance Studies at large. This chapter highlights certain threads of the Argentines of Paris actor-network, including collaborative pairs between playwright Copi and each of three stage directors but also larger theatre groups, institutions, and several non-human actors operating between Buenos Aires and the French capital. Overall, the book has laid out a broad selection of human and non-human actors that might appear in a theatrical analysis based on the notion of an actor-network dramaturgy. Methodologically, this mode of analysis’s particularity lies in starting from a material node on the network—the realized staging—and then proceeding to research the actors directly connected to the production itself. The chapter suggests actions for researchers to develop an actor-network dramaturgical vision, namely, to expand their inquiry beyond the artistic by including longer

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genealogies of humans, things, and events; to listen to more types of actors, human and non-human, at all levels of scale; to embrace nomadic identities and their material connections with specific spaces and locations; to perceive the networks and reveal their multiple connections; and finally to appreciate both friendly and adversarial actors, successes and failures, as sources of potentially exciting ANT stories. This volume thus greatly expands the information available in English on these Argentine artists. Although Savary and Lavelli do appear in a few collections of interviews or general histories of the French or Argentine theatre, most of the productions I present have never been researched in comparable depth. Even less is available for Copi, Arias, or other artists: in fact, I offer here the first scholarly history of the beginnings of the TSE group in any language. I also shed significant light on the Argentine theatre network in Paris. Whereas the French context saw the famous Cartel des Quatre as an official network established in 1927 by stage directors Louis Jouvet, Charles Dullin, Gaston Baty, and Georges Pitoëff, the associations among the Argentine artists I researched are often less conspicuous and have been reactivated only thanks to extensive on-site archival research and interviews. A synoptic table in the appendix at the end helps the reader situate the interwoven chronologies of the artists’ lives within the broader historical contexts of Argentina and France. Finally, and most importantly, as I explained earlier, since the associations among artists are just a small portion of a vast process that involves human and non-human actors, I seek to expand the horizons of theatre and performance history through a posthuman vision by revealing the often-surprising list of actors that are likely to impact staged productions but are frequently overlooked from a purely anthropocentric perspective. It is to this more comprehensive actor-network dramaturgy that I now turn.

Bibliography Ball, David. Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983. Balme, Christopher B. “The Bandmann Circuit: Theatrical Networks in the First Age of Globalization.” Theatre Research International 40, no. 1 (2015) 19–36. Cabranes-Grant, Leo. From Scenarios to Networks: Performing the Intercultural in Colonial Mexico. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2016. Callon, Michel. “Actor-Network Theory—The Market Test.” In Actor Network Theory and After, edited by John Law and John Hassard, 181–95. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2005.

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———. “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay.” In The Science Studies Reader, edited by Mario Biagioli, 67–83. New York: Routledge, 1999. ———. “Techno-Economic Networks and Irreversibility.” In A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, edited by John Law, 132–61. London: Routledge, 1991. ———. “The Sociology of an Actor-Network.” In Mapping the Dynamics of Science and Technology, edited by Michel Callon, John Law, and Arie Rip, 19–34. London: Macmillan, 1986. Callon, Michel, and Bruno Latour. “Unscrewing the Big Leviathan: How Actors Macro-structure Reality and How Sociologists Help Them to Do So.” In Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro and Macro-Sociologies, edited by K.  Knorr-Cetina and Aaron Victor Cicourel, 277–303. Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Derrida, Jacques. The Truth in Painting. Translated by Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987. Dreyfus, Hubert, and Paul Rabinaw. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. With an afterword by Michel Foucault. Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1983. Eckersall, Peter, Paul Monaghan, and Melanie Beddie. “Dramaturgy as Ecology: A Report from the Dramaturgies Project.” New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice, edited by Katalin Trencsényi and Bernadette Cochrane, 18–35. New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014. Fuentes, Marcela A. Performance Constellations: Networks of Protest and Activism in Latin America. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2019. Greimas, Algirdas Julien. Structural Semantics: An Attempt at a Method. Translated by Daniele McDowell, Ronald Schleifer, and Alan Velie. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. Harvie, Jen, and Andy Lavender, eds. Making Contemporary Theatre: International Rehearsal Processes. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2010. Ingold, Tim. Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. New York: Routledge, 2011. ———. Lines: A Brief History. New York: Routledge, 2007. Jackson, Shannon. Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics. New York: Routledge, 2011. Latour Bruno. “On Recalling ANT.” In Actor Network Theory and After, edited by John Law and John Hassard, 15–25. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2005a (1999). ———. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005b.

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———. “Technology is Society Made Durable.” In A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, edited by John Law, 103–31. London: Routledge, 1991. Law, John. “Actor Network Theory and Material Semiotics.” In The New Blackwell Companion to Social Theory, edited by Brian S. Turner, 141–58. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2009. ———. After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. New York: Routledge, 2004. ———, ed. A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. London: Routledge, 1991. ———. “Notes on the Theory of the Actor-Network: Ordering, Strategy and Heterogeneity.” Systems Practice 5 (1992): 379–93. Letzler Cole, Susan. Directors in Rehearsal: A Hidden World. New  York: Routledge, 1992. McAuley, Gay. Not Magic but Work: An Ethnographic Account of a Rehearsal Process. New York: Manchester University Press, 2012. Mol, Annemarie, and John Law. “Regions, Networks and Fluids: Anaemia and Social Topology.” Social Studies of Science 24 (1994): 641–71. Moten, Fred. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Müller, Martin, and Carolin Schurr. “Assemblage Thinking and Actor-Network Theory: Conjunctions, Disjunctions, Cross-Fertilisations.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 41 (2016): 217–29. Pelosi, Hebe Carmen. Argentinos en Francia, franceses en Argentina: una biografía colectiva. Buenos Aires: Ciudad Argentina, 1999. Rolland, Denis. L’Amérique latine et la France: acteurs et réseaux d’une relation culturelle. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011. Schweitzer, Marlis. Transatlantic Broadway: The Infrastructural Politics of Global Performance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Spöhrer, Markus, and Beate Ochsner. Applying the Actor-Network Theory in Media Studies. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, Disseminator on Knowledge, 2017. Stalpaert, Christel, Kristof van Baarle, and Laura Karreman, eds. Performance and Posthumanism: Staging Prototypes of Composite Bodies. New  York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. Ubersfeld, Anne. Reading Theatre. Translated by Frank Collins. Edited and with a foreword by Paul Perron and Patrick Debbeche. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Weiss, Jason. The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Writers in Paris. New York: Routledge, 2003. Worrall, David. Celebrity, Performance, Reception: British Georgian Theatre as Social Assemblage. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

CHAPTER 2

Copi, Savary, the Grand Magic Circus, and Other Actors: The Actor-Network Dramaturgy of Good Bye Mister Freud

Two hundred costumes by Legavre-Stoppani, twenty-five sets by Michel Lebois and Patrick Chauveau, […] the Grand Magic Circus and its cheeky humor, its embracing smiles, its dynamic mockery and its anti-fairy tales install themselves at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin. —Alain Leblanc (“Le Grand Magic Circus, Porte Saint-Martin: Freud ‘Superflic’…,” Le Quotidien de Paris, October 31, 1974. Unless otherwise noted, all translations in this volume are my own)

Signed by playwright Copi and director Jérôme Savary and described as “the current ‘folly’ of the Magic Circus,”1 the “opéra-tango” Good Bye Mister Freud debuted at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris on October 29, 1974, in the context of the Festival d’Automne. Apart from the lavish variety of sets and costumes highlighted in Le Quotidien de Paris, the number of specially cast artists included, on top of lead performer Micheline Presle, a white horse, a tango singer, an opera singer, a tightrope walker, a complete rock orchestra, and a contemporary music ensemble.2 The sheer size of the production was also on display in the group photo that appeared in the evening’s program, parading forty-two 1 2

 J. V., “Le Grand Magic Circus,” La Croix, December 8, 1974.  Jérôme Savary, La vie privée d’un magicien ordinaire (Paris: Ramsay, 1985), 271–72.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Boselli, Actor-Network Dramaturgies, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32523-6_2

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people organized in a pyramidal formation on the proscenium stage. And yet, to the spectators of the show, the program revealed relatively little beyond the names of the producers, authors, main performers, creative team, and crew members. The director’s notes hinted at the troupe’s improvisational collective creation practices in general but offered very few specifics on the production at hand. In fact, at that point, Good Bye Mister Freud functioned as a “black box” that concealed the stabilizing forces holding the show together along with the intricate sequences of actions that had contributed to its materialization. Only in this compact version could it be offered as a packaged product for easy consumption by the general public. But how had the production itself come together? Through which convoluted pathways had the playwright and the director, both born in Argentina, converged to create a show together in France? What other human and non-human actors, in the ANT sense of entities endowed with agency, had led or contributed to the performance eventually presented to the public? How might the 1962 military coup against Argentine President Arturo Frondizi, for instance, be perceived as an essential multi-actor event leading to the emergence of Copi and Savary’s artistic collaboration? And more generally, how do playwrights, directors, and productions themselves operate as actor-networks? What are the limits, if any, of an actor-network investigation applied to theatre?

Of Star Shapes and Lines: For an Actor-Network Dramaturgy of Good Bye Mister Freud This chapter employs Good Bye Mister Freud as a case study to illustrate in detail the complex weave of human and non-human actors influencing a theatre production, well beyond what is normally included in performance analyses. By tracking the lineage of action through the aesthetic realm and into the real, it extends the reach of dramaturgy, the collaborative process of theatre-making, from the local of a specific show into the global of genealogical descent, international politics, and historical events. Since the ANT field remains open to terminological expansion, it seems natural to view the process of networked translations, performed by human and non-human actors and eventually leading to a theatrical

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production, as another way of describing the dramaturgical process.3 Along these lines, director Eugenio Barba defined dramaturgy etymologically as “drama-ergon, the work of the actions. Or rather: the way the actor’s actions enter into work. […] [N]ot a procedure belonging only to literature, but a technical operation which [is] inherent in the weaving and growth of a performance and its different components.”4 Some professional dramaturgs even seem to echo specific ANT terminology. Marianne van Kerkhoven, for instance, thought that her account of the development of Kris Verdonck’s performance End “should be shaped like a star, or a network,” as a way to trace the contributions of several artists to the creative process.5 A star-shaped account like this remains the fundamental image to understand an actor-network because it offers the analyst a way to pragmatically “cut the network,” otherwise rhizomatically and infinitely extending in all directions.6 However, this chapter’s aim is slightly different, at the same time broader and more limited. Instead of looking at all the associative rays that converge into a production’s actor-network, it follows only a few of them, but for a longer period of time, thus taking a genealogical view that extends the concept of dramaturgy into the past beyond the lives of the artists themselves. In what follows, I relate the actor-network dramaturgy of Good Bye Mister Freud as an empirical story about a series of connected actions performed 3  Inspired by an eminently descriptive approach, ANT accounts depend to a high degree on their specific objects of study. Bruno Latour contends that “from the very beginning, ANT has been sliding in a sort of race to overcome its limits and to drop from the list of its methodological terms any which would make it impossible for new actors […] to define the world in their own terms, using their own dimensions and touchstones.” “On Recalling ANT,” in Actor Network Theory and After, ed. John Law and John Hassard (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2005), 20. For a term related to a performing arts sensibility, Charis Cussins used the word “choreography” in “Ontological Choreography: Agency for Women Patients in an Infertility Clinic,” Social Studies of Science 26, no. 3 (August 1996): 575–610. 4  Eugenio Barba, On Directing and Dramaturgy: Burning the House (New York: Routledge, 2010), 8 (italics added). 5  Marianne van Kerkhoven and Anoek Nuyens, Listen to the Bloody Machine (Utrecht, Netherlands: Utrecht School of the Arts, 2012), 14. See also David Williams’s description of dramaturgy as “the rhythmed assemblage of settings, people, texts and things,” “Geographies of Requiredness: Notes on the Dramaturg in Collaborative Devising,” Contemporary Theatre Review 20, no. 2 (2010): 197. 6  I borrow the term from Marilyn Strathern, “Cutting the Network,” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2, no. 3 (Sept. 1996): 517–35.

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along the rhizomatic lines leading to the emergence of the show. Oscillating between more fluid and more materially tangible notions of the network, I track longer sections of vital lines of becoming and pause at certain nodes to better perceive the makeup of concrete star-shaped actor-networks, including national and political actors, families, identities, skills, artistic groups, a theatre troupe, money, and even alcoholic beverages, all eventually subsumed into a complex theatre production. Looking backwards, without activating the connections between every single one of these actors, the production itself would not have been possible or, at least, not the same. Ultimately, I argue that each of those actor-networks left traces of their agency in the production, even if those traces could not immediately be appreciated by the spectators at the time of the performance. Although space and available data do not permit a comprehensive investigation of all the accumulated agencies, I propose here an extended, genealogical analysis of three main actor-networks by tracking Copi, Savary, and the Grand Magic Circus along their lines of becoming, before turning to their collaborative artistic endeavor, Good Bye Mister Freud. On the trajectories preceding the production, it seems essential to investigate at least the following: the agencies through which Copi and Savary became artists and then specifically theatre practitioners; the ways in which they materially sustained themselves; the circumstances that led to their becoming “Argentines of Paris” and then to their meeting and friendship; their passage through other artistic networks; and, finally, the evolution of Savary’s theatre troupe to the point where it could simultaneously attract a coproduction with the Festival d’Automne in Paris and cast a well-­known film star such as Micheline Presle. I start with Copi’s family genealogy.

Copi’s Line I wonder what would have been of my life down there if, at age twenty-two, while I was on vacation in Paris, chance hadn’t prompted my father, pursued by I don’t know what regime any more, to ask for asylum to the Embassy of Uruguay in Argentina. He found a good pretext to cut my funds. […] I began selling sketches on the Pont des Arts.—Copi7

Born on November 22, 1939  in Buenos Aires, Raúl Natalio Roque Damonte Botana, otherwise known as Copi, established himself in Paris 7  Preface to the unfinished novel Río de la Plata, in Copi, ed. Jorge Damonte (Paris: Christian Bourgois Éditeur, 1990), 84.

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during the summer of 1962. His drawing skills had been developed out of personal inclination but also thanks to the encouragement and economic support of his family.8 Arguably, the two most influential family members for Copi’s trajectory were his father, Raúl Damonte Taborda (1909–1982), and his maternal grandmother, Salvadora Medina Onrubia (1894–1972). While the former was also ultimately responsible for Copi’s definitive move to Paris, due to the outcome of his political associations in Argentina, the latter had the strongest impact on Copi’s theatrical vocation and early debut in Buenos Aires.9 The short quote above and the questions it poses lie at the heart of the following actor-network story; for, what Copi calls “chance” is really the emergence of events that implicated a large number of actors, who eventually forced him to earn his living for the first time. Raúl Damonte Taborda For us to understand Damonte Taborda’s quandary in 1962, we first need to briefly review the arc of his professional career and the constellation of agencies that influenced it. As a politician, diplomat, journalist, writer, and visual artist, Damonte Taborda reflected several traits of the typical elite intellectuals who would gravitate towards Paris. Copi portrayed him as follows: “My father was what one calls an Argentine of Paris, that is, a completely assimilated person: he spoke French fluently and was a visual artist.”10 Born in Paraná on June 24, 1909, to the modest barber Roque Francisco Damonte and Claudina Taborda, Damonte Taborda soon 8  Callon suggests that “embodied skills may also be treated as networks of entities. […] No description of skills is possible unless the networks of humans, texts and machines within which they are expressed and put to work are reconstituted.” “Techno-Economic Networks and Irreversibility,” in A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, ed. John Law (London: Routledge, 1991), 137–38. 9  Isabelle Barberis, Les mondes de Copi (Paris: Daniel Cohen, 2014), 33. 10  Raquel Linenberg, “Copi: Je suis un auteur argentin même si j’écris en français,” Quinzaine littéraire 501 (January 16, 1988): [n.p.]. Copi also recounts that his father “signed his canvases Taborda (his mother’s name) and was relatively successful. He had two exhibits there and one of his portraits was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art of Paris.” Damonte, Copi, 86. Isabelle Barberis informs us that some of his paintings are owned today by the Pompidou Museum in Paris. “Copi: Le texte et la scène: Mimesis parodique, mise en scène de soi, et subversion identitaire dans les années parisiennes (1962–1987),” PhD diss. (Université de Paris X—Nanterre, 2007), 1:22. For detailed biographical information on Damonte Taborda, see María Jimena Irisarri, “La Argentina como centro de actividades del nacionalsocialismo,” PhD diss. (Bahía Blanca: Universidad Nacional del Sur, 2014), 35–54.

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moved with his family to Buenos Aires.11 From his early years as a student, he demonstrated an aptitude for politics and, before his eighteenth birthday, had joined the Radical Civic Union (Unión Cívica Radical, UCR). That political party gained traction during the 1910s and 1920s but was ousted after General José Félix Uriburu’s coup on September 6, 1930, which marked the beginning of a conservative restoration and the so-­ called Infamous Decade.12 With UCR members forced to exile, Damonte Taborda traveled to Paris, where he pleaded with the Human Rights League for the liberation of former President Hipólito Yrigoyen. A brief return to Argentina in 1933 was interrupted when Damonte Taborda was arrested for inciting rebellion through the press. Freed by obtaining diplomatic asylum through the Uruguayan embassy, he was back in Buenos Aires in 1935, when he began to write for Crítica, a newspaper established in 1913 by Uruguayan émigré Natalio Botana (1888–1941), his future father-in-law. Compared to the more traditional and sober style of other Argentine national newspapers like La Prensa or La Nación, over time Crítica had embraced commercial, high-impact journalistic practices, including vociferous editorials, a degree of sensationalism, and graphic material, to gradually become the most widely read Latin American evening newspaper among urban popular classes, a voice in favor of egalitarian democracy and a political power to be reckoned with.13 Indeed, while Damonte Taborda 11  Álvaro Abos, El Tábano. Vida, pasión y muerte de Natalio Botana, el creador de Crítica (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 2001), 278. Damonte Taborda had an illustrious forbear in his great grandfather, León Sola (1787–1841), who had served five terms as governor of the Entre Ríos province of Argentina. 12  David Rock, Argentina 1516–1987: From Spanish Colonization to Alfonsín (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 214. For the history of Argentina during the period covered by this chapter, see also Jill Hedges, Argentina: A Modern History (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2011), Jonathan C. Brown, A Brief History of Argentina, 2nd ed. (New York: Facts on File, 2010), and Luis Alberto Romero, A History of Argentina in the Twentieth Century, trans. James P.  Brennan (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002). 13  The vicissitudes and intrigues of Crítica, among other Argentine newspapers, are narrated by James Cane, who refers to Botana as “the most spectacular and controversial example of a new social type: the journalistic entrepreneur, whose conspicuous wealth and enormous social influence flowed not from landed interests or political patronage, but from the practice of journalism itself.” The Fourth Enemy: Journalism and Power in the Making of Peronist Argentina (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 42. Specifically on the early years of Crítica, see Sylvia Saítta, Regueros de tinta: el diario Crítica en la década de 1920 (Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno, 2013).

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rapidly climbed the ranks to become its deputy editor, in 1938 his election as UCR national deputy for the City of Buenos Aires was boldly supported by Botana’s newspaper, with the understanding that the newly elected politician would protect the owner’s interests.14 In 1939, Damonte Taborda married Georgina Nicolasa Botana (1919–2015), Botana’s youngest child, and Natalio gifted the new family a thousand pesos along with an apartment. To complete Damonte Taborda’s ascent, when Natalio died in an auto accident in 1941, Copi’s father became the newspaper’s director and later its owner. At the same time, he was making a name for himself in publicly denouncing Nazi expansionism and propaganda, including the Nazification of German schools in Argentina.15 These antiNazi sentiments intensified his alignment with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s project of a continental union as a bastion against European fascisms, and earned him an invitation to visit the US Congress (October 20–November 8, 1941).16 Reelected deputy in 1942, Damonte Taborda was, however, forced to leave his post in 1943 (and briefly again take refuge in the Uruguayan Embassy) when the June 4 military coup put an end to Ramón Castillo’s fraudulent presidency and, with it, to the Infamous Decade.17 It is at this point that the figure of Juan Domingo Perón surfaced, first as member of the United Officers Group who executed the coup, next as head of the Department of Labor, and then as vice president and secretary of war.18 Here started Damonte Taborda’s relationship with Perón, a political association that would have serious consequences for his entire family. The initial contact occurred when, starting in 1943, Perón approached UCR members to explore the possibility of running as their candidate in the 14  Helvio Ildefonso Botana, Memorias: tras los dientes del perro (Buenos Aires: A.  Peña Lillo, 1977), 133. 15  See, for example, the New York Times article “Deputy Again Urges Break by Argentina; Damonte Taborda Says Country Is Center of Nazi Agents,” February 13, 1942. 16  If we look at Damonte Taborda’s actions as an actor-network’s progressive growth, this period appears as the moment of his maximum ability to interest, enroll, and represent other actors as their spokesman. Built on the Botanas’ economic fortunes and Crítica’s cultural and political sway that energized his political career, his success enabled him to connect internationally with the strongest continental American power, an actor-network intent on cutting off other American countries from detrimental influences from Europe. 17  Rock, Argentina, 247. Castillo’s election was predicated on massive electoral fraud perpetrated in 1938. 18  For the rise, apogee, and fall of Perón, see Rock, Argentina, 249–319 and Hedges, Argentina, 81–169.

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next election. Over time, the relationship between the two men deteriorated from a somewhat forced alignment to a sudden break. In brief, Damonte Taborda’s ownership and control of Crítica depended on a previous sizable official loan that required the government’s continued support, whatever its colors. For these reasons, within a year of the coup, the newspaper turned into an advocate for the military government, even praising “the unmistakably fascistic aesthetics of the massive July 9, 1944 military parade.”19 This complete sellout of Crítica’s journalistic power came to an end when Damonte Taborda foresaw Perón’s downfall as the most probable consequence of the defeat of similar European regimes. Between September 15 and 17, 1945, Crítica published a series of editorials that culminated in the definition of Perón as “an insignificant, small-­ time local chief.”20 While Crítica became enmeshed in the highly volatile political situation, which entailed arrests, repeated violent attacks on the newspaper’s building and properties, and deaths of journalists at the hands of Peronist demonstrators, Perón’s fate wavered between his arrest by the junta on October 12 and his liberation by popular pressure on October 17. Copi, who was nearly six at the time, vividly recalls how his house had been raided a few days earlier, and how his mother, with Copi’s brother Juan Carlos just born and seventeen women in the house, had given him a piece of paper to throw down to the porter from a small balcony so he would alert his father to flee before he stepped into a trap. Fearing death, the family fled to Uruguay. Damonte Taborda caught up with them a few days later, after crossing the River Plate hidden at the bottom of a smugglers’ boat and repeatedly changing passport and appearance with the help of a fake moustache. After the dramatic events in Argentina, this sudden move to Uruguay kicked off for Copi a period of “nearly eternal vacation,”21 when he had plenty of time to spend on the beach and dedicate himself to an artistic education nurtured by his family network. His parents had bought a two-­ floor waterfront house in Montevideo that included a painting and sculpture workshop and a ceramic oven. A large library was filled with European and North American books (but, apparently, not a single Argentine novel) that Damonte Taborda had managed to have shipped from Buenos Aires.  Cane, The Fourth Enemy, 151.  Ibid., 165. 21  José Tcherkaski, Habla Copi: Homosexualidad y creación (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1998), 114. 19 20

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While his father painted and his mother sculpted argyle mirror frames, Copi was encouraged to explore artistic occupations to complement the basic education offered by the Uruguayan housemaids. Details of those years are not easy to trace, partly because of insufficient documentation and partly due to Copi’s playful tendency to mix real experience with invention when talking about his biography. What seems probable is that he launched himself into drawing and dramatic writing at about the same time.22 Interestingly, he began writing because Damonte Taborda, not particularly fond of Copi’s humorous vignettes, tied his son’s pocket money to literary production: “a well-crafted sonnet when I was ten,” he reminisced, “won me a new bicycle, before my brother Jorge found out that I’d plagiarized two verses by García Lorca.”23 This anecdote concretely illustrates how Copi’s skills were built as a result of external agencies: by offering tangible rewards, Damonte Taborda was translating/transforming Copi’s creative energies so they could grow and expand into another territory. It was in this way that Copi began writing his first plays, now lost. Some were inspired by Eugene O’Neill, a favorite of his father’s, and others by García Lorca. The latter were dedicated to Spanish actress Margarita Xirgu—Lorca’s close friend, also exiled in Montevideo—whom Copi met at around eight years of age.24 Uruguayan actress China Zorrilla also narrates that Copi watched her evening shows from the backstage, ready to comment on her effectiveness or not in specific scenes.25 But Copi did not only write and watch, he also already performed. Copi’s brother, Jorge Damonte, recalls that he, their brother Juan Carlos, their dogs, and a parrot were Copi’s regular audience: “he already was the Theatre.”26 This relatively carefree period came to an end in 1952 when Perón’s re-election heightened Damonte Taborda’s sense that he and his family 22  The overlap of the arts was a given in Copi’s family: “I don’t limit myself to a single artistic activity because I wasn’t educated in that way, because I belonged to a semi-artistic family: my father was a producer, sculptor, painter, poet, and lawmaker. I never thought of a single career.” Ibid., 61. 23  Damonte, Copi, 86. 24  Before his assassination in 1936, Lorca had been an intimate friend of the Botanas and a guest at their villa. 25  Dossier Copi, Le Nouvel Obs, 60, quoted in Barberis, Copi, 1:45–46. 26  Damonte, Copi, 7. Copi even told his brother Jorge that his very first audience, when he was still in Argentina, had been two bear cubs born at the same time as him and later sent to a zoo once they began growing faster than the child.

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had little hope of returning to Argentina any time soon. He had, in the meantime, cut his most significant material ties with Buenos Aires by returning ownership of Crítica to Copi’s maternal grandmother, Medina Onrubia, and her sons Helvio and Jaime Botana (1946).27 Nominated ambassador in Reims by Uruguayan President Luis Battle Berres, Damonte Taborda decided to move to Paris, in the Montparnasse neighborhood, and Copi began learning the language by attending a French collège, the cours Chauvot.28 He also complemented his education by visiting museums and going to the theatre while continuing to write plays under the simultaneous influence of such diverse authors as Jean Anouilh, Tennessee Williams, Oscar Wilde, and Anton Chekhov.29 But in 1955 Damonte Taborda returned to Argentina once again.30 Copi, at fifteen, found himself wrested away from the city he had started to love, suddenly carrying guns with his father on the Uruguay River in support of the Revolución Libertadora, the popular uprising that led to the toppling of Perón on September 16, 1955. Once back in Buenos Aires, Copi’s parents separated. Damonte Taborda published books against Perón and his legacy and founded a new radical newspaper, Resistencia Popular.31 With his mother turned from atheist to militant Christian and his younger brothers sent to a Jesuit school, Copi was left free to roam the city and dedicate himself to “sentimental adventure and social voyeurism.”32

27  The newspaper, however, burdened by financial problems and hefty fines, was forced to gradually yield to Peronist investors—among them was Eva Perón, in 1947—until the Botanas had to sell their shares and were finally physically expelled by the police on May 5, 1951. Botana, Memorias, 210. 28  Damonte, Copi, 84. There he attended the fifth grade, corresponding in the French system to twelve- to thirteen-year-old students. 29  Copi, “Le Théâtre exaltant,” in Le frigo: suivi d’un entretien avec Michel Cressole (Paris: Persona, 1983), 53. 30  As usual, causes and motives are difficult to disentangle: Copi emphasized the emotional aspect (Damonte, Copi, 86), while Ilse Logie suggests that the family was “economically ruined.” “Geografías ficcionales: El Uruguay de Copi,” Cuadernos LIRICO, 8 (2013): 4, accessed January 28, 2023, https://doi.org/10.4000/lirico.985. Yet, the political shift in Argentina still seems to me the strongest attractor for Damonte Taborda. 31  Quite prolific, in the same year Damonte Taborda published ¿A dónde va Perón? De Berlín a Wall Street (Montevideo: Ediciones de la Resistencia Revolucionaria Argentina, 1955) and Ayer fué San Perón: 12 años de humillación argentina (Buenos Aires: Gure, 1955). 32  Damonte, Copi, 87.

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Salvadora Medina Onrubia Of course, Copi was not only influenced by his father. In his critique of the traditional representation of genealogical trees, Ingold suggests that kinship and descent lines should not be conceived simplistically as direct connections and translations from parents to children, “lines of transmission, down which are supposed to pass not the impulse of life but information, genetic or cultural, for living it.”33 Instead, he suggests to look at them as flows, bundles of lines that resemble more what philosopher Henri Bergson called “a thoroughfare.”34 What happens is that, if we call B the direct parent of C, “it is from the grandparental generation A that C learns the stories that it, in turn, will carry forward in life, above all through its offspring D. […] The result is a braid of lines that continually extends as lives proceed.”35 Through a similar mechanism, the most important theatrical influence on Copi within his family came from his maternal grandmother. Helvio Botana, Medina Onrubia’s son and Copi’s uncle, described her at the moment of her association with his father: At the beginning of 1915, already with Crítica in full swing, N.[atalio] B. [otana] met Salvadora. She was introduced to him by Doctor Juan Carulla and Claudio Martínez Paiva, both anarchists at the time. Salvadora at twenty-two was very beautiful, very fair-skinned and red-haired. She was an active anarchist. She had an unpublished play, Almafuerte, that she wanted to get to Crítica because the newspaper promoted and even funded theatrical endeavors. Natalio fell in love with her, with her unpublished poems and the play.36

Medina Onrubia’s anarchist and feminist works—her most famous was probably Las descentradas (Women Off-Kilter, 1929)—deconstructed the heteronormative representation of women by introducing individuals who dared defy conventions, including some lesbian characters. But far from being just a liberated woman and artist, Salvadora was a complex and conflicted figure due to an episode that had marked her for life. When she had  Tim Ingold, Lines: A Brief History (New York: Routledge, 2007), 115.  “the living being is above all a thoroughfare, and […] the essence of life is in the movement by which life is transmitted.” Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (New York: The Modern Library, 1944), 142. For Bergson, while “life in general” tends to follow a straight line, its particular manifestations “want to mark time,” and thus, while “[e]volution in general would fain go on in a straight line; each special evolution is a kind of circle.” Ibid., 141. 35  Ingold, Lines, 117. 36  Botana, Memorias, 26. 33 34

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married Natalio, she already had a son, Carlos Natalio, nicknamed Pitón, whom Botana had adopted and loved as his own. However—according to Helvio—on January 8 or 9, 1928, Salvadora, apparently envious of Pitón’s warm affection for Natalio, told her son the truth about his birth. Evidently shocked by the revelation, Pitón shot himself on January 17 in front of his step-brothers.37 The consequences of this act ricocheted in many directions: Salvadora became addicted to morphine, until she was able to substitute it with ether, a less dangerous drug she continued to use until her death, apparently without harmful consequences.38 The reason for mentioning Medina Onrubia’s story of addiction is that her ongoing familiarity with drugs may shed some light on why she introduced her grandchild to marijuana as early as when he was twelve.39 And Copi describes a lighter (possibly ether-induced) side of Salvadora, who very much enjoyed his first dramatic experiments: “My grandmother […] laughed madly when I read my plays to her. She saw in her grandchild a mischievousness like her own. I was sixteen when she came to see my first staged play, with the best Argentine actors. One of the old actresses had been her lover.”40 37  Ibid., 36. Pitón’s real father was lawyer Enrique Pérez Colman Firpo. Helvio Botana’s narrative was challenged by Medina Onrubia, who blamed Helvio for unwittingly initiating a violent game with his step-brother that would turn deadly. See Emma Barrandeguy, Salvadora (Buenos Aires: Vinciguerra, 1997), 49. Crítica described the facts as an accident. See Alberto Piñeyro, Natalio Botana y Salvadora Medina Onrubia: Dos voces para Crítica (Montevideo, Uruguay: Rumbo, [2014]), 77. https://anaforas.fic.edu.uy/jspui/handle/123456789/42844, accessed January 28, 2023. 38  Botana, Memorias, 45. 39  This detail is mentioned by director Jorge Lavelli. Alejandro Cruz, “Jorge Lavelli: ‘El teatro lírico tiene un lado enfermo,’” La Nación, July 6, 2014. It was a habit Copi would maintain throughout his life. 40  “Le Théâtre exaltant,” 53–54. The play developed tropes that would recur in Copi’s oeuvre: paradoxical situations, Artaudian cruelty, and marginal characters with a fluid sexuality and identity. Copi describes the plot as follows: “It was titled An Angel for Madame Lisca. ‘Madame Lisca,’ i.e., the idea of a Central European woman and an odalisque. A young provincial homosexual arrived at the family pension she kept in Buenos Aires. There was an elderly gay violinist who pursued her, disgusted her, and, at the same time, troubled her. Madame Lisca’s daughter was in love with him, who was hitting on the mother, an ideal woman from central Europe. In addition, there were conversations among women about their children.” Ibid., 54. The original notebooks now archived at the Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine in Caen, France indicate that the play was actually titled Lamento por el ángel (Lament for the Angel) and staged during the 1957–1958 season at the Teatro Sarmiento in Buenos Aires. See Barberis, Le mondes, 35. Thus, even if the show’s dates occurred before Copi’s birthday in November 1957, he would have been at least seventeen when he directed it. Among the performers was film and theatre star Gloria Ferrandiz. As Copi states, family connections also facilitated casting.

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Apart from influencing Copi’s dramatic style and, potentially, his way of inducing creative states with external substances, it was Medina Onrubia who initially came up with her grandson’s nickname. He soon adopted it for his comic strips, published for the first time in his father’s Resistencia Popular and in the humor magazine Tía Vicenta. Salvadora gave everyone in her family a nickname, apparently to conceal their real names and avoid hexes,41 and the one for her grandchild originated, according to his brother Jorge, from a rebel tuft of hair on his head (copo, meaning “flake” in Spanish). Over time, though, it was attributed to several other reasons, including Copi’s slender physique, ruffled look, or pale complexion.42 In truth, the nickname functioned as an active assemblage that Copi was fond of adding to as he pleased. Copi biographer Isabelle Barberis, for instance, mentions Copito de nieve (Snowflake), an albino African gorilla held at the Barcelona zoo since 1962, to suggest that Copi, who knew the city well, may have been inspired to play up the homonymy with the exiled fleecy animal, who had arrived in the same year as Copi’s move to Europe.43 The press, in turn, generated a false etymology as “little chicken,” with reference to the artist’s self-portrayal in his comic strips, and often punned with verbs and nouns related to copying, such as in “Copi conforme,” which sounds like “certified copy.”44 And then Copi simply invented when, in an interview for an Italian magazine, he explained his name as deriving from the word “copioso” (copious), due to his gusto for speaking a lot.45 Queer studies scholar Matthew Edwards characterizes the use of this “playful name-game” as a choice that “disrupts any possible legacy established through the maternal and paternal last names […] as it favors anecdotal narratives as the basis for social integration and representation”; he also warns the reader that every identity descriptor assigned to Copi must similarly be understood as intertwining layers of family history with creative

41  Thus, Copi’s uncle Helvio Ildefonso was “Poroto,” Jaime Alberto was “Tito,” Carlos Natalio was “Pitón,” and Copi’s mother was “la China,” a nickname adopted since her birth because Salvadora thought she had Chinese features. Botana, Memorias, 13–14. 42  Jason Weiss, The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Writers in Paris (New York: Routledge, 2003): 108. 43  Barberis, Copi, 2:13. 44  See an example in René Solis, “Copi conforme,” Libération, July 11, 2006. 45  Interview with Jerry Bauer, Playmen, April 4, 1979, quoted in Stefano Casi, Il teatro inopportuno di Copi (Corazzano, PI, Italy: Titivillus, 2008), 191.

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additions.46 In ANT terms, we can, therefore, view the nickname as blackboxing Copi’s family history, but also actively attracting creative associations as it follows its own line of becoming. The “Argentine of Paris” Assemblage Nowhere is the composite nature of assemblages more evident than in the definition of “Argentine of Paris,” which, even as it implies a sort of hyphenated identity, ultimately masks the extreme diversity of components it subsumes. Speaking of national identities, Copi states: I’ve always been an Argentine of Paris. What I mean is that I speak like the French, dress like them, and I probably have the same point of view on freeways or the price of fish. However, after all, I’m not a Frenchman, and I belong to a category of foreigners whom the French consider as such for two full generations. I’m not French, right? But I am an Argentine of Paris.47

If this definition pointedly reduces French-ness to the city of Paris, the Argentine label remains opaque and prompted Copi to issue several pronouncements to clarify how he felt about his country of birth. In his partly autobiographical novel, L’Internationale Argentine (The Argentine International), Copi declared: “I’ve never felt, I admit, the least nostalgia for Buenos Aires. A tango leaves me as indifferent as a java.”48 After all, from the point of view of national states, it is Uruguay that should have figured more prominently as an affective place tied to Copi’s childhood.49 Latin Americanist Ilse Logie has seen Uruguay as “a third intermedial space,” other and external just like France, which would then contribute to produce the artist’s sensibility “from the clash of three different cultures.”50 Yet, with ANT and assemblage theory there is no inside nor outside, and therefore no conflict, but there are rather different actors that

46  Matthew Edwards, “How to Read Copi: A Historiography of the Margins,” Hispanic Review 81, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 66–67. 47  Linenberg, “Copi,” [n.p.]. 48  Copi, L’Internationale Argentine (Paris: Pierre Belfond, 1988), 19. The java is a type of dance developed in France in the early twentieth century. 49  Copi stated: “conversely, I feel nostalgia of Uruguay, a certain skin-deep childhood nostalgia, the beach, the sand, and solitude.” Tcherkaski, Habla Copi, 115. 50  Logie, “Geografías,” 6.

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co-function.51 In ways similar to how he played with his artistic name, when it came to nationality, Copi felt free to pick and choose which components to keep and which to leave behind. Thus, he claimed to belong to a broader, supranational network of artists, pitting its universalism against the folkloric, territorial imagination of the patriot: Of Argentina I keep the best, I keep Argentine theatre. I write in the tradition of Florencio Sánchez and Gregorio de Laferrère and I write in verse; […] between the Argentine theatre and the Argentine-ness of the patriot there is an insurmountable abyss. Because Argentine patriots are military; Argentine artists are nomads; […] the only thing I’m keen on claiming: my nationality of artist. I have no nationality; nationality stays in the passport; […] I shine it as I do my shoes.52

Before Copi’s definitive move to Paris, the majority of associations seen so far involved his own family, which provided him with artistic stimuli, social connections, a platform for publication, and, last but not least, economic support. Traditionally these would be called relations of interiority as opposed to those of exteriority, or “filiations” vs. “alliances,” in Deleuze

51  In one of their most explicit descriptions, Deleuze and Guattari describe the assemblage as follows: “a multiplicity which is made up of many heterogeneous terms […], the assemblage’s only unity is that of a co-functioning: it is a symbiosis, a ‘sympathy.’” Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet, Dialogues II (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 69. To proceed even further up the chain of assemblages, for instance, there is no required clash in Copi’s mixed genetic assemblage, which the artist indicated as a mestizaje of European and Indian blood: “I belong to the fourth to sixth generation of Spanish and Italian immigrants to Eastern Argentina and Uruguay, of Indian blood. In fact, of blood of Indian women. I have two […] Indian grandmothers.” Damonte, Copi, 83. 52  Tcherkaski, Habla Copi, 69–73. See also: “My Argentine friends live in Europe, in the United States, in Latin America, but of those of my youth […] only two have stayed down there, Paco Silva and Horacio Swarzer. Just two! The others are nomads like me.” Damonte, Copi, 82. Describing Copi’s approach in more theoretical terms, French philosopher Nicholas Bourriaud views immigrants and exiles as nomadic “radicants,” a botanical family that “develop their roots as they advance, unlike radicals, whose development is determined by their being anchored in a particular soil”; thus, “the adjective ‘radicant’ captures this contemporary subject, caught between the need for a connection with its environment and the forces of uprooting, between globalization and singularity, between identity and opening to the other. It defines the subject as an object of negotiation. […] constantly putting down new roots, for it constitutes a laboratory of identities.” The Radicant, trans. James Gussen and Lili Porten (New York: Lukas & Sternberg, 2009), 51.

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and Guattari’s definitions.53 If Copi tends to remain vague on the subject of money, once the crucial channel that transferred funds from Copi’s father broke down, it forced the young artist to shift from filiation to external alliances in order to survive. To understand this fateful moment in Copi’s trajectory, we must briefly return to Damonte Taborda’s imbrication with Argentine politics. In 1957 the Unión Cívica Radical, which had remained the opposition party since 1930, split into two factions, the UCRP (Unión Cívica Radical del Pueblo, the People’s Radicals) led by Ricardo Balbín, categorically anti-Peronist and supportive of the military government of Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, and the UCRI (Unión Cívica Radical Intransigente, Intransigent Radicals), headed by Arturo Frondizi, in favor of continuing Yrigoyen’s policies but still open to Peronist support. 54 After the latter’s victory, Damonte Taborda, who had engaged in secret negotiations with the exiled Perón on Frondizi’s behalf, became part of Frondizi’s e­ ntourage. However, once Peronists were allowed to run in the elections of 1962, their new majority scared the military and Frondizi was placed under arrest. Fights erupted between two main factions of the military, the Azules (Blue)—led by General Juan Carlos Onganía, who preferred withdrawing the military from government and reincorporating Peronist forces—and the hardline anti-Peronist Colorados (Crimson) who favored a military dictatorship. Within this highly unstable political environment, in which the Azules eventually prevailed, Damonte Taborda thought prudent to once again seek protection behind the doors of the Uruguayan Embassy. It is at this juncture that the constellation of political actors in Argentina had a decisive impact on Copi’s life trajectory. Damonte Taborda, barricaded in the foreign embassy, could no longer forward any money to his son in the French capital and was forced to leave him to his own devices. Selling his artwork on the streets of Paris, Copi was able to survive by abruptly shifting from filiation to alliance in terms of money. It was this chain of actions and events that cemented the assemblage

53  Deleuze and Guattari reserve the idea of assemblage for alliances alone. Manuel DeLanda, however, reintegrates filiations into assemblage theory by observing that difference exists anyway, especially once non-human elements are taken into account. Assemblage Theory (Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 3. 54  See Hedges, Argentina, 178 and Rock, Argentina, 337.

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“Argentine of Paris” once and for all for Copi, who would not set foot in his country of birth again until 1984.55 In the meantime, the squabbles between Azules and Colorados caused twenty-year-old Jérôme Savary to be held in an Argentine military prison for a month. To understand exactly how this circumstance arose, it is now the moment to follow the translations along Savary’s own genealogical and biographical lines.

Jérôme Savary’s Line In his autobiography, La vie privée d’un magicien ordinaire (The Private Life of an Ordinary Magician), Savary spotlights the most illustrious forebear on his maternal side, his great-grandfather Frank Wayland Higgins (1856–1907), a farmer of Irish descent who had married Katherine Corinne Nobles (1855–1929) in 1878 and served as Republican governor of New York for one term (1905–1906).56 This ancestor was a source of pride for Savary, who felt he had inherited from him, at the same time, America as his second homeland and its pioneering spirit.57 Furthermore, even after spending much of his fortune to get elected, Higgins guaranteed material security for Savary’s family. One of Frank and Katherine’s four children was Josephine Bell Higgins (b. 1883–?), Savary’s future grandmother. At the age of eighteen, she was sent on her European tour and married Emile Lucian Hovelaque, then inspector-general of education of France, in 1911. Savary claims that the governor, enraged by his daughter’s marriage, decided to disinherit her on the spot. However, the governor had died in 1907, just after concluding his term in office.58 Access to Higgins’s inheritance was restricted, so that Savary’s mother, Claire Hélène Béatrix Hovelaque (b. 1914–?), and his 55  The situation was due to a ban that followed the incendiary production of his play Eva Perón, directed by Alfredo Rodríguez Arias in 1970, of which I speak in Chap. 3. 56  Savary, La vie, 10. Savary is not particularly fond of dates, which can be found, along with more details on other members of the family, at http://vossandreidancestors.com/g1/ p289.htm#i7213, accessed January 28, 2023. Some data is missing from the records. 57  Jérôme Savary, Ma vie commence à 20 h 30 (Paris: Stock - Laurence Pernoud, 1991), 91. This would be another good example of transmission of a trait that does not proceed directly through the parent-son genealogical line. 58  An obvious caveat that applies to any autobiographical writing is that the author cannot be trusted blindly: just like Copi’s, Savary’s accounts often contain some level of poetic license, exaggeration, or even whole fictional episodes. Furthermore, some recurring episodes across Savary’s books frequently introduce conflicting information.

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uncle Pierre were able to use the interest but not the capital, only to be spent by Savary’s generation.59 Even so, Savary acknowledged his mother’s generous financial support throughout his formative years: My mother was great, she provided for me pretty much until I was twenty-five without a reproach. She raised me like that. I’m just following her example, she was a spendthrift like me. I think she had a complex for never having worked, she had ideas of the left and a capitalist past.”60 After completing her education in England, Claire had married Jacques Savary, whom Jérôme portrays unflatteringly with a mix of pity and astonishment as a generally absent father and a failed writer without a direction in life. Jacques, nevertheless, maintained some connection with his son, now and then resurfacing in his life.61 He was, at the very least, the most direct reason for Jérôme’s birth in Argentina, along with all the actors (e.g., national states, people, or ideologies) pushing towards or resisting the outbreak of World War II. Apparently, after their marriage, Savary’s parents “were both seized by what was called, at the time, the ‘Giono virus,’”62 a sort of pre-war agrarian movement calling for a return to the land inspired by Jean Giono, a pacifist fiction writer who set his stories in the Provence region of France.63 Claire decided to purchase a ferme-château, a rustic property with vineyards and orchards near Cahors, in the South of France. Yet, after the birth of their first son Victor, the restless Jacques began making more and more frequent trips to Paris. According to Savary’s account, evidently filtered through his mother’s experience, one day Jacques returned from Paris with Marthe, his lover, and the tickets for a rather swift departure on the next ship for New York, along with a small group of other pacifists. Seeing the approaching war, these intellectuals—Savary’s uncle, some artist friends, professors, and mathematicians—planned on founding “a 59  Savary, La vie, 11. The director never mentions this detail again, so it remains unclear what happened with that inheritance money in the end. 60  Colette Godard, Jérôme Savary, l’enfant de la fête (Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 1996), 29. 61  Savary offers an amusing portrait of Jacques, referring to his early years in Argentina: “Since he succeeded at nothing, he was constantly surprising and presented himself to the eyes of the young boy I was at the time as a kind of Fregoli: different every time. One time a farmer, another time a peddler, one time a poet, another time a mechanic.” La vie, 24. Leopoldo Fregoli (1867–1936) was an Italian performer famous for his quick-change skills. 62  Savary, La vie, 13. 63  On Giono, see Colette Trout and Derk Visser, Jean Giono (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006).

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fraternal, agricolo-pacifico-literary community, that,” Savary points out, “from the first moment, had rather, for [his] mother, the classic profile of the ménage à trois.”64 Departing on April 8, 1938, as soon as they established themselves in their American Midwest ranch,65 this group of pacifists seemed unable to function together, endlessly debating and philosophizing over the simplest daily decisions. The quick dissolution of this impractical assemblage soon left Jacques and family on their own and imposed the sale of the ranch. A long wandering ensued that brought them first to Mexico, where the second son, François, was born, and then to Argentina in 1939. Three years later, just before leaving with Marthe, Jacques gave his wife a “divorce gift”66: Jérôme Savary was born in Buenos Aires, on June 27, 1942, but spent his first five years on a ranch near Córdoba. While his elder brothers were forced to go to school and wear the Peronist uniform, Jérôme, like Copi, speaks of a childhood period of communion with nature, but in the Argentine “heartland.” From Argentina to France The war’s end reignited Claire’s desire to return to France, this time as a single parent. Unlike her other children, excited at the prospect of leaving Argentina, Jérôme cried, since that supposed return to France was, for him, “my first exodus, my first laceration.”67 It was 1947. Claire decided she would raise her children away from the capital, eventually settling on the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon in south-central France, where the progressive Quaker collège Cévenol prided itself on mingling local with international students. Barely interested in this type of formal education, Jérôme could at least enjoy Jean Dasté’s theatre troupe three times a year. This actor-director, who had married stage director Jacques Copeau’s daughter Marie-Hélène, was one of the first professionals actively carrying out theatrical decentralization, a French state-directed policy aimed at

 Savary, La vie, 14.  Savary provides no further details on the ranch’s location or more specific dates for this journey. 66  Savary, La vie, 19. 67  Ibid., 27. 64 65

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taking theatre outside of Paris and attracting more popular audiences.68 The troupe arrived with “an old truck, loaded with papier-mâché forests and princess robes”69 and presented its shows in the minuscule cinemafoyer le Cévenol, adapting several classics to the limitations of that space. Yet, Savary admits his sensual, rather than intellectual interest in those performances: of ten or twelve immortal masterpieces seen at the time, I haven’t retained a single word, not even the shadow of a plot. Clinging to my seat, I admired only, with my eyes wide open, the painted backdrops going up and down, the storm roaring behind the scenes, the daggers shining in the dark, and above all, oh especially!, the arrival of the young lead who, from her first step on stage, provoked stirrings, tremors so violent in my child’s body that they made the entire row of chairs vibrate.70

This anecdote, which expressionistically exaggerates Savary’s inner state, also illustrates his future sense of theatre: an attention to the visual, auditory, and sensual stimuli of performance and a diminished relevance attributed to literary elements. Even if sprinkled with the occasional performance, though, the small community of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon felt just too limiting and solitary for Jérôme, who managed to convince his mother to let him head towards the big city on the condition that he would continue his high-school studies there. In Paris at fourteen, Savary rented a room from Juliette Gastambert, an old friend of his mother and wife of the pastor of Neuilly. Juliette and her network proved decisive for Savary’s artistic vocation. First, it was here that he met another lodger, a dancer for the ballets of the Marquis de Cuevas.71 Attractive and friendly, although frustratingly out of reach on the sexual front for the young man, the woman opened Savary’s eyes on a new world through her room, filled with costumes, which he 68  Decentralization was initially pursued by Jeanne Laurent, deputy director for theatre and music at the Direction générale des Arts et Lettres (1946–1952). In 1951 stage director Louis Jouvet was nominated advisor for matters related to theatre. This of course is an example of a culturally inflected actor-network attempting to enroll more and more constituencies. 69  Savary, La vie, 43. 70  Ibid., 44. 71  Established by Marquis George de Cuevas in 1947, this ballet company was originally funded by the principality of Monaco, but then moved to Paris in 1950 to present seasons based on the classical repertoire. The company also toured the French circuit. It dissolved in 1961 after the founder died.

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also visited in secret when the dancer was away. “I owe to the Marquis de Cuevas and his boarder the conviction that I, too, would be an artist,” confessed Savary.72 In the meantime, a friend of Juliette, an elegant lady from Central Europe who Savary claims to have been psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s secretary, had taken a liking to the young man. Thus, she bought a subscription for two to Jean Vilar’s Théâtre National Populaire (TNP), at the time still housed at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris.73 Seeing from up close some of the stars of the moment, such as Maria Casarés or Gérard Philipe, Savary for the first time took a real interest specifically in the theatre. One of the TNP’s features that struck him were the Friday concerts held in the foyer: “the concert-aperitifs, the posters designed by great masters, all contributed to make this presentation a feast, to make it less stilted, more human. At the sound of a string orchestra, one could watch the greatest actors of the century dance with the theatre’s subscribers.”74 In praising Vilar’s “concern for the packaging of the theatrical performance,”75 Savary directs our attention to this assemblage of theatrical, visual, and performative activities, while pointing to the modality of the theatrical fête that, blurring the separation between audience and performers, would become a hallmark of his own idiosyncratic brand of theatre. Formal education per se was not Savary’s forte. After abandoning a poorly organized “private school for dunces” in Paris,76 he began his self-­ directed studies by devouring nineteenth-century novels, visiting the Louvre, and observing people. His mother, evidently concerned at a total lack of structure, attempted a compromise and enrolled him into one of the rare schools dedicated entirely to the arts, the École d’Art Martenot, where—soon disillusioned with the dance and drawing parts of the curriculum, taught in a very old-fashioned way—Jérôme dedicated himself  Savary, La vie, 53.  Founded in 1920 by Firmin Gémier, in the period 1951–1963 the TNP directed by Vilar promoted quality productions aimed at the largest possible number of spectators (“an elite theatre for all” as Vilar would put it). The TNP officially moved to the Théâtre de la Cité in Villeurbanne, near Lyon, in 1972, when it was directed by Roger Planchon, Patrice Chéreau, and Robert Gilbert. The Palace of Chaillot, in turn, became the Théâtre National de Chaillot, under the helm of Antoine Vitez, a theatre Savary himself would head between 1988 and 2000. 74  Savary, La vie, 61. 75  Ibid. 76  Savary, Ma vie, 54. 72 73

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more intently to the music classes, first approaching the drums and then the trumpet.77 Eventually, still searching for a direction, in May 1958 he was accepted into the prestigious École national supérieure des Arts Décoratifs after passing a highly competitive exam. While making an effort to learn a potentially lucrative craft that would help him in the future, however, he made his first true artistic debut as a trumpet player with the Arts Déco fanfare at both popular food fairs and upscale social evenings. At that time Savary also met visual artist Michel Lebois, who would later steadily collaborate with him and design the sets for Good Bye Mister Freud. Fleeing the French Draft: New York and Buenos Aires It was then that actors at the national level made the ANT term “enrollment” resound quite concretely. With France still engaged in the Algerian war, Savary dreaded that, with his eighteenth birthday approaching, he would be summoned for military service.78 Becoming a conscientious objector meant languishing in prison like his brother Victor. “I was very shocked,” he reminisces, “by the return of an Arts Déco student, who had lost his right arm on a mine and found himself without a hand even before finishing to learn to draw.”79 Without viable alternatives, he suddenly remembered he was Argentine-born. He could therefore perform his service in the southern hemisphere, provided he left the country before being called for the “three days,” the official interpellation by the French state.80 However, while waiting for his twentieth year, the age for the Argentine service, he decided he should return to New York, a city he had fallen in 77  The school was founded in 1912 by piano teacher Madeleine Martenot, but, over time, developed a mission of imparting a complete artistic education, combining the visual arts and music with relaxation techniques and privileging “the heart before intellect.” For a brief history of the institution, see https://federation-martenot.fr/histoire-de-lecole-dart, accessed January 28, 2023. 78  On the Algerian war, in English, see Tyler Stovall, Transnational France: The Modern History of a Universal Nation (Boulder, CO: Westview, 2015), 390–97 and Todd Shepard, The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006). 79  Savary, La vie, 100. 80  See George Q. Flynn, Conscription and Democracy: The Draft in France, Great Britain, and the United States (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002), 93. For a history of military service in France, see Annie Crépin, Histoire de la conscription (Paris: Gallimard, 2013).

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with after an earlier visit. Leaving France on July 10, 1960, Savary spent about two years in New York, mostly enmeshed with the jazz scene, its musicians, women, and drugs, but also attending the Arts Students League school, selling his etchings, and drawing cartoons in hopes of publishing them in the New Yorker. His mother, in the meantime, regularly sent him five hundred francs per month.81 And yet, despite the artistic stimulation of the Big Apple, a few episodes of hard-drug use by others shocked him. Fearing he would himself slip from marijuana and cocaine into more addictive substances, he abruptly left the city and headed to Argentina earlier than expected, spending a month in Jamaica with his father to detoxify (while drinking alcoholic cocktails).82 As was the case with Copi, while we follow Savary’s line, we can always pause at specific points to highlight a variety of actor-networks with which he interacted. For instance, after an intermediate stop in Tucumán, Argentina, where he enrolled into the local Escuela de Bellas Artes, Savary was hosted by a former Tucumán schoolmate in Buenos Aires, at one of the painting ateliers of a large loft near the downtown Colón Theatre. Then, running out of money when a postal strike delayed receipt of his mother’s funds, he survived for two months on tea, rice, and the free refreshments offered at art vernissages. These two episodes show quite literally how connections with the visual arts sustained Savary’s physical life in this period as he found accommodation and sustenance by activating personal connections and a series of material objects. Some of these non-human actors did not even involve a conscious action by humans: the art exhibit curators, for example, were unaware of the nourishing agency of their refreshments for a young man in an emergency situation. After some time in Buenos Aires, Savary was finally on the receiving end of a multitude of actors who physically translated him into military service. The Argentine system for selecting conscripts at the time was based on a lottery. “It is in this way,” lamented Savary, “that not one of my Argentine friends, Copi, Lavelli, and others, did his service.”83 The random drawing obviously blackboxed several actors, such as office clerks, a complex bureaucracy, a lottery machine, and their unpredictably fluid  Jérôme Savary, Album du Grand Magic Circus (Paris: Pierre Belfond, 1974), 13.  Ibid., 16. 83  In truth, however, Lavelli did his military service. See his interview in Lise BlochMorhange and David Alper, Artiste et métèque à Paris (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1980), 203. 81 82

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assemblages.84 Eventually, a pink postcard arrived, summoning him to Azul, an isolated city in the pampas about four hours south-west of Buenos Aires by bus. For Savary, being selected meant a period of boredom and hazing spent with the last Argentine horse artillery regiment, but it was also an opportunity to finally learn the local language, not so much the refined variety but rather “a barracks Spanish. A mixture of slang and peasant language.”85 This was the time when Savary experienced in his own skin the effects of the fragile political situation in Argentina. After Frondizi’s fall, with the Azul regiment ironically counted among the rebel Colorados, the defeat of that faction meant a whole month in prison for Savary. Then, things lightened up when a colonel, who had attended military school in Bruxelles and spoke fluent French, took him as his assistant and also helped shorten his service time.86 Back in Buenos Aires, Savary began going out with friends to nightclubs and became passionate about the tango.87 Then, as in Copi’s case, his first paid artistic gigs consisted of publishing a few cartoons in Tía Vicenta.88 Even so, at some point, Argentina began to feel stifling: “too many tangos, too many old Nazis, too much nostalgia.”89 Savary thought he had done enough with his cartoon publications to show he had accomplished at least something in Argentina and decided it was time to return to Paris. It was the summer of 1963. 84  Although Savary seemed to believe that this was a selection based on odd or even numbers, the official procedure was more complex and excluded those who had been assigned a number lower than a designated threshold for that year. Details on the host of actors involved in the Argentine conscription process can be found in Sebastian Galiani, Martín Rossi, and Ernesto Schargrodsky, “Conscription and Crime,” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4037, October 2006. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/9070, accessed January 28, 2023. For a more general overview of conscription in Argentina, see Rita J. Simon and Mohamed Alaa Abdel-Moneim, A Handbook of Military Conscription and Composition the World Over (New York: Lexington Books, 2011), 31a–31f. 85  Savary, Ma vie, 110. 86  Savary bends time in his recollections, claiming multiple times that his military discharge coincided with President John F. Kennedy’s assassination on November 22, 1963, and describing in detail an emotional moment connected to that event, set on a bus during his return to Buenos Aires. The episode, however, must be invented since Savary then repeats twice that he was already in Paris in August 1963. La vie, 158 and 166. 87  About his passion for tango, speaking of his time in Buenos Aires, Savary remarked: “And like jazz in New York, tango becomes my Argentine mistress, the companion of all my moments.” Ma vie, 110. 88  Savary, La vie, 160. 89  Savary, Album, 16.

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“It’s at the Contrescarpe and Around That All Happens” Savary’s journey across the globe is a particularly apt example of how lives can be conceptualized as Deleuzian and Guattarian “bundles of lines,”90 moving in a tentative way through the network. Ingold argues that “although the time of life is linear, its linearity is of a particular kind. It is not the kind of line that goes from point to point […]. It is rather a line that grows, issuing forth from its advancing tip rather like a root or creeper probes the earth.”91 Thus, the movement does not always proceed by means of transport from point to point (an implicit critique to ANT’s translation), but often becomes a form of tortuous wayfaring. And wayfaring also fittingly describes Savary’s line in search of an artistic vocation, not lingering too long at any school but rather passing through them—his own line of flight—as he gradually gained awareness and developed his skills by alternating between several artistic strands, from music to the visual to the performing arts. That said, we should not discount some very material nodes of the network that illustrate clear instances of transport/translation. A case in point is the house owned but rarely used by Savary’s father that was handed over to Savary shortly after he settled in Paris. It was a significant piece of material help coming from his family, the accumulation of several actions initiated by his father much time earlier. “A funny house, three floors, a room per floor, like a game of cubes. But it’s at the Contrescarpe and around that all happens”: thus Lebois, Savary’s old Arts Déco friend, characterized the house’s central position, directly facing Place de la Contrescarpe and immersed in the city’s artsy scene.92 Theatre critic and Savary biographer Colette Godard synthetized the surrounding network and ebullient cultural atmosphere: Everything happens at the Théâtre de Lutèce, a private theatre, directed by patron Lucie Germain, that later disappeared. At the Épée de Bois, a minuscule place turned into a cinema. On the square itself, occupied by some traditional tramps, at Arlette Reinerg’s cabaret […]. At the Contrescarpe, one can meet everyone from Alain Crombecque to Víctor García, through

90  Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 203. 91  Ingold, Lines, 118. 92  Godard, Jérôme Savary, 25.

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Copi and all the Argentines. At the beginning of the 60s […] the Argentines in particular dominated the Parisian scene.93

That summer, living on the first floor of his house right next to Arlette Reinerg’s cabaret, Savary could leave the window open on Place de la Contrescarpe so he could turn his action of painting canvases, accompanied by Charlie Parker’s jazz music, into a spectacle for the passers-by. After his father passed away in 1964, Savary left the house to Mary, Jacques’s last wife, and moved to the small hotel next door, where he dedicated himself to writing his first two plays: the absurdist, Ionesco-inspired L’invasion du vert olive (The Invasion of Olive Green), which tells of a village invaded by a color; and Les boîtes (The Boxes), inspired by Beckett.94 Savary felt like the most typical writer of the Latin Quarter, and yet he was still wayfaring, looking for a more clearly articulated profession.95 Crucially for his theatrical career, he began connecting with the Latin American expatriate community by frequenting the bar and cabaret L’Escale.96 At that time, he said, “[c]uriously, I feel like an exile in Paris […]. I feel more connected to Latin America than to France and I spend whole nights discussing feverishly, with plenty of Che! and Muchacho! with any South American I can get a hold of.”97 Among these interlocutors was actress Hilcia d’Aubeterre, who would become one of the very first members of Savary’s own company. Another was Copi. So far, we have thus followed the lines of becoming of two artists, paying attention to the influence and material support of their families, the steps that led to the discovery and intensifying of their vocation in the visual arts and theatre, and the impact of larger historical and political events, which led both Copi and Savary to eventually converge to Paris. 93  Ibid., 25–26. Both Crombecque and García will soon appear in relation to Savary. For the history of Reinerg’s historic cabaret, see Gilles Schlesser, Le cabaret “rive gauche”: 1946–1974 (Paris: Archipel, 2006), 309–13. 94  On the latter play, elsewhere, Savary claims a collaboration with playwright Fernando Arrabal. Bettina Knapp and Jérôme Savary, “Sounding the Drum: An Interview with Jerome Savary,” The Drama Review: TDR 15, no. 1 (Autumn 1970): 92. I speak of the staging of both plays later in the chapter. 95  It is worth noting that the Latin Quarter, on the left bank of the Seine, derived its denomination from the schools teaching Latin during the Middle Ages and not from the density of Latin Americans living there in the 1960s. 96  This cabaret is also located in the Latin Quarter, on Rue Monsieur le Prince. Savary at times calls it Machucambo, from the Machucambos, a musical group who purchased it in 1964. See http://www.maisonorange.fr/escale.html and http://www.maisonorange.fr/ machucambos.html, accessed January 28, 2023. 97  Savary, La vie, 171.

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Even if their genealogies and the early period of their lives were not directly implicated in shared artistic endeavors, they are nevertheless essential to account for their finding each other in the same city and even in the same convivial locations. It is now time to shift focus from their individual lines to the evolution of Savary’s theatre group, which allowed them to begin working together in the theatre.

The Line of the Grand Magic Circus On the whole, the formation of Savary’s troupe is a textbook example of ANT translation that, through a theatrically dizzying series of transformations, led the group to emerge with its more conscious poetics. But before translation can occur and stabilize, an actor-network such as a theatre director must endeavor to interest others into becoming their representative, an outcome that is never assured. Savary’s initial actions could be characterized as interessement, which Callon defines as the group of actions by which an entity […] attempts to impose and stabilize the other actors it defines through its problematization. […] To interest other actors is to build devices which can be placed between them and all other entities who want to define their identities otherwise. […] We call this elementary relationship, which begins to shape and consolidate the social link, the triangle of interessement. The range of possible strategies and ­mechanisms […] is unlimited: anything goes. It may be pure and simple force […]. It may be seduction or a simple solicitation.98

Víctor García and Hilcia d’Aubeterre Indeed, the first, foundational action in which Savary engaged, in the spirit of “anything goes,” was to seduce an actress away from another actor-network. D’Aubeterre, a Venezuelan of French descent, was working with the troupe of Víctor García, an Argentine director who, fleeing police repression in Buenos Aires, had arrived penniless to Paris in 1962.99  Michel Callon, “Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication of the Scallops and the Fishermen of St Brieuc Bay,” in The Science Studies Reader, ed. Mario Biagioli (New York: Routledge, 1999), 71–72. 99  Unlike Copi or Savary, García was not part of the richer elite. For García’s story and artistic accomplishments, see Juan Carlos Malcún, Los muros y las puertas en el teatro de Víctor García (Buenos Aires: Inteatro, 2011) and Jefferson del Rios, O teatro de Victor Garcia: a vida sempre em jogo (São Paulo: SESC, 2012), which contains the playbill of Ubu Roi (Ubu King) featuring Savary among the protagonists. 98

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From Savary’s point of view, García was “a short man, Argentine and homosexual, of a rare intelligence and vivacity,” but since “Hilcia was his star, he brooded over her like a mother hen” and gave Savary a hard time when he tried to be alone with her.100 Shortly thereafter, Jérôme ended up living with Hilcia, frequently attending her rehearsals, and developing an interest in her profession. García had good reasons to worry, as this was the prelude to Savary’s subsequent bolder move. García, in the meantime, was preparing Spanish playwright Ramón del Valle-Inclán’s La rosa de papel (The Paper Rose) with actors from seven South American countries, in the context of the University of the Théâtre des Nations.101 The show was later invited to the experimental event  Savary, La vie, 172–73.  Phyllis Zatlin, Cross-Cultural Approaches to Theatre: The Spanish-French Connection (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1994), 60–61. The Théâtre des Nations was a unique organism supported by the International Theatre Institute (ITI), under the aegis of UNESCO. The ITI was officially created in 1948 by the representatives of twenty countries gathered in Prague: its first president was French dramatist Armand Salacrou and its headquarters were set up in Paris. The festival itself, however, became fully operational only in 1955, when the French state and the City of Paris took charge of its funding. The festival had at least two antecedents. The earlier one was inspired by French performer and director Firmin Gémier (1869–1933), who had founded the Société Universelle du Théâtre (SUDT, Universal Theatre Society). In June 1927, the SUDT organized its First Congress with participants from eighteen nations in conjunction with the Premier Festival International d’Art Dramatique et Lyrique (First International Festival of Dramatic and Operatic Art) at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The later and more direct antecedent was the Festival International d’Art Dramatique de la Ville de Paris (City of Paris International Festival of Dramatic Art), established in 1954 under the direction of Aman Maistre-Julien et Claude Planson at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, the same theatre that would host the Théâtre des Nations. See Daniela Peslin, Le Théâtre des Nations: Une aventure théâtral à redécouvrir (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009), 26–69. In general, the Théâtre des Nations aimed at creating opportunities for cultural and artistic exchange by showcasing the most significant companies from all over the world while trying to overcome political and geographic boundaries during Cold War times. The festival’s second edition in 1958 initiated a more consistent presence of Argentine troupes in France when the Teatro de Buenos Aires presented La carosse du St Sacrement (The Coach of the Holy Sacrament) by French playwright Prosper Mérimée and El límite (The Limit) by Argentine author and director Alberto de Zavalía. For these and later Argentine productions at the festival, see the chapter “La participation LatinoAmericaine au Théâtre des Nations à Paris (1958–1987)” in Osvaldo Obregón, La diffusion et la réception du théâtre latino-américain en France de 1958 à 1986 (Besançon: Presses universitaires franc-comtoises, 2002), 59–117. Crucially, in 1962, the University of the Théâtre des Nations attached to the festival introduced practical workshops that provided concrete opportunities for French and foreign young artists to stage their experimental creations in Paris. Odette Aslan, Paris capitale mondial du théâtre: le Théâtre des Nations (Paris: CNRS, 2009), 239. 100 101

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Estival 64, held at the Pavillon de Marsan near the Louvre in July 1964.102 A drummer’s illness on the eve of the troupe’s departure for a European tour offered Savary the first chance to work with them and to receive a salary. Savary noticed his own transformation into a theatre performer and the “sensual exaltation” it brought him: “Musicians are on stage, in costume, and often participate in the action. Thus, without even realizing, I become an actor. And I admit that the contact with the public gives me pleasant sensations.”103 Enthused by this discovery and eager to know more about theatre, he rushed to independently read both classic plays and theatre theorists, but decided to also take part in the University of the Théâtre des Nations, where he explored set design and rubbed shoulders with García, Jorge Lavelli, and other South Americans who had been engaged in practical creative endeavors since 1962. This experience was the strongest theatrical influence on his early career. García later asked him to design the set and costumes for Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi (King Ubu)  planned for the upcoming Young Companies Competition (Concours des Jeunes Compagnies) and also cast him in the lead role of King Venceslas.104 The time spent with García, however, exacerbated underlying tensions. Callon calls “controversy […] all the manifestations by which the representativity of the spokesman is questioned, discussed, negotiated, rejected, and so forth,”105 which may result in a departure from that specific actor-network. Savary was certainly learning the craft of practical theatre, but he also scorned García’s too-solemn theatrical ceremonies that seemed impermeable to the comic gags Savary proposed. Apart from aesthetic divergences, a more crucial controversy loomed once Savary became more conscious of his own nature: “the designer, after all, is at the orders of the director. And I discover that I don’t like being at the orders of anyone. I feel the soul of a leader of men, of a general. I feel made to direct the troupe, not to serve it.”106 At that point, Savary’s decision to found his own company became a literal betrayal of García’s when he managed to convince d’Aubeterre to  See “Estival 64 au Pavillon de Marsan,” Le Figaro Littéraire, Paris, July 2–8, 1964.  Savary, La vie, 174. 104  The play was the first staged by García with his own French company. It premiered in 1965 at the Young Companies Competition held during the IX Festival of the Nights of Bourgogne (Festival des nuits de Bourgogne), with eighty performers of twenty-seven different nationalities. The show was reprised in Paris at the Théâtre du Louvre in 1966. 105  Callon, “Some Elements,” 79. 106  Savary, Ma vie, 132. 102 103

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abandon her first director, who would never forgive him, “at the end of an epic combat.”107 Alain Crombecque, Fernando Arrabal, and the Panic Movement The struggle between competing actor-networks concluded with d’Aubeterre joining Savary, but more performers were required to satisfy his desire to lead. Thus, the director began contacting old friends from the Arts Déco fanfare and a few South American performers from L’Escale, eventually gathering a company of twenty-five, established under the simplest French association law of 1901, which requires the association to reinvest any profits. Savary boasted about his “phenomenal power of seduction” for being able to interest those performers without any promise of pay and for an uncertain project.108 Nevertheless, for all his enthusiastic bragging about leadership, he also admitted that his first professional foray as director was utterly unsuccessful. With the help of checks from his mother and Mary, his father’s American widow,109 in 1965 he rented the small Comédie de Paris, in the Pigalle neighborhood, for a double bill featuring his two short plays written at the Contrescarpe. The planned thirty performances from March 25 to April 24 represented a very long run for an unknown troupe. As a result, with an average of fifteen spectators each evening, he was left with considerable debts and a strong temptation to quit. And yet, not everything had gone to waste. Among those few spectators was Alain Crombecque, who liked the show and was to become one of the crucial figures for both Savary’s career and, ultimately, the production of Good Bye Mister Freud.110 Between 1964 and 1965, Crombecque, great friend of Copi’s and vice-president of the UNEF (the National Union of French Students), organized a university festival for theatre and 107  Ibid., 133. Cassandra S. Crawford characterizes “translation [as] also betrayal, of origins and of solidity,” “Actor Network Theory,” in Encyclopedia of Social Theory, ed. George Ritzer (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), 2. 108  Savary, Ma vie, 133. 109  In Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, these are obviously still two filiations, sources internal to the family. Unlike Copi, Savary could count on a smoother transition from family support to economic independence. 110  Copi was Crombecque’s first connection with the Argentines, which then continued with his work as press attaché for García. See Christine Crombecque, Alain Crombecque: au fil des rencontres (Arles: Actes sud, 2010).

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music groups. Savary met him at Arlette Reinerg’s cabaret, where he had begun working as a barman to pay off his debts. Even if Savary was no longer a student, Crombecque enrolled his troupe ex officio into the competition to present a version of the show staged at the Comédie de Paris. The director found that the particular assemblage planned by Crombecque made Savary’s own pieces unmissable: “he’d sandwiched us between a Chinese Red Guards performance and a Paco Rabanne fashion show […], the highlights of the festival.”111 It was in this manner that Spanish playwright Fernando Arrabal noticed the troupe’s work, congratulated Savary, and asked him to direct his own play Le labyrinthe (The Labyrinth), for which he promised to obtain funding, at the Théâtre  Daniel Sorano in Vincennes, just east of Paris.112 Arrabal’s importance for the Argentines of Paris cannot be overstated as he provided plays that were crucial to the success of their early careers.113 In Savary’s case, it was the playwright’s willingness to let him have a free hand with The Labyrinth that enabled the director, between 1967 and 1968, to progressively transform the play into his own brand of total theatre, such as would be on display in Good Bye Mister Freud. Starting in 1960, Arrabal, after leaving André Breton’s surrealist group in response to its leader’s dogmatism, had begun formulating the outlines of the Panic movement in conversation with Chilean film-maker Alejandro Jodorowsky

 Savary, La vie, 182.  On another occasion, Savary stated that the funding of three million old francs was obtained by Jacques Coutureau, who would play the lead role in The Labyrinth and become part of Savary’s core company as musician and musical director. Savary, Album, 19. 113  For a general appraisal, see Dorothy Knowles, “Ritual Theatre: Fernando Arrabal and the Latin Americans,” Modern Language Review 70 (1975): 526–38. García obtained significant recognition for his Le cimetière des voitures (The Automobile Graveyard)—a dramaturgy of three Arrabal texts, Oraison, Les deux bourreaux, and La communion solennelle (Orison, The Two Executioners, and Solemn Communion)—presented first in France and then in several other European countries between 1966 and 1977. In 1971, in London, he also staged L’Architecte et l’Empereur d’Assyrie (The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria) in English. As for Lavelli, he staged Pique-nique en campagne (Picnic on the Battlefield, 1966), La Communiante et la Princesse (The Communicant and the Princess, 1966, a double bill including Solemn Communion and Les Amours impossibles [The Impossible Loves]), the short piece Une chèvre sur un nuage (A Goat on a Cloud, 1966) in a double bill with Copi’s sketch Sainte Geneviève dans sa baignoire (Saint Genevieve in her Bathtub), The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria (1967), Bella Ciao (1974), Sur le fil ou la ballade du train fantôme (On the Tightrope or Ballad of the Ghost Train, 1975), and La Tour de Babel (The Tower of Babel, 1979). 111 112

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and French illustrator and cartoonist Roland Topor during their regular meetings at the Café de la Paix. In “The Panic Man” Arrabal proclaimed: the Panic […] is a “way of being” sustained by confusion, humor, terror, chance, and euphoria. […] The Panic finds its most complete expression in the Panic feast, the theatrical ceremony, in play, in art, and in indifferent solitude […], it is neither a group nor an artistic or literary movement, it is rather a lifestyle. I’d prefer to call the Panic an anti-movement. […] Everyone can claim they have been the first to have the idea of the Panic […] or to name themselves the president of the movement.114

This “anti-movement” reached its high point in 1965 with the publication of Arrabal’s Théâtre panique, Topor’s Panic, Jodorowsky’s Teatro pánico,115 and the performance of four provocative “ephemerals” on May 24 during the second Festival of Free Expression (Festival de la libre expression).116 The Panic’s porous boundaries invited external contributions and Savary soon inserted himself into the group as general secretary of the Grand Théâtre Panique, which at that point also included Copi.117 In fact, much of Savary’s elaboration of the idea of fête would emerge directly from his Panic connections. In “Towards the Panic Ephemeral or 114  Fernando Arrabal, “L’homme panique,” in Panique: Manifeste pour le troisième millénaire (Paris: Punctum, 2006), 60–61. In French, Panic is a masculine noun (le panique) as opposed to a feminine one indicating fear (la panique), a difference that disappears in English. 115  Fernando Arrabal, Théâtre Panique (Paris: Bourgois, 1965); Alejandro Jodorowsky, Teatro pánico ([México]: Era, 1965); Roland Topor, Panic (1965; San Francisco, CA: City Lights, 1969). 116  The festival was organized by Jean-Jacques Lebel at the American Center and the ephemerals presented were Arrabal’s Les amours impossibles (Impossible Loves), Jodorowsky’s Melodrama sacramental (Sacramental Melodrama), Topor’s Cérémonie de la femme nouvelle (The New Wife’s Ceremony), and Alain Yves Le Yaouanc’s Multiplicatif (Multiplicative). For clips of Jodorowsky’s play, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-jIkgB76LY, accessed January 28, 2023. A troupe of elephants announced in the line-up was clearly just a provocation. 117  The Grand Théâtre Panique was officially involved in just two productions, one of Arrabal’s Le couronnement (The Coronation) directed by Ivan Henriques at the Théâtre Mouffetard in 1966 and Savary’s own production of The Labyrinth. The members of the whole group are listed in Arrabal, Panique, 25. A group color picture can be seen in the article by Fernando Arrabal, “¡Viva Jerónimo Savary!” La règle du jeu, March 5, 2013. https://laregledujeu.org/arrabal/2013/03/05/3746/%C2%A1viva-jeronimo-savary, accessed January 28, 2023.

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Let Theatre Get Out of the Theatre,” Jodorowsky made a series of statements that, in hindsight, might be applied to Good Bye Mister Freud as well: the Panic produces EUPHORIA and leads to the COLLECTIVE FÊTE […]. All artistic activities are in sum fragments of the only true Panic manifestation: the FÊTE–SPECTACLE. … During the fête-spectacle nothing is done twice. […] To get to Panic euphoria, we must free ourselves from the theatre building. […] The Panic “gang” will choose a place they like best: a vacant lot, a wood, a public square […], even a traditional theatre, but by using all its volume: euphoric demonstrations among the seats, on the balconies, […] overflowing along the aisles, […] the roof, etc. […]. The Panic performer will start, as in jazz, from an organizational chart and then, during the fête-spectacle, will improvise, plunging into what is perishable.118

Yet, as Argentine scholar Carmen Crouzeilles points out, despite a promising beginning, the Panic group’s vital impulse seemed exhausted by 1966. In contrast to its members’ systematic denial of the movement’s existence for many years, the “remnants of this avant-garde experience were salvaged and reclaimed by [Savary, who …] spectacularized, massified, and converted into a great success the Panic Theatre’s methods.”119 From Arrabal’s The Labyrinth to the Grand Magic Circus As a matter of fact, The Labyrinth was the show that put Savary’s troupe on the map of French and international experimental theatre. To appreciate the degree of transformation of the playtext, a brief summary is in order. Originally written by Arrabal in 1956 as a transcription of a 118  Alejandro Jodorowsky, “Vers l’ephemère panique ou Sortir le théâtre du théâtre,” in Arrabal, Panique, 85–92. Savary wrote himself a short piece titled “Nos fêtes … De la manière de voir le théâtre avec des yeux innocents” (“Our Fêtes … Of the Way of Seeing Theatre with Innocent Eyes”), in which he suggested to maintain an open mind on the nature of theatre: “Let us, us, offer fêtes like we intend them, where we intend them, without trying to give them a name. The time will come, one day, to know if this is theatre or not, and what theatre actually is.” Ibid., 161. 119  Carmen Crouzeilles, “Pánico y después: escándalo, revuelta y espectáculo,” in Deslindes: Ensayos sobre la literatura y sus límites en el siglo XX, ed. Claudia Kozak (Rosario: Beatriz Viterbo, 2006), 135 and 130. In ANT terms, this resonates with Callon’s definition of an actor as “an entity that takes the last generation of intermediaries and transforms (combines, mixes, concatenates, degrades […]) these to create the next generation.” “Techno-Economic Networks,” 141.

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claustrophobic nightmare provoked by an operation at a sanatorium, the five-­character play opens with Etienne, the protagonist, chained in a latrine to another man, Bruno, who constantly exclaims “I’m thirsty!” Etienne breaks free from his chains but finds himself wandering through an inescapable park, a maze of blankets hung out to dry. In that bewildering place, he meets Micaela who tells him that she cannot help him escape, since it is her strict but enigmatic father who controls that unfathomable space. When the father enters, Micaela denounces Etienne’s attempt to escape and, falsely, to seduce her and burn the park. Now and then she flushes the toilet to placate her apparent fiancé Bruno’s thirst and obscenely rubs herself against him, before he hangs himself with the toilet chain. At the end, a rather idiosyncratic judge sentences Etienne to death for killing Bruno. Despite this grim Kafkian atmosphere, for the Vincennes production of January 1967 Savary made use of highly theatrical devices to transform it, writes theatre historian David Whitton, “in the style of a macabre pantomime. He injected a note of derision, turning it into an enormous, noisy farce of callousness and persecution. He also made it into an extravaganza of spectacle.”120 According to reviewer Guy Dumur, the show stimulated the spectators’ senses through a variety of sounds ranging from liturgical chants to jazz and drums, along with “various onomatopoeias—including those, very realistic, of the noisiest voluptuousness—screams uttered by the actors.”121 The director introduced burlesque and circus elements; for example, he turned his own role of the judge into what Dorothy Knowles described as a “hilarious figure cutting capers on a trapeze high up above the stage. It was a grotesque day-of-judgment ceremony.”122 Newly invented characters were also added: “a naked Eskimo lady, […] a jazz player, a hysterical ephebe, and […] our Copi himself in a suit jacket, who does practically nothing during the whole piece but sketch a dance step,

120  David Whitton, Stage Directors in Modern France (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1987), 182. 121  Guy Dumur, “Beaucoup de bruit pour quelque chose,” Le Nouvel Observateur, January 18, 1967. 122  Knowles, “Ritual Theatre,” 528. For some of the original cast names, see https://www. lesarchivesduspectacle.net/?IDX_Spectacle=73903; a short clip of scenes from the play is available at http://www.ina.fr/video/I13064129/jerome-savary-le-theatre-contemporainet-arrabal-video.html, both accessed January 28, 2023.

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with a little stream of blood dripping from his mouth.”123 Finally, the cast comprised even live animals, a goat, a hen, and a duck who “on the day of the premiere laid an egg on the stage. It was an absolute triumph,” Savary reported.124 As for the critical reception, the director recalled a divide among reviewers faced with such an anti-academic approach, the enthusiastic left-wing press incited by Arrabal versus the traditional one. In the latter case, critics such as Jean Dutourd felt so puzzled as to be unable to provide any interpretation apart from an exclusively factual description of the show.125 But even in decidedly appreciative reactions like Dumur’s, a more crucial rift appeared between Savary’s operation and Arrabal’s text, which felt too verbose by contrast with the spectacle: “Never […] has theatre given itself so many liberties, even when it calls itself ‘happening.’ […] Unfortunately, there is talk, and a lot of it. […] That creates long monotonous stretches when boredom weighs us down. Not for very long: a cry, an unexpected vision quickly wakes us up.”126 Overall, though, the production was quite successful and was then restaged in Paris at the small Théâtre de Plaisance. Then, in June 1967, the show was seen at the German international festival in Frankfurt by Tom O’Horgan, the director of the musical Hair on Broadway. It was through his connections that The Labyrinth was invited to London first, then to New York. For this first staging Savary had been able to tap into readily available resources, i.e., the funding obtained through Arrabal but also from some easily convinced performers such as his partner Hilcia and his friend Copi. However, when planning to present the show at the Mercury Theatre in London in June 1968, he had to fight with the interference of a Leviathan

123  Dumur, “Beaucoup de bruit.” This character also seems a preparation for the Dracula character that Copi will play in Good Bye Mister Freud. 124  Savary, La vie, 182–83, where he also says that Copi danced a tango with the duck. Elsewhere he describes the situation in more detail: “In The Labyrinth, Copi embodied a silent character. For a good hour and a half, impeccably dressed (Copi was a dandy), he stood motionless downstage at the side of a duck as stoic as he. One day, however, he lost his composure. That day, for some unexplained reason, the duck lays an egg. With an ecstatic face, Copi shouted, ‘Jérôme … Jérôme? … The duck has laid an egg!’ This sentence, needless to say, wasn’t in the text.” Jérôme Savary, Dictionnaire amoureux du spectacle (Paris: Plon, 2004), 36–37. 125  Jean Dutourd, “Critique impartiale,” France Soir, January 14, 1967. 126  Dumur, “Beaucoup de bruit.”

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much larger than himself127: the Parisian May student protests that had translated his performers’ energies away from the troupe. Thus, given the incendiary political situation, convincing them to travel to England and without financial support proved arduous: “My troupe was dislocated,” lamented the director, “I had left Hilcia, who was the star of the show, and the majority of the other performers were fighting on the barricades.”128 Apparently, his ex-wife had transformed the Contrescarpe house into one of the headquarters of the student mutiny, while the indispensable male lead, Jacques Coutureau, was enrolled by the actors’ committee occupying the Théâtre de l’Odéon, at the expense of director Jean Louis Barrault.129 Only once that occupation collapsed, with the intervention of the police, was Savary able to confirm Coutureau’s participation. Crouzeilles argues that when the May ’68 events marked at the same time the apogee and crumbling of the avant-garde ideal of fusion between art and life, Savary understood it immediately and decided to jump on to the ship of commercial theatre.130 In reality, however, Savary’s understanding was a more gradual process dependent on practical and inevitable circumstances. Having managed to gather only a third of the original cast of twelve (Copi, for one, did not follow the production abroad), Savary recruited performers on site for the month-long London run. One of these newly cast artists was a yet-unknown Lindsay Kemp, who played the mute role of a ballerina in tutu.131 More importantly, owing to short 127  As seen in Chap. 1, Michel Callon and Bruno Latour use Hobbes’s image of the Leviathan to illustrate how an actor increases its size by enrolling other actors and becoming their spokesman. “Unscrewing the Big Leviathan: How Actors Macro-structure Reality and How Sociologists Help Them to Do So,” in Advances in Social Theory and Methodology: Toward an Integration of Micro and Macro-Sociologies, ed. K. Knorr-Cetina and Aaron Victor Cicourel (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 279. 128  Savary, La vie, 197. 129  Crouzeilles notes that the occupation of the Odéon by around 2,500 students on May 15, 1968 is often allotted only minimal space in French chronicles of the student revolt because it is viewed as politically untenable: what was supposed to become a revolutionary act combining art and politics simply turned into a bad spectacle due to the inability of the students to propose something better than Barrault and also to their eventual removal by the police. “Pánico,” 134. By contrast, extended accounts of those events have been provided by both Savary (La vie, 197–204) and Copi, in an episode of his novel Life is a Tango. See La vida es un tango in Obras, vol. 1, ed. María Moreno (Barcelona, Spain: Anagrama, 2012), 182–90. 130  Crouzeilles, “Pánico,” 134. 131  The British performer (1938–2018) would later become famous as a dancer, mime artist, and choreographer.

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rehearsal times, the director resorted to letting performers recite whatever text they knew—Shakespeare, Chekhov, or Pirandello—in English, leaving just a few snippets of the Arrabal. What gave cohesion to the show was Savary’s discovery of his power to direct its progress from the stage in the traditional role of Monsieur Loyal. For him, “this ringmaster and conductor, who improvised his texts, conversed with the public, using every incident of the show to his advantage, playing the trumpet and drums while monitoring his troupe with one eye, was already […] the Grand Magic Circus.”132 The London show was an uncontested success. The Times critic Michael Billington saw the production as “a prolonged all-out assault on the audience’s senses” immersed in “an atmosphere of wild carnival exuberance”; spectators could expect to see “Tarzan-like figures swing above one’s head on ropes, a hairy fellow in a suspender belt fire a toy pistol at the front rows, and Bacchic chorus dance either frenziedly with each other or chastely with members of the audience”; for those interested in “new directions in the theatre,” recommended the reviewer, “you would be unwise to ignore it.”133 To the perplexed Arrabal visiting the London production, Savary explained his difficulties in recruiting performers as a reason for a significant change of emphasis in the title, which now read The Grand Panic Theatre, a spectacle by Jérôme Savary after Arrabal’s The Labyrinth. This shift is the first official indication of the troupe’s line diverging from the Panic actor-network by enrolling new components and dropping older ones. Arrabal understood and, years later, fully acknowledged the translation-qua-transformation: “Unforgettable my—no: ‘his’ Labyrinth in his staging.”134 Ultimately, as noted by theatre historian 132  Savary, La vie, 206. Of course, Savary could speak English as well during the show. Talking about his actions on stage, Savary explained: “I directed this performance with drums, a few horns, a microphone; when I wanted a certain person to stop performing, I would sound the drum. The result was quite extraordinary.” Knapp, “Sounding the Drum,” 94. The name Monsieur Loyal comes from Anselme-Pierre Loyal (1753–1826), one of the first famous circus personalities. Richard C. Webb reminds us that this character, the bonimenteur, “is a descendant of the celebrated bateleurs and prologueurs of early French theatre such as Bruscambille who became famous by his boisterous addresses to the audiences at the Hotel de Bourgogne. Traditionally his role was to quieten the audience before the start of the performance proper and to introduce the acts.” “Toward a Popular Theatre: Le Grand Magic Circus,” Journal of Popular Culture 9, no. 4 (1976): 843. 133  Michael Billington, “Exuberant Assault on Senses,” The Times, June 6, 1968, 13. 134  Arrabal, “¡Viva Jerónimo Savary!”

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Martin Sorrell, The Labyrinth “amounted to Savary’s rejection of theatre. To be tied to a text was to be tied to literature and thus to the Establishment.”135 In London, the show also caught the eye of La MaMa Theatre’s artistic director Ellen Stewart, who invited the group to the States for the Interact International Theatre Festival scheduled for August 1968 and held at Brandeis University. With its name changed once more to Grand Panic Circus, the show had no longer anything to do with Arrabal, having become “a conglomerate of numbers, of comical situations”136 that “rather resembled […] a happening, but a structured one, in which all elements seemed planned, choreographed and put to music to a precise score.”137 Combining the roles of author, director, orchestra conductor, and performer, Savary continued to organize the overall action through sound cues, to integrate external elements inspired by the auditorium or the audience, and to improvise connecting monologues between scenes.138 After the festival, the troupe was invited to extend performances in New York City and presented itself as Le Grand Panic Circus.139 Eventually, though, drawing an inevitable conclusion from the series of transformations that had intervened, Savary decided it was time to drop the Panic 135  Martin Sorrell, “Jérôme Savary, the Ordinary Magician of French Theatre,” in European Theatre 1960–1990: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. Ralph Yarrow (New York: Routledge, 1992), 47. The author clearly intends “theatre” as the traditional, text-based type of performance. 136  Michel Lebois, quoted in Godard, Jérôme Savary, 72. 137  Savary, La vie, 208. 138  Savary thus claims he preceded Tadeusz Kantor, the Polish visual artist and theatre practitioner most famous for appearing in the avant-garde performances he directed. Joseph Danan, who speaks of a shift in theatre-making from “the art of constructing a play” to “the art of constructing a show,” added that sometimes “one or more narrator figures (or a presenter, commentator or chorus) comes to replace represented action with the narration of the action in the present tense of the performance,” which is the case of Savary. “Dramaturgy in Postdramatic Times,” in New Dramaturgy: International Perspectives on Theory and Practice, ed. Katalin Trencsényi and Bernadette Cochrane (New York: Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2014), 6–14. 139  The show’s playbill indicates that performances ran between August 23 and September 7 at the Extension theatre located at 277 Park Avenue. See Jérôme Savary, Le Grand Magic Circus et ses animaux tristes: 30 ans d’aventures et d’amour (Paris: Théâtre National de Chaillot, BC, 1996), 21. Savary calls the space “an old decommissioned church” (La vie, 209) and Lebois describes it as “a small summer theatre, a Baptist congregation transformed into a cultural place.” Godard, Jérôme Savary, 72. Both Savary and Lebois state that the show ran a whole month.

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reference altogether and change the troupe’s name to Le Grand Magic Circus et ses animaux tristes (The Grand Magic Circus and its Sad Animals), with reference to men who have lost their sense of animality and instinct. The lengthy name, however, would often be shortened to Grand Magic Circus or simply Magic Circus.140 At that point in time the basic elements of the Grand Magic Circus’s alchemic formula had in many ways reached their maturity. Subsequently, with the addition of street theatre elements developed during parades such as those in New York’s Central Park or the Munich Olympic Games of 1972, the Grand Magic Circus would generate a number of successful productions presented in Europe, North and South America, and even the Shiraz Festival in Iran. These shows—from Zartan, le frère mal aimé de Tarzan (Zartan, the Unloved Brother of Tarzan, 1971) to Les derniers jours de solitude de Robinson Crusoë (The Last Days of Solitude of Robinson Crusoe, 1972) and De Moïse à Mao (From Moses to Mao, 1973)—continued to evolve the Grand Magic Circus’s line on the way to Good Bye Mister Freud and professionalism. From Moses to Mao, remarks Godard, “is the first really professional show of the Magic Circus. After [its debut in] Strasbourg and a tour, it’s now installed at Jean-Louis Barrault’s, at the Théâtre d’Orsay, and triumphs. […] Fire-eaters and fake zebras are reserved for the stage. For the fête on the stage. The Magic Circus has left marginality for good.”141 The importance of critics to the assemblage of a troupe’s success is obviously another element to consider in terms of the multiplicity of actors involved. Godard herself was instrumental in Savary’s translating his American success to France, after the troupe was practically ignored for a while despite the positive outcome of The Labyrinth. And Savary openly acknowledged her essential role: “Colette Godard […]  The neat linear sequence of name changes offered by Savary is somewhat disturbed by the fact that the Panic reference was reintroduced for the New York dates of Zartan and the Colonial Fairy Tale, performed for two weeks at La MaMa by the “Magic and Panic Circus” in 1970. Evidently the double name was meant to reconnect with audiences who had met the troupe under the earlier denomination. 141  Godard, Jérôme Savary, 113. Premiering at the Théâtre National de Strasbourg on November 6, 1973, the show was reprised in Paris at the Théâtre d’Orsay during the 1973–1974 season, up to June–July 1974, just before Good Bye Mister Freud debuted. Savary says it had 105% attendance. The “fake zebras” mentioned by Godard are visible, for instance, in a performance piece set in a natural history museum: see https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=tbSj1kFa0Wc, accessed January 28, 2023. 140

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comes see us in Central Park. We connect. She is, after that time, attentive to all that I do […]. I consider her to be the true historian of the Magic Circus […]. ‘Perform this in Paris,’ she tells me upon coming out of a performance at La MaMa. ‘This time it should work—besides I’ll give you a hand, you deserve it.’”142 The dramaturgical formula of the Magic Circus shows could be summed up by one of Savary’s artistic statements that makes explicit their composite nature: “the logic of my shows, those I write, is less the logic of the linear plot than a subjective assemblage of emotions and images, in the manner of collages by Man Ray or Duchamp. Being madly in love with stereotypes because they’re very theatrical, I love to assemble them my way and, by juxtaposing banal images, to compose a poetical universe.”143 For French theatre scholar Jean-Ives Coquelin, Savary “dream[ed] of a mixed art that welcomes theatre, fair mountebanks, circus, music-hall, comic strip, [and] popular literature heroes.”144 Such an approach lent itself to a “proliferation of tableaux […] governed by two principles: action and spectacle” whose main purpose was entertaining the audience.145 The show’s coherence was nevertheless assured by the audience’s familiarity with the stereotypical characters and original stories, all woven together by the ringmaster’s (re)assembling speeches. Thanks to his interventions, the Magic Circus’s unique style could tread a fine line, “moving  Savary, La vie, 234.  Savary, Ma vie, 89. 144  Jean-Ives Coquelin, “Pour un théâtre politique,” in Les années 70: De l’expérimentation à l’institutionnalisation, ed. Jean-Pierre Bertin-Maghit (Pessac: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 2006), 59. Along with other popular influences that include “the pantomime [as] the traditional source of men dressed up as animals” and “the cinema and in particular the horror film,” Webb argued that “the combination of the rapid action unexplained by deep psychology or motive and the brilliant color of the spectacle place le Grand Magic Circus style of production in the tradition of the comic strip. What all these have in common is their anti-literary nature.” “Toward a Popular Theatre,” 844. This unusual assemblage of circus and theatre was not immediately understood. Savary lamented that, of all the critics who attended an early production, “few were capable of writing a word about it, of describing any part of it. Poirot-Delpech of Le Monde telephoned the critic of Variétés, the one who writes all the reviews of circus, variety acts, etc., and asked him to write something. Our new brand of theatre won’t be accepted till the old literary type of dramatic production dies.” Knapp, “Sounding the Drum,” 95. 145  Webb, “Toward a Popular Theatre,” 843. In terms of dramaturgical structure, Whitton suggested similarities of this format with “the English pantomime tradition, with a series of burlesque episodes loosely following a central narrative.” Stage Directors, 184. 142 143

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along at an infallible rhythm between amateurishness flaunted as skill and professionality masquerading as incompetence.”146 Frequently, the troupe’s performances took place in unconventional spaces such as large tents and sports halls, set up with a multiplicity of acting areas that afforded a close interaction with the spectators. The pre-performance period, observed Sorrell, started with a “circus-like build-up, involving loud, brassy music, the play of strongly colored lights, and the chatter and activity of the troupe itself,” often dressed in extravagant, dazzling costumes combined with garish clown make-up. Along with rather naive entertainment numbers based on the performers’ special skills, the shows frequently created embarrassing situations, for instance due to the “sexual near-­ explicitness, the very frequent nudity of performers of both sexes, who were never shy of keeping themselves at an indelicate distance from the audience, and the creation of well-known characters from real life who were then made to behave in ‘outrageous’ fashion.”147 More importantly, however, during each performance the Magic Circus was able to create a sense of feast that, argues Coquelin, harked back to Vilar’s idea of popular theatre inspired by Medieval festivals.148 In fact, notes Knapp, Savary believed “the theatre to be a communal project, a celebration […] an excuse, a way to force people to communicate—to destroy the walls which make them live their inner existences alone. […] The difference between a performance and a feast or celebration is that the former is presented for others, the latter is something in which everyone participates.”149 Aligned with its Panic genealogy, Savary’s idea of fête thus closely resembled that of spontaneous communitas as conceptualized by Victor and Edith Turner, a joyous modality of being that abolishes status  Pierre Schneider, “Paris: Authority in Realm of Drama,” New York Times, May 8, 1972, 46. The author referred to the show Robinson Crusoe. 147  Sorrell, “Jérôme Savary,” 49. 148  Coquelin sees parallel intentions in the two directors, despite Vilar’s attachment to a frontal relation with the audience as opposed to the Magic Circus’s more interactive, in-theround approach. He also underscores the fête’s similarities with events and happenings, its “ephemerality, instantaneity, uniqueness, […] a pledge of virginity, a way to escape the frantic attacks of the cultural industry known for its powerful reproductive device. The unique object is a snub to profitability, financial rationality, to the laws of capitalist labor.” “Pour un théâtre politique,” 61–62. 149  Knapp, “Sounding the Drum,” 94. 146

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and structure.150 In this manner, by appealing to everyone, “illiterates as well as the intelligentsia,” Savary positioned himself in opposition to contemporary avant-garde theatre, which he viewed as too intellectual and therefore divisive.151

Converging Lines: The Copi-Savary Collaborative Pair And Copi? While Savary was developing the practical aspects of creating these theatrical fêtes, the playwright seemed to pursue a completely different direction as he wrote primarily text-based plays for Alfredo Rodríguez Arias and Lavelli, his most dedicated director.152 Speaking about his work with Lavelli and that director’s respect for the letter of his plays, Copi maintained that “in the theatre one improvises nothing. What can you improvise? The writer knows how to write; the director knows how to stage; the actor knows his job […]. One works around that. As for improvisation, children improvise, in kindergarten. […] I, at least, never improvised.”153 If Copi viewed improvisation as childish and amateurish, why, then, did he return in 1974 to the Grand Magic Circus’s decidedly 150  See, for instance, this definition of communitas that hints at an actor-network level of agency, in which different parts remain individuals but also co-function: “Communitas is a group’s pleasure in sharing common experiences with one’s fellows. […] It does not merge identities; the gifts of each and every person are alive to the fullest. It remains a spring of pure possibility, and it finds oneness, in surprise. That is, it has agency, and seems to be searching. It has something magical about it.” Edith Turner, Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 2–3. Similarly, for the Magic Circus, Sorrell speaks of “the visceral message of physical and mental joy that [it] imparted to all their spectators.” “Jérôme Savary,” 49. 151  Comparing his work to contemporary experimental directors, Savary opined: “The minute you have a ‘superman’ or a ‘supermystic’ performing before you—as does [Jerzy] Grotowski—you create a barrier. As for the Living Theatre, [Julian] Beck created a type of ‘prophetizing superman’ who disdains his audiences. This too destroys all sense of unity. He didn’t awaken any feelings of participation within the spectator—on the contrary, he created a division. There has been no greater failure today, as far as I am concerned, than the productions of the Living Theatre, rigid and purely intellectualized productions.” Knapp, “Sounding the Drum,” 94. 152  The plays staged until 1974 were La journée d’une rêveuse (The Day of a Dreamer, 1968) directed by Lavelli, Eva Perón (1970) directed by Rodríguez Arias, L’homosexuel ou la difficulté de s’exprimer (The Homosexual or the Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself, 1971) and Les quatre jumelles (The Four Twins, 1973), both directed by Lavelli. 153  Tcherkaski, Habla Copi, 84.

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anti-literary, ad-lib performance style? To understand the genesis of Good Bye Mister Freud we need to take a closer look at the playwright’s ongoing friendship with Savary within the context of a theory of collaborative circles expanded through the wider lens of ANT. In step with theorists who object to the idea of an isolated creative genius, sociologist Michael Farrell dedicated a volume to how friendship dynamics and creative work interact within collaborative circles, for example, among the French impressionists of the second half of the nineteenth century. These aggregations, suggests Farrell, tend to form when artists are in their twenties or early thirties and in moments of transition, such as “when they leave home, […] when they change professions, or when they begin a new stage in their career,”154 in other words, when they start “disengaging from the social networks of their adolescent years, but they are not yet established in an adult network.”155 Farrell references an idea similar to an actor-network when he speaks of an artistic “magnet place”: The network has peaks where there are many high-status members linked together in a single place; and it has valleys where there are no high-status persons. […] It was because of these peaks that Paris became a magnet place for young artists. They were drawn by the concentration of expertise, resources, and fame, as well as by the opportunities to develop their own skills, sell their work, and perhaps become famous themselves. […] If we view collaborative circles as new forms of life, we could say that they evolve in the dark valleys rather than on the brightly lit peaks of a discipline. The peaks are where the elite organize into hierarchical groups and work to preserve and extend the visions of a previous generation; the valleys are where collaborative circles of peers create new visions.156

For the outsider Argentines of Paris, about a century later, the valleys where friendships could arise were certain porous locations—“third places” away from work or home, to use urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg’s term—such as the left-bank cabarets near the Contrescarpe.157 According to Farrell’s definition, “a collaborative circle combines the dynamics of a 154  Michael P.  Farrell, Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics & Creative Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 19. 155  Ibid., 278. 156  Ibid., 267–68. 157  Ray Oldenburg, The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community (New York: Marlowe, 1999).

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friendship group and a work group. At the core is a set of friends who, over a period of time working together, negotiate a shared vision that guides their work. […] In the formation stage, the members may be no more than acquaintances who happen to be in the same place at the same time.”158 In fact, Savary began creating his first connections with Latin American theatre practitioners such as Víctor García and Hilcia d’Aubeterre mostly at the cabaret L’Escale.159 At the same time, argues Farrell, it is frequently within the “more intimate context of pairs” that “the most daring risks—the sharing of half-­ baked hunches, some of which went somewhere, some of which went nowhere—[occur].”160 In other words, in the context of magnet places filled with potential associations, pairs tend to engender even tighter connections and function “like an extended pod of [an] amoeba.”161 Savary speaks of his first acquaintance with Copi in his Amorous Dictionary of Show Business: “I met Copi […] in a South American cabaret on the Rue Monsieur-le-Prince. Our common past as humorists, our shared passion for theatre made us socialize very quickly. […] We were such friends that we vacationed together.”162 To complete the picture of this close friendship, in the winter of 1965–1966, Savary added a period of domestic proximity by hosting Copi for a few weeks at the Contrescarpe house. Since they were both “madly in love with theatre” but not yet professionals,163 the two of them decided to form a small amateur troupe to perform in Spanish for friends and immigrants on Sunday afternoons. The amateur nature of that company also indicates the artists’ situation at the time, in the valleys of the Parisian magnet place. According to Godard, the sketches that Copi wrote for Savary, Le thé (The Tea) and L’alligator (The Alligator), were “improvised for three quarters.”164 The origins of The Tea date back to the summer vacation that  Farrell, Collaborative Circles, 7.  Earlier, the Arts Déco context had been favorable for finding performers too, as we have seen. And the members of the Panic movement would count as a collaborative circle, although Savary was always slightly removed from the center of the action. 160  Farrell, Collaborative Circles, 34. 161  The amoeba is yet another image that resembles a star-shaped actor-network or a “blob” in Ingold’s terminology. 162  Savary, Dictionnaire amoureux, 167. 163  Savary, Ma vie, 139. 164  Godard, Jérôme Savary, 53. If only twenty-five per cent of the performance was actually based on pre-existing texts, this would of course contradict Copi’s denial of ever improvising as well as his claims to authorship. 158 159

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Savary, d’Aubeterre, and Copi took together in Ibiza in 1964. They shared a beach house just to the side of actress Martine Barrat’s villa, whose immense terrace hosted hashish and acid parties at night for “her clique of flowered hippies.”165 Based on performance artist Nicola L.’s recollection, The Tea was first improvised in Ibiza at her own informal salon as a caricature of mundane conventions, and then performed a few times at the Théâtre de Plaisance in Paris.166 The Alligator, on the other hand, was prepared for the UNEF festival in Paris during the summer-fall of 1966. Copi appeared as a crocodile and a rat, two animals from his artistic menagerie, while Savary played a princess and an explorer, with d’Aubeterre in the role of a savage.167 After his brief appearance in The Labyrinth, Copi did not collaborate with Savary again on professional theatrical endeavors until Good Bye Mister Freud, even though their day-to-day friendship continued. It was Copi who, through his Italian friend and publisher Giovanni Gandini, facilitated gigs for Savary to earn a living in 1968. By creating photo-­ novels on the ’68 events for the left-wing journal Ali-Baba in which both Copi and Arrabal played characters (along with friends from the Arts Déco and Sabine Monirys, Savary’s new partner), the photographer/director was able to make two thousand francs per published story.168 Additionally,  Savary, La vie, 189. Barrat would join the New York performances of the Grand Panic Circus in 1968. 166  Copi describes the short piece in this way: “It was a Chekhovian tempo, about Hilcia d’Aubeterre, wearing an Arab dress. Jérôme served us tea. I said:— the weather is good. And after three minutes: — the weather is bad. Three minutes later, she jumped onto her chair and shouted for three minutes. We changed places. She sat down again. […] I said:— I have a surprise for you. I poured the teapot over her head. She was dripping. That was all. We passed the hat after, with the teapot.” “Le théâtre exaltant,” 55–56. 167  Apparently, there were two versions of the sketch that depended on the audience: a sanitized version in Spanish for the family-oriented audience of South Americans on Sunday matinees and an obscene version in French in which Copi appeared naked. Barberis remarks that such “diptych illustrates the ambivalence of Copi’s universe and his capacity for switching from the children’s tale to a show for adults” Copi, 1:67. She also sees such brief sketches as the smallest unit of Copi’s dramaturgy: “It is from the brief form that a more constructed but still impulsive dramatic writing will later develop. The skit (‘sketch’) is a structural unit from which the theatrical form can overflow. It contains the principles of repetition and acceleration that will characterize the spinning of Copi’s dramaturgy.” Ibid., 56. 168  Savary, Album, 23. The volume also contains a photo-novel vignette with Monirys and Arrabal. Elsewhere, Savary speaks about the theatricality of his photographic work: “Through my camera’s objective, I realized some actual mises en scène. Like at the theatre, I chose the sets and directed the actors […]. Unable to make live theatre, I made my own little theatre in my photo-novels.” Savary, Ma vie, 140. 165

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Savary mentions regular outings with Copi: “during the 70s we went every Friday […] to the brasserie ‘La lune,’ in Place d’Italie, to listen to the weekly talent radio show.”169 This overlap of the convivial and expressive spheres, of the everyday and the artistic, already signals the existence of a privileged collaborative pair. But although pushing against the idea of a single creative genius, collaborative pairs in Farrell’s sense are still limited to human actors and can only go a certain distance in accounting for the multiplicity of agencies involved in theatre-making. From an ANT perspective, instead, it seems crucial in the case of Good Bye Mister Freud to include wine, at the very least, among the non-human actors impacting Copi and Savary’s joint creative endeavors. Despite the difficulty of pinpointing wine’s specific actions, a study by Emilie Gomart and Antoine Hennion can help to grasp a more impersonal notion of agency. Speaking of the effects of music and drugs, the authors argue for a shift from an “actor-network” to an “event-­ network theory” in which it is no longer necessary to understand precisely who acts, but rather what occurs and emerges. While artistic passion and drug addiction entail “the abandonment of forces to objects and the suspension of the self,” abandoning oneself “is not exclusively passive; it involves the participation of both the person and the object. […] These models of being/acting weave together what had seemed to be polar opposites—passivity and activity, determining and determined, collective and individual, and intention as against causality.”170 The same pertains to alcohol, which certainly counts as a substance that implies a level of reciprocal influence between the object and the human actors involved in its consumption. Interestingly, Savary mentions wine twice in his written portraits of Copi. In the troupe album published in the same year as Good Bye Mister Freud, the director describes him as “the king of silence. It’s crazy how significant his silences are. […] He works on bistro table corners, always in front of a glass.”171 Another time, he depicts Copi at work in Ibiza: “At the house, while drawing rats and ducks, Copi exclaimed: ‘I don’t drink  Savary, Dictionnaire, 426.  Emilie Gomart and Antoine Hennion, “A Sociology of Attachment: Music Amateurs, Drug Users,” in Actor Network Theory and After, ed. John Law and John Hassard (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999), 227. 171  Savary, Album, 75. A portrait of Savary and Copi in front of a glass of wine is available on the Getty Images website (https://www.gettyimages.com), n. 956630794, accessed January 28, 2023. 169 170

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anymore! […] Not a drop of alcohol. Just this little white wine that I put in the fridge and goes down like water’” (but Savary found out later that the wine had sixteen degrees of alcoholic content).172 Copi’s use of alcohol extended beyond private life to acting time: according to Lavelli, when Copi played the Postman in his own La journée d’une rêveuse (The Day of a Dreamer), he kept a vial of liquor on stage, attached to the tree he climbed during the performance.173 Of course, Savary was no teetotaler.174 As mentioned before, while working as a barman at Arlette Reinberg’s cabaret in 1963, he had not only served but also “accompanied” his customers to the point that even his figure changed: “I was thin, I became, that summer, the rather round man who speaks to you today.”175 What Savary and Copi had in common is that, unlike García for example, their passion for wine always maintained a fundamental balance, frequent use but without dangerous excess.176 In sum, while Copi and Savary were sitting around a table at the cabaret l’Escale, sympathizing about common experiences and passions, ANT would see wine as a very dynamic actor at work to facilitate the convergence of their lines. The reason this not uncommon catalyst for creativity is so prominently brought up here is because it became relevant for the entire troupe and the Good Bye Mister Freud production, to which wine brought not only its alcoholic influence on devising and performance but also economic support. 172  Savary, La vie, 189–90. A sign of Savary’s tendency to magnify, the degrees later became eighteen in Savary, Dictionnaire, 167. 173  Lavelli’s interview with Barberis, Copi, 1:54. 174  If Copi had been introduced to marijuana by his grandmother, Savary had been introduced to drinking by his father. During the French period of his adolescent years, he saw his father intermittently, but when he did, wine figured prominently in their outings: “My father, who had not followed my growth, often forgot that I was a child and, as soon as he had a drink near his nose, he treated me like an adult, training me, from bar to bar, in nights of, for me, unprecedented libations.” Savary, Ma vie, 67. 175  Ibid., 136. 176  Savary warned against hard drug addiction and excessive alcohol: “[T]hese days, in Paris, every day I come across artists who think they need drugs to create. And, as in New York in 1960, I see people destroy themselves in front of me. […] At the risk of appearing moralist […], I don’t support artists who take drugs to ‘have talent.’ And, when I audition performers for a new show, drugs, just like alcohol (when visibly taken in exaggeration) are a criterion of immediate elimination.” Ma vie, 107. Lavelli, instead, reports meeting García in a chaotic state due to alcohol and drugs: “I was not friends with Víctor García. He was unconscionable, to the point that he could take his life to real chaos. Once, I met him in Madrid and he was given to alcohol, to drugs; he’d lost that balance without which nothing can be done.” Cruz, “El teatro lírico.”

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The Good Bye Mister Freud Actor-Network “Savary alone NO! Copi alone NO! but Savary and Copi, I say YES right away!” replies Michel Guy, director of the Festival d’Automne to Alain Crombecque, his deputy, coming to propose to him our last project: Good Bye Mister Freud, an opera tango by Copi and Savary.177

Emboldened by the resounding success of From Moses to Mao and yet eager to step out of the routine of playing the same performance six times a week, Savary decided to produce a new show co-written with Copi. Although the above scene with Guy and Crombecque may well have been imagined, it has the benefit of highlighting precisely the importance of the association Savary-Copi as the sine qua non of this production from the point of view of both artistic recognition and marketability.178 Later, an editorial announcement published in Le Monde would hint at the blending of Copi’s and Savary’s sensibilities: “Jérôme Savary likes melodrama and the Châtelet, trompe l’oeil sets, the turntables, the painted canvases that bring down dreamy landscapes from the flies. Copi likes the Folies-­ Bergère, the women in feathers who, from one tableau to another, go from Chicago to Naples. Both love the tango, which expresses the long sigh of the solitary man.”179 It was the collaborative pair that generated the initial scenario of Good Bye Mister Freud during the summer of 1974: “We descended to my place, in the Corbière hills”—narrates Savary—“to write the piece together. In fact, we spent the summer drinking ‘a little white wine that goes down like water and says sixteen degrees’ and when the day came to begin rehearsals, we hadn’t written ten pages of text.”180 177  Savary, La vie, 266. For the full festival program, which included works by directors Peter Brook and Robert Wilson, see https://www.festival-automne.com/en/edition-1974, accessed January 28, 2023. Crombecque would become the director of the festival for the years 1974–1978. 178  The decision to collaborate of course involved Copi’s agency, too, but he left no details on this topic. The role of Crombecque should not be underrated, although the Festival d’Automne’s effective function as co-producer was limited to providing the space for the performance and not the actual organization and liquid financial investment. These were instead fronted by the Grand Magic Circus and would become a crucial element for the production’s earlier-than-expected closure. 179  “GOOD BYE MISTER FREUD par le Magic Circus,” Le Monde, December 19 and 26, 1974. The Théâtre du Châtelet is a theatre and opera house that seats around 2,500 spectators and the Folies-Bergère is the famous Parisian music hall, originally built as an opera house for around 1,600 spectators. Both are synonymous with large-scale productions. 180  Savary, La vie, 266–67.

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Naturally, the length of the written text was not the primary element for the Magic Circus’s shows. What matters most here is that the wine-­ influenced collaborative pair became the essential component to put the production’s assemblage in motion. The smaller assemblage, however, soon inserted itself into a different kind of group, a hybrid between the collaborative circle of the Grand Magic Circus’s beginnings and an emergent, more professional formation. As mentioned earlier, with From Moses to Mao the company had undergone a decisive shift from amateurism to professionalism. So much so that, in June 1974, Savary celebrated the rather individualist attitude among members of his troupe: you have to understand what the Circus is and how it works on the inside. In no way do we form a community. Of course, we have a group existence insomuch as we spend 250 days a year together, half the time on tour. But there’s one thing I really like about the Circus, it’s the fierce individualism of each troupe member; it’s just the opposite of communal troupes, where you have everybody on top of each other all the time, eating together, etc.181

Savary’s words were a not-too-veiled attempt to distance his troupe from director Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil, a company whose actor-­ network activity and collective creation approach competed with the Grand Magic Circus.182 At the same time, Savary was portraying his company as the opposite of a collaborative circle, less interested in the convivial in favor of the expressive sphere, essentially a task-oriented action team.183 181  Savary, Le Grand Magic Circus, 123 (English translation contained in the volume, italics added). 182  Savary also boasted of his troupe’s better conditions for actors as a reason for their “betrayal” of the other company, while roasting Mnouchkine on her elite status: “Ours was what you might call a parallel development. Curiously enough, quite a few of LGMC’s players and other personnel came to us from Soleil. One reason was, simply, that I paid them more. Another perhaps is that we had a bit more fun in LGMC. A further difference between us is that Mnouchkine works in one place […], she hasn’t been seen by that many people outside Paris. Her appeal is often to the ‘aficionados’ of theatre.” Martin Sorrell, “An interview with Jérôme Savary, Artistic Director of the Théâtre National Populaire, Paris,” Studies in Theatre Production 1 (1990): 48–49. 183  Action teams are “specialized teams that generate a product or a service through highly coordinated actions.” Donelson Forsyth, Group Dynamics, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2010), 354. As usual things are never so clear-cut: the presence of long-time collaborators like Michel Lebois or Savary’s romantic partners within the group would indicate a gamut of relationships that must have continued to operate even in the new professional situation.

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The clearest sign of professionalism was the casting, for the first time, of a performer of such renown as Micheline Presle. Like Copi, Savary loved stars,184 but Presle had already been fascinated by the troupe as a spectator of earlier shows: “I’ve seen something extraordinary: the Magic Circus!”—she had told her daughter Tonie—“You see, if I were your age, I would immediately leave with them.”185 But the Magic Circus’s process of translating performers into its network did not stop at the start of rehearsals: invited by Godard to see a striptease performer working from a caravan on the Paris periphery, the director ended up casting the artist Mona Mour (the playful stage name of Mona Heftre) for the chorus line of Good Bye Mister Freud, just a week before the premiere.186 It was normal for performers to enter the Magic Circus by co-optation rather than audition, with Savary as the main gatekeeper. Devising Good Bye Mister Freud: “Two Authors, or Everyone-­Author, or No Author?” Rehearsals started in late summer, overlapping with other projects.187 A glimpse into Good Bye Mister Freud’s devising process was provided by 184  Describing Copi, Savary stated: “He was also a socialite, an Oscar Wilde. He loved rich people and famous people. […] Sometimes it happened that we played at the Rothschilds.” Dossier of the Nouvel Obs, 62, quoted in Barberis, Copi, 1:15. Troupe member Michel Dussarrat, in turn, portrayed Savary as follows: “Jérôme is fascinated by the star system. When he casts Micheline Presle for Good bye Mr. Freud, he puts himself in impossible states. He never stops saying: ‘You’re imperial … A chair for Micheline … Aren’t you cold? Do you want the window closed?…’” Godard, Jérôme Savary, 145. 185  Micheline Presle, Di(s)gressions: Conversations avec Stéphane Lambert (Paris: Stock, 2007), 39. This occurred in 1971, after the performer had seen Zartan, the Unloved Brother of Tarzan at the Théâtre of the Cité Internationale in Paris. See also Presle’s contemporaneous interview: “If I wanted to be part of the Magic Circus […] it’s because its shows match a spirit that is mine, a ‘state of laughter’ that is mine. For me, the theatre is an essential form of life. As for the Circus, it isn’t a question of madness but of vision of things.” Françoise Varenne, “Le Grand Magic Circus à la Porte Saint-Martin: Good Bye mister Freud! … Good Morning monsieur Savary!” Le Figaro, November 4, 1974. 186  Savary, La vie, 271–74. Heftre also obtained a role in the movie written with Topor and, on a personal level, after Savary left Sabine Monirys, became Savary’s partner and mother of their children Nina and Manon. Copi’s play La Pyramide (The Pyramid, 1975) would be dedicated “to Mona and Jérôme.” 187  The earliest article on the show I was able to find, “Micheline Presle at the MAGIC CIRCUS,” appeared in Le Figaro on August 19, 1974, signed F. de S. In the meantime, Savary was also working as screenwriter on a film with Topor, Le boucher, la star et l’orpheline (The Butcher, the Star, and the Orphan, 1975) with Micheline Presle, Christopher Lee, Michel Simon, Delphine Seyrig, and Copi as main performers.

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journalistic reportages such as the article by Françoise Varenne, who witnessed Copi transcribing the dialogues improvised by the actors: although they are co-authors, they did not write the piece. It’s now, as the rehearsals progress, that lines are imagined. And it’s worth watching Copi, a slender young man who looks perpetually shy and serious, feverishly jot down in a big notebook with a spiral binding what will be the fabric of the dialogue. When it’s his turn to enter the scene, he hands the notebook over to someone else before jumping into the shoes of a slightly lecherous Dracula.188

Years later, reminiscing about the show, Savary emphasized the tight director-playwright collaboration, aided by a strong level of alcoholic agency: “soon the Porte-Saint-Martin resounded […] with rock and tango. We wrote day by day, Copi and I, sitting, like two Siamese brothers, in the tenth row of the orchestra and with the help of a bottle of whisky which, invariably, at the stroke of two o’clock in the morning, came toppling over the scattered sheets.”189 A multi-actor version of the show’s development was related, instead, by critic Patrick Thevenon, who depicted the dramaturgical process as an act of more distributed collective creation: “There’s no written version of Jérôme Savary’s shows, and their transmission is oral, in the great tradition of storytellers and troubadours. On the stage […], the scrawny Copi […] launches a line. Savary, in the room, catches it, sends it back. An actor captures it: a character is created. Another responds of his own initiative: a dramatic action draws itself.”190 At the end of the devising period, the opera-tango had a clear overall structure, if in need of a few refinements. Although a filmed record of the entire show is unavailable, a detailed description of the third performance of Good Bye Mister Freud, supplemented with illustrative charts, was provided by Paula Kim after attending a month of rehearsals in preparation of

 Varenne, “Le Grand Magic Circus.”  Savary, La vie, 267. The tight connection evoked by Siamese brothers has a parallel in a little scene reported by Patrick Thevenon from Copi’s point of view: “Slim down a little, Copi tells [Savary] ironically, and I’ll get us a seat for both of us at the French Academy” “Portrait. Magic Circus: après Tarzan et Mao, Freud…” L’Express, October 14–20 (1974): 27. By positioning the two artists on the same level, these two images reflect an egalitarian spirit of collaboration typical of collaborative pairs. 190  Thevenon, “Portrait,” 27. 188 189

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her doctoral dissertation.191 Overall, the performance started with a prologue, and continued with fourteen scenes in two parts. Unlike From Moses to Mao, which consisted of a series of independent numbers connected by Savary’s speeches, Good Bye Mister Freud had a more developed storyline that alternated partially improvised scenes with numerous songs written by Copi.192 The melodramatic show’s heroine is Mimi Freud, a French laundress and the Tsar’s lover, who flees Moscow after the revolution but takes the crown jewels with her. Often crossing paths with two rival groups, the bloodthirsty bandits of the Marx gang in pursuit of the jewels and the acrobat performers of the entertaining Shakespeare troupe,193 Mimi is saved by Count Dracula. In his castle she gives birth to her son, the hunchbacked Sigmund, the result of a double rape by the diabolical Marcello Marx and a dwarfish Al Capone. Fleeing the Marx gang, Mimi travels to William Tell’s Switzerland, boards the Titanic in Venice, is taken to the Amazon by a jungle ghost, finds herself aboard a pirate’s boat in Santo Domingo, and is then forced to prostitute herself in New Orleans. Continuing Mimi and Sigmund’s peripeteias, a stop in New York’s Central Park leads the son to discover psychoanalysis and Mimi to 191  Paula Kim, “Le Grand Magic Circus: Good bye Mister Freud,” Diss., Université Sorbonne nouvelle-Paris 3 (Paris: UFR d’études théâtrales, 1975). Photos related to the show are available on the Getty Images website (https://www.gettyimages.com), often catalogued without the name of the show: nn. 162750715 and 162750717 (the troupe outside the theatre); 162750719, 162750722, 162750724, 162750732–38, 948277392 (Copi as Dracula), 956630826 (Copi, Savary, and Presle), 965817802 (Copi and Savary), 1199882141, 1199882258, 1199882263, 1199882309, 1199882320, 1199882323, 1199882422, 1301156746. A few pictures appear in the Grand Magic Circus’s photo books; in addition, contact sheets of production photos are viewable at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). Finally, radio talks on the show were broadcast on November 2 and 24 and December 3 and 8, 1974 (http://inatheque.ina.fr, accessed January 28, 2023). 192  Savary viewed songs as a good starting point for ensemble cohesion: “It all starts with songs that we write and repeat. This is the best way to get a group together.” Janick Jossin, “La fête chez Savary: L’album de famille, le dessous de la fête … Racontée par son animateur, l’aventure du Grand Magic Circus,” L’Express, November 18, 1974. Barberis notes how the spirit of musical comedy and the style of these songs anticipates the later plays in verse by Copi, Les Escaliers du Sacré-Cœur (The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur) and Cachafaz with reference to the imagery of the slums and to popular song genres, including the ritournelle, complainte (lament), and drinking song. Copi, 1:133. These plays will be analyzed in the next two chapters. The plot involving Russian aristocracy and exotic locations of Good Bye Mister Freud is also reminiscent of Copi’s The Homosexual or the Difficulty of Sexpressing Onself. 193  Although I differentiate the names in the translation, both the Shakespeare troupe and the Marx gang are labeled with the same word in French, “la bande à Shakespeare” and “la bande à Marx.”

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extract the jewels she had hidden in his hump. While Mimi and everyone fly to Rio de Janeiro to distribute the jewels to the poor, Sigmund steals a rocket and leaves this world for good.194 Writing for Le Quotidian de Paris about this “photo-novel adventure,” reviewer Alain Leblanc was impressed by the assemblage of heterogeneous situations, “mixing genres, story and history, the particular, the general, the eighteenth, [and] the twentieth century.” Enthusiastically speaking of “a Baroque celebration, healthy madness, where laughter gushes out like firecrackers, where joy is in the air like a breath of fresh air on a polluted street, […], all sprinkled with glitter,”195 he also noted the creative team’s cavalier attitude towards their subject: Good Bye Mister Freud is the result of the interaction of the twin spirits Jérôme Savary-Copi […] and the troupe. If we stick to the title, we could think of an attack on Freudian thought. However, the Magic Circus doesn’t even bother to, it turns its back on psychoanalysis, resolutely. […] There is, in the Savary-Copi idea, an aggressive Walt Disney side that overthrows laws, taboos, legends, symbols. “Go away, Freud, we don’t need you anymore.”196

Similarly, Godard argued: “Today Savary may have become as subversive as he was at the beginning, he refuses comfort, upsets his followers, always disconcerts others. He takes risks.”197 194  The Rio tableau featured a final dance, which had become one of the Magic Circus’s trademarks. Savary stated: “We rounded off all our shows at that time with a long burst of Latin American music, usually a samba, which got the audience dancing. Incidentally, nearly all our actors and actresses were also accomplished musicians.” Sorell, “An Interview,” 48. A short clip of the last tableau is available at http://fresques.ina.fr/en-scenes/fiche-media/ Scenes00408/le-magic-circus-good-bye-mister-freud-et-micheline-presle.html, accessed January 28, 2023. 195  Leblanc, “Le Grand Magic Circus.” 196  Ibid. This iconoclastic approach seems filtered through what Jean Duvignaud would call the baroque and kitsch imaginaries of rupture. B.–K.: Baroque et kitsch, imaginaires de rupture (Arles: Actes Sud, 1997). On the same subject, Godard highlighted, instead, the childlike joy stimulated by this collection of clichés: “As for Jérôme Savary, […] [t]he father of psychoanalysis interests him as parent of clichés […]. To remain in the field of the cliché, […] Savary brings back to the spectators their child’s soul. That is to say that, at the Magic Circus, one’s eyes widen, one is surprised, not to applaud, but to clap like in front of a fairy showcase of toys.” Colette Godard, “De Savary à Barrault: Freud et Nietzsche sur les planches,” Le Monde, November 12, 1974. 197  Ibid.

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Less enthusiastic, Matthieu Galey, a critic who had previously appreciated the troupe’s joyously improvisatory work, seemed appalled this time by Copi’s presence within the show’s assemblage. In his opinion, an author could indeed be harmful to the Magic Circus, a competitor veering in the wrong direction, even tainting with his malaise the troupe’s “warm complicity of a fête”; citing Copi’s “sinister humor, uncanny obsessions, and very peculiar mythology,” Galey found that “there’s something profoundly tragic in this little man who plays the clown, and appears to us as a sentimental Dracula.”198 In other words, Galey seemed to perceive a potentially dangerous departure from the troupe’s line of becoming, arising from the introduction of Copi into the mechanism. And yet, Savary himself would later observe that a certain melancholy quality belonged to the very style of the Magic Circus: “I measure to what point my theatre is contradictory. People came in droves to laugh, and they laughed, it’s evident. But the core of my shows was rather tragical and often very melancholy.”199 After all, the mixed, tragicomic tone of the show could be attributed equally to Copi, Savary, and their shared passion for the plaintive tango music. And yet, the joint authorship announced in the program generated more controversies. Its ambiguities were summed up in a vitriolic review by Dominique Jamet, who remarked: “Good-bye Mr. Freud is presented to us both and contradictorily like the last collective production of the Grand Magic Circus (neither god nor master nor laws nor author) and as the signed work of Copi and Jérôme Savary. So, two authors, or everyone-­ author, or no author? It does not matter anyway.”200 From the point of  Matthieu Galey, “GOOD BYE MISTER FREUD Opéra-tango de Copi et Jérôme Savary: Un auteur, pourquoi faire?,” Le Quotidien de Paris, November 8, 1974. 199  Savary, Ma vie, 181. The director often described himself as a “melancomic”: see, for instance, http://www.lefigaro.fr/culture/2013/03/05/03004-20130305ARTFIG00511jerome-savaryle-grand-melancomique.php, accessed January 28, 2023. Of course, the alchemy of these different moods could be seen from an opposite point of view emphasizing the mirth. Just a week earlier, Leblanc had commented on the peculiar mix offered by the Magic Circus: “For those who know how to see, there is under the party and the Auguste’s makeup, something derisively lucid and nostalgic. The space of an instant. But the party is there, that doesn’t care about anything but the streamers and the cotillons.” “Le Grand Magic Circus.” 200  Dominique Jamet, “À la Porte Saint-Martin ‘Good-bye, Mr. Freud’ de COPI et Jérôme SAVARY,” L’Aurore, November 8, 1974. 198

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view of current devising practices, there is obviously no contradiction in assuming an ongoing oscillation between collective creation and individuals who take more responsibility for certain areas depending on their specialization. Copi may well have been the one transcribing, while Savary focused more intensely on the mise en scène, and all performers improvised. Nonetheless, it is true that, at the time of the production (rather than years later in his retrospective autobiography), Savary was sending mixed signals. On the one hand, he listed Copi as co-author, thereby profiting from the association with him and his recent fame as playwright for acceptance into the festival, while, on the other hand, he simultaneously posited himself as the sole spokesperson for the entire troupe. In other words, once the collaborative pair component was translated and plugged into the actual production’s machine, its relative weight changed: Savary took over and Copi became, in his view, just one of the several other agencies of the larger company. This point is worth analyzing in depth because it illustrates one of Savary’s dominant actor-network strategies. The Director and the Machine In his director’s notes for Good Bye Mister Freud, Savary put forth two complementary principles underlying the Magic Circus’s work. The first, “respect for the actor as individual,” entailed that performers script their own role in the manner of commedia artists, both in rehearsal and during a show’s run, in dialogue with the spectators’ reactions. The second principle, the absence of a written text, meant that “theatre is not written, it is lived day by day, rewritten night after night (and then, in case, it’s transcribed). […] The presence of Topor or Copi is, therefore, not that of an author in the classic sense. […] Their function is that of advisers. They participate in the creation of the show by providing a view external to that of the Circus. They become themselves, at the same time, members of the troupe.”201 Thus, after elevating the performer over the playwright, the director moved to relegate Copi’s role to that of scribe and external adviser, only to immediately assemble and blackbox him into the troupe in

 Good Bye Mister Freud program, available at the Richelieu branch of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), call number WNG-5(1974). https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/cb414479291, accessed January 28, 2023. 201

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general.202 This relationship differed markedly from the image of the Siamese brothers that emphasized the collaborative pair. Ultimately, as administrator Christian Gay-Bellile remarked, “Even if the work is described as ‘collective creation,’ […] Jérôme rightly consider[ed] himself the author of the shows.”203 And, indeed, from the point of view of ANT, this behavior was to be expected: “an actor is an author,” or “an intermediary that puts other intermediaries into circulation. […] But the network of intermediaries accepted by an actor after negotiation and transformation is in turn transformed by that actor. It is converted into a scenario, carrying the signature of its author, looking for actors ready to play its roles.”204 Of course, strategies varied. For Gay-Bellile, who witnessed the troupe dynamics from the inside, “Jérôme is the boss. Dictator? Not really. The actors aren’t ready to be manipulated. Jérôme’s charisma is indisputable, he always manages to persuade his interlocutors […]. Of all, he’s the most inventive, has a rare sense of space, in pictures. The troupe recognizes it, they obey.”205 Savary’s role as dominant actor-network within his troupe was also made clear performatively by the fact that he, as usual, directed the show as onstage ringleader: in Good Bye Mister Freud he had a little corner, stage left, reserved for his improvised interventions. Such a visible persona prompted some friendly critics to extol his ability to lead: “They’re thirty— South American and French in the majority—who march behind Savary like a single man,” wrote Thevenon, reminding us of the image of the

202  The final result was not always satisfactory, and a number of reviewers objected to a fundamental lack of substance on the textual level. Jean-Jacques Gautier of the Académie française, not unexpectedly, criticized the work as insufficiently witty due to the lack of an author: “Creativity and collective creation! Dear nonsense. Decidedly, Mr. Everyone has less wit than Mr. Voltaire.” “‘Good bye Mr. Freud’ par le Grand Magic Circus,” Le Figaro, November 8, 1974; similarly, reviewer J. V. regretted a lack of more biting satire: “the text of this ‘opera-tango’ shines by its absence. No more antireligious perfidy, or so little (the brief appearance of the Pope), the only characters really manhandled being Tsar Nicholas II, Count Dracula, Al Capone, and William Tell!” “Le Grand Magic Circus dans ‘Good bye Mr Freud,’” La Croix, December 8, 1974; finally, Jamet did not mince words, finding the show empty compared to its immediate predecessors: “This ‘Freud’ is a repetition, a stuttering, a twin given by the Magic to From Moses to Mao. But an aborted twin, dreary and stillborn in debility, poverty, ugliness, and vulgarity.” “À la Porte Saint-Martin.” 203  Godard, Jérôme Savary, 123. 204  Callon, “Techno-Economic Networks,” 141–42. 205  Godard, Jérôme Savary, 123–24.

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Leviathan.206 “Whether we accept it or not, the Savary miracle exists. […] Like the flute player who led the little children, they follow him,” added Varenne.207 Weighing the pros and cons of Savary’s overriding role, Whitton found that “the Grand Magic Circus’s strength and weakness is that it is so entirely the creation of one man. […]. He is metaphorically, and often literally, a one-man band.”208 Yet, such an impression was nothing but the result of the blackboxing of numerous other agencies, achieved through the constant renewal of Savary’s spokesmanship, which often resulted in an almost complete silencing of other actors’ voices outside of rehearsals. Perhaps the most telling description of this mechanism appeared in a review of the Grand Magic Circus Album, in which the only balance to the director’s narrative was the mute pictures of the shows: Jérôme Savary is inexhaustible. He never stops recounting. We feel him passionate about his own story, amazed by his contradictions, ambitious and naive, sincere and poignant, egocentric and generous. […] He would forget about his Magic Circus buddies, so interested is he in his own story. But the photos are there […]. They show what has not been explained: the evidence of a total freedom, of a new expression, of a real collective creation.209

Despite Savary’s strategies to control his troupe’s narrative as their enthusiastic and, at times, overbearing spokesman, it is now crucial to understand that, at the moment of creating a specific production such as Good Bye Mister Freud, the director and the whole team were also endowing the project with its own agency of actor-network at a higher scale, i.e., containing all of them as its components. Ultimately, it was the production’s actor-network that primarily interacted with spectators and critics, in turn creating new assemblages every evening. Underscoring the importance of introducing spectators into the mix as ever-changing, co-­ functioning components, in an interview with critic Janick Jossin, Savary stated that he and the whole troupe did not “begin to understand the meaning of the shows until towards the tenth performance.”210 As a  Thevenon, “Portrait.”  Varenne, “Le Grand Magic Circus.” 208  Whitton, Stage Directors, 188. Savary was often nicknamed “the man-orchestra.” See, for instance, https://www.francetvinfo.fr/culture/spectacles/theatre/jerome-savary-leretour-de-l-039-homme-orchestre_3297935.html, accessed January 28, 2023. 209  Jossin, “La fête.” 210  Ibid. 206 207

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consequence, deduced his interviewer, “from one rehearsal to another, then from one performance to the other, the show develops, reaches maturity. […] But nothing ever stabilizes. As the performances progress, the play evolves, ages, and dies.”211 In truth, Savary soon found out that he did not have full control of the machine he had contributed to giving life to and its interactions with the audience: “The last preview was triumphant, but the press of the next day was execrable. It couldn’t find enough assassin words to describe this slapstick, and I realized then, but a little late, that I would have done better to extend From Moses to Mao than to embark on this new adventure.”212 The controversies about authorship seen earlier were evidently ignited by the fact that the show did not immediately work fluidly, and critics needed to re-open the opaque black box in order to understand who or what was to blame. Was it Copi’s melancholy contribution to the usually joyous fêtes created by the company? Was it the lack of a prepared text that loomed over a shoddy process of collective creation? There were also other reasons. Several critics underscored a disconnection among the parts of the assemblage in terms of acting, with a general sense that Presle seemed removed from the rest of the troupe. During rehearsals, from Savary’s viewpoint, Presle had seemed to loosen up once immersed in the Magic Circus’s uplifting atmosphere: “When she arrives, […] she’s got her big felt hat of a left-bank bourgeoise on her head. It’s Anna Karenina with Ubu. But when she removes it, she’s one of us. Docile, hardworking, never tired. And we see her a little bit more cheerful every day.”213 This description portrays the act of transformation by contagion that occurred once a new, fairly foreign component was incorporated within the Magic Circus’s assemblage and started co-functioning with it. And yet, once in performance, reviewer Pierre Marcabru found that Presle “has only one foot in the show, not in her element, like a foreign body, badly served and serving badly,”214 an impression corroborated by Godard: “she doesn’t yet dare to ‘let herself play,’ she remains within the limits of the pretty and well made.”215 Some reviews were more positive: Galey appreciated how Presle “convert[ed] herself heroically to burlesque. Even if she still 211  Ibid. See also Savary: “Each of our productions works like a literary or artistic movement: it’s born, it lives and it dies.” Le Grand Magic Circus, 123 (translation in the volume). 212  Savary, La vie, 276. 213  Varenne, “Le Grand Magic Circus.” 214  Pierre Marcabru, “Good bye, Mr Freud!,” France Soir, November 8, 1974. 215  Godard, “De Savary à Barrault.”

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seem[ed] a little intimidated,”216 while the otherwise dissatisfied Jamet singled her out as “intense in this situation, body, talent and goods,”217 yet another sign, though, of the performer’s distance from the rest of the troupe.218 In regard to the overall ensemble cohesion, the critics’ reaction may also have been influenced by the ongoing development of the show, since they attended on different days. For Marcabru, on November 8, “the actors of the Great Magic Circus, who are usually so spontaneous, so bold, seemed to float about, looking for their rhythm, uncertain.”219 By contrast, Godard, ever the Magic Circus’s fan, only four days later viewed this as a staging that preserves and exploits the extraordinary freedom acquired by the troupe. […] [A]ll dance and sing as great professionals and allow themselves to “go over the top” without being overwhelmed. It is a perpetual explosion of inventions, gags that go beyond parody, they recompose tableaux of a disturbing sophistication, of explosive beauty, of insinuating poetry also due to the presence of Copi, lunar Dracula, pale marionette with a top hat, always about to break.220

But aside from the acting itself, another frequent point of contention was that the warm and close relationship with the audience that had come to define the Magic Circus did not translate properly to a conventional proscenium theatre, a mixed blessing for a troupe used to more flexible  Galey, “GOOD BYE.”  Jamet, “À la Porte Saint-Martin.” 218  Opinions were also mixed in regard to the actor playing Freud: for Galey, “Amazing Baby Freud, Jean Paul Farré […] remains short on his potential. He’ll need, with the run, to ‘free himself’ more, to find himself, with his high pitch voice and his very personal madness, which are irresistible.” “GOOD BYE”; for the less hopeful Jamet, “of Jean-Paul Farré (Freud) remains only the high-pitched voice.” “À la Porte Saint-Martin.” 219  Marcabru, “Good bye, Mr Freud!” 220  Godard, “De Savary à Barrault”; “The silhouette of Copi as Dracula” was also noted by Jamet as one of the few things to salvage from the show, along with “the astonishing voice, of bronze, of Jérôme Savary.” “Good-bye, Mr. Freud.” Some scenes, i.e., components of the show’s overall dramaturgical assemblage, were considered more successful than others: for J. V. “the staging (half-Châtelet, half-Folies-Bergère) teems with spectacular showpieces that one would envy to a music hall.” “Le Grand Magic Circus”; Jamet saw “a pretty successful silent battle scene.” “Good-bye, Mr. Freud”; and Marcabru found that “one or two scenes succeeded. New Orléans, for example.” “Good bye, Mr Freud!”; Savary reported that his “tango with Copi inevitably caused the spectators’ hilarity.” La vie, 276. 216 217

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spaces. To start with, Savary acknowledged the difficulty, while upholding the necessity to adapt to the place proposed for the staging, which depended on the Festival d’Automne’s availability: One has to play where one is and make the place play with you. […] We’d have preferred to play in a large empty space where contact would have been easier […] and visibility better. But such a place hasn’t been proposed and perhaps doesn’t exist. […] For the Circus, an old theatre offers enormous possibilities of play and entertainment. So, since we’re in a magic box, we won’t try to make believe we’re not and, for once, will make it work.221

Embracing the specificity of the site, the troupe employed Italianate stage machinery to show “moonlights, blue skies, painted canvases that rise and fall, carton panels arranged in perspective, boats sliding in the distance.”222 And to facilitate the connection with the audience, the orchestra space was organized into three areas: stage left was reserved for the musicians, stage center for a podium, and stage right for small round tables, a cabaret for the spectators. To the sides, stairs led to the first balcony and one of the boxes. Kim noted that interactions with the audience were more frequent during the first half of the show (in the prologue, scenes 2, 3, 4, 6, and the intermission) and became rarer in the second half (scenes 11 and 14), possibly due to the dwindling rehearsal time as the premiere approached.223 An example of a highly physical, close interaction with the audience was perceived by Savary as extremely provoking:

221  Good Bye Mister Freud program. The Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin is located at 18 Boulevard Saint-Martin. See https://www.portestmartin.com/page/historique-du-theatrede-la-porte-saint-martin, accessed January 28, 2023. In an earlier interview, asked if he ever performed in theatres, Savary replied: “I do [so] out of necessity but I don’t like to. It depresses me. Seeing people lined up before us in seats watching the curtain go up or down just saddens me. I am a firm believer in magic, in the creation of atmosphere.” Knapp, “Sounding the Drum,” 94. 222  Godard, “De Savary à Barrault.” 223  Presle seemed surprised by a lack of Savary’s direction towards the end: “Rehearsals were epic. I don’t know why Jérôme had stumbled on the last tableau, whose staging he’d completely thrown away. In the end, the evening of the premiere, we weren’t ready. But it took place. And, at the end of the show, which was attended by all the Paris notables, I still have this image of these personalities stepping onto the stage, looking sorry, coming to express their ‘condolences’!” Presle, Di(s)gressions, 39–40.

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The scene that was a unanimous success was certainly the brothel in New Orleans, because it was worthy of the best tableaux of the Crazy Horse.224 Stimulated by the competition, the girls of the Circus engaged in contortions of a torrid eroticism, and Mona, who was no longer shy at all with us, brought out all her talent as a stripper. […] [S]he provoked the spectators. She generally liked a man of a certain age, bald if possible, then she sat on his knees, caressed his head as if he were a baby, rubbing her breasts on his nose and taking advantage of his unease in order to “pull” ten bucks from his wallet. The audience, of course, was thrilled; the man was sweating.225

But critics were not always persuaded by such eroticism and at times received the opposite impression. Reviewer J. V., for instance, remarked: “On stage, the actors say and do rigorously whatever. But […] they say it and do it innocently. Thus, for example—it is the hallmark of the house— many integral nudes, both male and female. Not the shadow of an erotic solicitation in these exhibitions. It’s naturism, probably ironic, at least quite relaxed.”226 And, disinclined to see the irony, Jamet found the “strutting [of] their buttocks, breasts, and genitals in the wind,” literally under the spectators’ nose, to be “neither shocking nor especially attractive.”227 In general, however, it was the combination of the Magic Circus’s overall performance style and the traditional space of the Italianate theatre that appeared to be highly problematic for a number of critics. Galey, hoping for future improvements, remarked that the theatre, with its gold and curtains, doesn’t lend itself to direct contact with the audience, but communication will eventually become established in the long run. […] It may not be a coincidence after all if the Magic Circus finds itself on a boulevard, after starting its career in small avant-garde theatres. But this kind of achievement condemns [it] to a success [that remains] within the neat limits of a recipe-house. One shouldn’t change cuisine too much nor the cook.228

Adopting a geometrical, rather than culinary, metaphor, Marcabru added:

224  The Crazy Horse is a Parisian cabaret theatre known for its shows featuring nude female performers. See https://www.lecrazyhorseparis.com/en, accessed January 28, 2023. 225  Savary, La vie, 276. 226  J. V., “Le Grand Magic Circus.” 227  Jamet, “À la Porte Saint-Martin.” 228  Galey, “GOOD BYE.”

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the Grand Magic Circus had accustomed us to the fête, to disorder, to the charivari. […] The current doesn’t flow. Why? First because Jérôme Savary […] undertakes here a geometrically hazardous operation. He tries to put a circle in a rectangle. […] [H]is staging, his technique, his processes, all his strings belong to the circus, the round, the close play with the spectators in the know, accomplices who kick the ball back. In an Italianate theatre like the Porte Saint-Martin, with its ramp, its audience that climbs up to the third balcony, it’s impossible to make this work.229

In earlier productions the Magic Circus had adapted their performance techniques to unconventional and outdoors spaces, thereby developing a dramaturgy of relatively independent tableaux and larger than life stereotypical characters.230 However, for Good Bye Mister Freud, that dramaturgy had been readapted back to the most conventional space possible. For some, this new setting indicated that the troupe was headed towards conformism with the theatrical establishment. In a review of the Grand Magic Circus Album, J.-D. Bauby saw a danger that, with the recent recognition by the Ministry of Culture, Savary could soon become “the buffoon of the regime” and the Magic Circus would soon play “under a four thousand-­ seat dome, a show of real professionals who would have nothing to envy to the Châtelet,” thus leaving behind a “nostalgia of the heroic times, of the hen and the party whistles.”231 Indeed, since its beginnings, the Magic Circus had acquired a dedicated following, portrayed by Galey as an “audience of unconditional fans, from young people who laugh from the start to the provincial bourgeoisie happy to feel at home without risk. And let’s not forget the intellectuals, invigorated by this bath of not too subtle jokes”; and yet, a material consequence of the conventional theatre space was a considerable hike in ticket prices so that “the most fervent supporters of the Magic who can’t afford 40 franc seats, are exiled to the third balcony.”232 Marcabru  Marcabru, “Good bye, Mr Freud!”  In this respect, Angela Sweigart-Gallagher and Aaron Thomas define “dramaturgies of place” as “the effects that a specific location has on the shapes and rhythms of a theatrical performance; dramaturgies of place are ways of informing or developing the content of a piece—its themes, its characters, even its basic construction—through a link with the place of a piece’s performance. “The Location’s the Thing: Endstation Theatre and Dramaturgies of Place,” Theatre Topics 25, no. 1 (March 2015): 26. 231  “L’album du Grand Magic Circus LE BONS SOUVENIRS DE DEMAIN,” Le Quotidien de Paris, December 5, 1974. 232  Galey, “GOOD BYE.” 229 230

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suggested that the Magic Circus “put the audience at 42 francs on the third balcony and those at 15 francs in the orchestra seats,” in hopes that “that would put a little life, enthusiasm and cheerfulness in the room.”233 But Savary, despite acknowledging the too-high prices, simply could not afford the switch and reminded the spectators that “the Festival d’Automne doesn’t ‘fund’ the Circus, but co-produces the show, and it’s therefore necessary that each partner ‘recuperate their money’ (what times!).”234 Champagne and Money Problems Ultimately, the real problem for Savary was that the very ambitious show was overall too expensive. One of the ways to support production costs was to attract and enroll commercial sponsors. The evening program displayed full-page advertisements for a brand of champagne (Cordon Rouge, by G.H. Mumm and Co., Reims), a credit card (Carte Bleue), a perfume (Jean D’Albret, Paris), a soft drink (Schweppes Indian tonic), the Nikon Gallery announcing an exhibit of fifty photographs of the Magic Circus by Jacques Prayer, the French national railway SNCF, and the ginger ale soda Mix and Dry. Half pages were reserved for the Cerruti 1881 boutique, the provider of the costumes for Savary and Copi, and the Innoxa and Leichner makeup brands, the former used for Presle, the latter for the other artists.235 Finally, two pages were dedicated to restaurant listings (“…and now, where are we going to eat?”). But the most active support, in the sense of its influence on the production’s outcomes, seems to have come from champagne itself. As Savary recounts: Copi crossed the auditorium on a liana bridge, suspended at twenty meters above and, every time, it was a miracle he reached the end of it, since we were both dead drunk every evening. In fact, inaugurating the practice of sponsorship, which is now currency in the theatre, we had struck an advertising agreement with Moët et Chandon, who delivered three crates of champagne a day. Everyone had their own bottle, but Copi and I, as co-­ authors, had a right to two bottles each, which we held prominently in our

 Marcabru, “Good bye, Mr Freud!”  Good Bye Mister Freud program. 235  A single-line mention was reserved for Carita wigs and Capobianco shoes for Presle, and New Man clothes chosen for the Chicago tableau in scene 8. 233 234

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hand during the entire show, under the pretext that we had to “advertise for those people.”236

In spite of Savary’s refusal to fully accept the presence of another author, evidently champagne reaffirmed a certain egalitarian hierarchy on the material level, since Copi received the same number of bottles. And in addition to the troupe, champagne was offered to the audience as well: “Every night, forty members of the audience came on stage to play the brothel clients, the men in tails, the women bare-breasted, with plenty of champagne to go around.”237 In the words of Mona Heftre, “champagne flowed freely: royal!”238 A major issue for the production was that, notwithstanding the sponsors’ support, the cost of each performance still exceeded its potential revenue from tickets. It was a financial fiasco, as Savary characterized it.239 As a consequence of this impossible situation, the director relates multiple versions of a scene between himself and his administrator, Gay-Bellile, who, after two months of performances, brought him an extremely troubling financial report and warned that bankrupting the Magic Circus would have serious legal consequences for Savary as its accountable troupe manager240: there were so many people on stage that, despite the sell-out houses, we were losing money at every performance. –“You’ve got to stop right away!” he said, slamming the dossier shut. –“Impossible!” […]

236  Savary, La vie, 272. The particulars of the champagne’s availability differ: elsewhere Savary speaks of one free crate only for the whole troupe (Ma vie, 188); Barberis states that the champagne brand was Taittinger (Copi, 1:131), but the program lists yet another brand, G.H. Mumm and Co. 237  Savary, Album, 126. The women referred to were, of course, Magic Circus performers. 238   Mona Heftre, http://monaheftre.free.fr (no longer active), quoted in Barberis, Copi, 1:53. 239  Savary, Ma vie, 187. 240  Savary, La vie, 271. The former treasurer of the UNEF had met Savary for the first time during the festival organized by Crombecque and had later given the troupe its juridical status in his role as administrator. Attracted by intellectual stimulation and travels, he stayed with the Magic Circus for thirteen years, doubling as light board operator and truck driver for the troupe, despite often having to scramble for limited funds, with each production investing first and hoping to recuperate the costs later, counting on the company’s tours. See Godard, Jérôme Savary, 122.

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–“O.K., then cut back on the troupe,” Gay-Bellile retorted. […] I started by getting rid of the horse, figuring that it wouldn’t hold too much of a grudge.241 –“It’s not enough,” said Gay-Bellile the next day. So, I sent the contemporary music group back to their studies. After all, they could go play rock-and-roll like everyone else. –“We’re still losing money,” Gay-Bellile said the day after. So, I fired the tightrope artist. She’d been getting up my nose, anyway. She only had to hang her rope higher. –“You have to fire one or two more. Why not terminate Rondo’s contract?” That was too much! “What! Fire my pal Rondo, el cantante de Buenos Aires, just when our show is called Opera Tango? Never!” That’s when I came up with this unfortunate remark: “Too bad. I’m keeping him and I’ll pay him out of my pocket.” And ever since, the itemized bill for my stubbornness has appeared nightly on my dressing-room table.242

Savary put a positive spin on this forced pruning from a purely hedonistic point of view: “since the troupe was reduced by half, but Moët et Chandon, the sponsor, delivered to us the same number of bottles, we finished the series of performances in a state of permanent drunkenness.”243 Even if the influence of champagne is not easy to pin down to more specific effects on the whole show, the image of the entire troupe in the thralls of alcoholic intoxication, overblown as it may be, can be an opportunity to shift our perception decidedly from the Grand Magic Circus—viewed as the group gathered, energized, and sustained by Savary as its most vocal spokesman—to the production of Good Bye Mister Freud, as a higher-scale actornetwork with a life of its own.

241  The material consequences of this choice are visible in a picture with Presle and an animal costume: “Short of funds, we sack the horse. Micheline Presle has to make her entrance on a false giraffe,” Savary, Le Grand Magic Circus, 28 (translation in the volume). 242  Savary, La vie, 280–81. The fate of the tango dancer is uncertain, though, as (in a different version) Savary remembers firing him, too. Ma vie, 188. See a short bio of the singer at http://www.todotango.com/english/artists/biography/1727/Ernesto-Rondo, accessed January 28, 2023. 243  Savary, Ma vie, 188.

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One of the most materially visible signs of the production’s “being alive” is the fact that the performance witnessed by the reviewers at the beginning of the show’s run, with its costly amount of special attractions, resembled only partially the version seen later on by other spectators, despite the permanence of the same title.244 Indeed, the above dialogue between the director and the administrator synthetically presents a series of departures of components whose presence enhanced the assemblage’s appearance while simultaneously threatening its continued existence. Just like the philosophical pharmakon, those components were both remedy (to boredom) and poison for the production and ended up as scapegoats.245 In a way, at that juncture, Gay-Bellile had become the spokesperson of the show’s actor-network itself, on the verge of drowning and therefore trying to simplify in order to survive. Underscoring the material necessity of financial restraint, Gay-Bellile voiced a fundamental criticism to Savary’s single-minded focus on the creative side, which gives a sense of the economic forces at play behind the scenes: As for Jérôme and management … He’s an imaginative artist who wants to bend the economic reality to the strength of his dreams. […] Perpetually broke, he […] doesn’t understand that there’s a company for which he’s the director, and that I can’t unbalance the budget on the pretext that he, or another member of the troupe, has money problems. […] In Good bye Mr. Freud, there are about fifty people, it’s huge. Despite the 50 to 60,000 spectators in five months, the show doesn’t pay the expenses. […] Good bye Mr. Freud made us dive, […] it took six years to pay the debts.246

Thus, a fundamental aspect of the production’s agency as actor-network lay in its hefty payroll that, once put in motion, would continue to cause 244  The movement of translations out of the show was also partially counteracted by invitations to external troupes to come in, albeit presumably excluded from the Magic Circus’s payroll. On November 29, 1974, an editorial article in L’Humanité announced: “The Grand Magic Circus has invited to the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, until December 15, an Argentine troupe that will perform (from 11 pm to midnight) a mute parody of Charlie Chaplin entitled ‘The Great Dreamer, If He Dared.’ This is the first in a series of invitations that the Grand Magic Circus intends to extend for shows that will be given in the evening after the performance of ‘Good bye, Mr Freud.’” I could find no other traces of this or similar initiatives, however. 245  For these interrelated meanings of Gr. pharmakon, see Jacques Derrida, “Plato’s pharmacy,” in Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (London: Atlone, 1981), 61–171. 246  Godard, Jérôme Savary, 125–39.

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serious effects for years to come despite the last-minute emergency cuts. In sum, the life of the production came with “costs of living” attached, and those expenditures were a primary reason the production had to close sooner than the advertised six months.247 In the end, Savary found himself unable to pay his performers half of what he had promised and, at the conclusion of the show’s German tour, was afraid that the Grand Magic Circus might have “lived its last firework.”248 Although two more shows were staged under the troupe’s name, the Good Bye Mister Freud actor-­ network made its agency felt for a very long time, delaying those productions for nine years.249

Conclusions: The Far Reaches of Actor-Network Theory for Theatre Performance Even if, according to a majority of critics, Good Bye Mister Freud was not the most accomplished show of the Grand Magic Circus, the production nevertheless offers rich material for an ANT empirical story because of the quantity of actors it mobilized. From the vantage point of Good Bye Mister Freud, I have followed a number of human and non-human actors and their translations through the rhizomatic network of associations that eventually led to the production’s concrete materialization. Among the non-human actors, a few left more traces, such as money or wine, while others were blackboxed almost entirely. Seeking to understand the multiple components of the assemblage “Argentine of Paris,” I started by focusing on the ostensibly most important actors among many, the authorial dyad Copi-Savary, as I examined the constellations of agencies that influenced their movements around the globe until their eventual meeting at the Latin American cabaret L’Escale in Paris. Some common traits such as their elite families and Argentine backgrounds, a passion for the theatre and the visual arts, and even their propensity to accompany creative activity with a few glasses of wine, all contributed to their friendship, everyday conviviality, and early 247  The actual length of the run is uncertain: if Gay-Bellile speaks of five months, Kim (a potentially more objective observer) states that the show, “planned for six months, […] ran but for four,” “The Grand Magic Circus,” 69. 248  Savary, La vie, 282. 249  These were Le cochon qui voulait maigrir (Fat Pig) and Bye Bye Show Biz, both created in 1983.

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experimental performances. Along the way, noticing the imbrication of ergon with parergon, I have also hinted at how the visual arts at times provided support for the continued development of the artists’ lines and facilitated their theatrical careers.250 I then observed Savary’s tendency to dominate the actor-network of his troupe by speaking for all other artists involved, including Copi, while virtually eliminating the notion of author as competing actor-network. Eventually, however, both the playwright’s and the director’s roles, although backed by more written literature, have been shown to be but blackboxed accumulations of other agencies, contained within another actor-network, the production itself. Lastly, I related how Good Bye Mister Freud, once put in motion by a multiplicity of agencies that enrolled in it, interacted with critics and spectators and elicited mixed responses, but was also fundamentally undermined by its disproportionate costs. These became the source of its continued agency, well past its official closing, by means of the financial burden it imposed on the Magic Circus troupe. Overall, I have thus laid out what I consider the outer boundaries of ANT applied to theatre performance. Adopting the widest possible view, this chapter has explored the far reaches of the network by extending analysis into the past beyond the artists’ lives and into the future beyond the closing of a theatre production. This approach revealed how actor-­ networks interact in unpredictable yet momentous ways on a global scale. For example, the brewing of WWII among European states, pushing other actors down the rhizomatic lines, caused Savary to be born in Argentina, while the Algerian war prompted him to return to his native country and develop a passion for tango, which in turn facilitated his collaboration with Copi. Being able to appreciate these material connections has the advantage of grounding even the most superficially showy, postmodernist-style production such as Good Bye Mister Freud in the flow of history: by tracking the lineage of action, I showed how France and Argentina themselves became contributing actors to the dramaturgy of the Copi-Savary-Grand Magic Circus production. While journeying along several lines of becoming, I have also sought to illuminate the depth of the network, i.e., the multiple levels of black boxes within black boxes,251 from individual artists 250  Shannon Jackson describes this as a situation when “one medium’s parergon turns out to be another medium’s ergon.” Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (New York: Routledge, 2011), 28. 251  See also “assemblages within assemblages.” DeLanda, Assemblage Theory, 14.

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to their collaborative pair, to a whole troupe, all eventually subsumed into a full theatre production. A fruitful element that has guided the analysis of Good Bye Mister Freud has been a focus on the heterogeneity of components that formed alliances: a collaborative pair working within the larger, professional action team of the Magic Circus troupe; a bourgeois star acting alongside an uninhibited stripper and other unconventional performers; an in-the-­ round acting style combined with the limits of an Italianate stage; or a spendthrift director obsessed with spectacle collaborating with a money-­ conscious administrator. All these components co-functioned as assemblages, but also often produced glitches that spotlighted the provisional, unstable nature of their combinations. In this chapter, I have focused on the assemblage between Copi and a particular director and his troupe. For this specific assemblage, the playwright first collaborated to a scenario and then improvised and transcribed the texts generated by a process of collective creation. In the following chapters, I move along Copi’s line, seeking to highlight different sides of the playwright as he or his dramatic work combined with two other Argentine directors living in France, all of them mostly interested in his written plays. Some of their productions preceded Good Bye Mister Freud and should be counted among the actors that facilitated the show’s acceptance into the Festival d’Automne because of the momentum they built for the playwright’s career. Space limitations partially explain why it would have been impossible to speak in depth about every single ray converging into the Good Bye Mister Freud’s star-shaped network, but an even more compelling reason is that other actors have not been as vocal as its director. In a way, this ANT story has often been forced to see from the point of view of that powerful actor-­ network. This is a problem famously brought up by Susan Leigh Star, who criticized ANT’s tendency to neglect those less visible, more marginal components of the network that are nevertheless as essential to its functioning.252 A particular blind spot on the creative side, for example, concerns one of the designers and makers of the large number of costumes, a visually essential part of the show that was noted only in passing by reviewers. Even when Godard actually described the beginning scene’s outfit for 252  Susan Leigh Star, “Power, Technology and the Phenomenology of Conventions: On Being Allergic to Onions,” in A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, ed. John Law (London: Routledge, 1991), 26–56.

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Mimi, the Argentine designer Juan Stoppani, whose last name was misspelled in the show’s program, was not mentioned at all.253 How and why had Stoppani taken residence in Paris? It is now time for an ANT story about the TSE group.

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———. Le Grand Magic Circus et ses animaux tristes: 30 ans d’aventures et d’amour. Paris: Théâtre National de Chaillot, BC Editions, 1996. ———. Ma vie commence à 20 h 30. Paris: Stock—Laurence Pernoud, 1991. Schlesser, Gilles. Le cabaret “rive gauche”: 1946–1974. Paris: Archipel, 2006. Shepard, Todd. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006. Simon, Rita J., and Mohamed Alaa Abdel-Moneim. A Handbook of Military Conscription and Composition the World Over. New  York: Lexington Books, 2011. Sorrell, Martin. “An interview with Jérôme Savary, Artistic Director of the Théâtre National Populaire, Paris.” Studies in Theatre Production 1 (1990): 45–51. ———. “Jérôme Savary, the Ordinary Magician of French Theatre.” In European Theatre 1960–1990: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, edited by Ralph Yarrow, 45–59. New York: Routledge, 1992. Star, Susan Leigh. “Power, Technology and the Phenomenology of Conventions: On Being Allergic to Onions.” In A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, edited by John Law, 26–56. London: Routledge, 1991. Stovall, Tyler, Transnational France: The Modern History of a Universal Nation. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2015. Strathern Marilyn. “Cutting the Network.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2, no. 3 (Sept. 1996): 517–35. Sweigart-Gallagher, Angela, and Aaron C. Thomas. “The Location’s the Thing: Endstation Theatre and Dramaturgies of Place.” Theatre Topics 25, no. 1 (March 2015): 25–35. Tcherkaski, José. Habla Copi: Homosexualidad y creación. Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1998. Topor, Roland. Panic. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books, 1969. Trout, Colette, and Derk Visser. Jean Giono. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006. Turner, Edith. Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Webb, Richard C., “Toward a Popular Theatre: Le Grand Magic Circus.” Journal of Popular Culture 9, no. 4 (1976): 840–50. Weiss, Jason. The Lights of Home: A Century of Latin American Writers in Paris. New York: Routledge, 2003. Whitton, David. Stage Directors in Modern France. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1987. Williams, David. “Geographies of Requiredness: Notes on the Dramaturg in Collaborative Devising.” Contemporary Theatre Review 20, no. 2 (2010): 197–202. Zatlin, Phyllis. Cross-Cultural Approaches to Theatre: The Spanish-French Connection. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1994.

CHAPTER 3

A Tale of Two (and Other) Cities: The TSE Group from Buenos Aires to Paris

The story with Paris goes beyond myself. It’s built through other people like Copi, Jorge Lavelli, Víctor García […]. As I settled there, I glided without realizing it into the heart of an already woven network, where Copi reached out to me. It was he who allowed me to establish a point of contact with France. —Alfredo Arias (L’écriture retrouvée: entretiens avec Hervé Pons (Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 2008), 104–05.

As an actor-network constantly under construction, rebuilt and reimagined by a swarming multitude of agencies, the city is an intensely evolving assemblage of heterogeneous human and non-human components, including theatre groups and their performances. In fact, spurred by the news that by 2006 most of the world’s population was living in urban spaces,1 theorists began to speculate with renewed energy on the ways in which “performance can help to renegotiate the urban archive, to build

1  See for instance Steven Johnson, “Metropolis Rising,” New York Times, November 15, 2006.

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the city and to change it.”2 Of course, the city does not exist in isolation: immersed in the flow of globalization, certain cities find themselves “at the center of a network of political, economic, and cultural connections […] that lead to other global cities.”3 A case in point is the close relationship established over the last two centuries between Buenos Aires and Paris. Indeed, the French capital has often been perceived as an ideal place for artists captivated by its rich intellectual life or keen on leaving behind Argentina’s at times repressive political situation. Bearing in mind the Buenos Aires-Paris relationship, one could also ask: how does performance help build perceptible bridges between global cities? Jokingly punning on the ANT acronym, Latour would suggest answering this question by privileging the perspective of the ant, that “blind, myopic, workaholic, trail-sniffing, and collective traveler.”4 Latour believes that sociology has had a tendency to become too nebulous: by limiting itself to the dimension of face-to-face human interactions, it has relegated a multitude of factors to abstraction. In this way, it has artificially separated micro from macro and the local from the global while ignoring non-­ human actors and large segments of active networks. Conversely, ANT entails an always local tracing of associations between actors through a continuity that requires very concrete conduits and vehicles. This methodology has prompted Latour himself, for example, to generate a multimedia website that highlights the often-unseen networks operating in the French capital, Paris: Invisible City.5 Such a quintessentially local investigative approach can naturally be applied to global networks because the objective remains to detect continuities in the translational flows.6 In sum, even intercontinental performative networks boil down to connected chains of enacted local associations. 2  Kim Solga, with D.J. Hopkins and Shelley Orr, “Introduction: City/Text/Performance,” in Performance and the City, ed. D.  J. Hopkins, Shelley Orr, and Kim Solga (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 6. 3  D.  J. Hopkins with Kim Solga, “Introduction: Borders, Performance, and the Global Urban Condition,” in Performance and the Global City, ed. D.J. Hopkins and Kim Solga (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 9. 4  Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 9. 5  http://www.bruno-latour.fr/virtual/EN/index.html, accessed January 29, 2023. 6  Without continuity of associations there can be no translation and therefore no network in the ANT understanding of the term. Hence the need of first of all “localizing the global.” Latour, Reassembling, 173.

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By adopting an “ant vision” for theatre production and minutely tracing associations among multiple people, spaces, and things, this chapter follows the theatre group TSE, headed by artist-director Alfredo Rodríguez Arias, along the rhizomatic pathways that transported artists, sensibilities, and repertoires between global cities: Buenos Aires and Paris primarily, but also passing through Caracas, New York City, and London. For Latour, “[a] network is not a thing, but the recorded movement of a thing.”7 It is this movement that I aim to record and that progressively built a performative bridge between those cities thanks to a series of translations and transformations. Thus, in many respects, this chapter is a study in what Deleuze and Guattari call “nomadology,” i.e., the analysis of assemblages that constantly change as they move around, going through alternating phases of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. In simple terms, deterritorialization is “the movement by which ‘one’ leaves the territory. It is the operation of the line of flight,” whereas reterritorialization is the restructuring of the territory.8 This process corresponds to how an actor-network mutates by gaining or dropping, tightening or loosening connections, but I prefer Deleuze and Guattari’s terms here because of my emphasis on space and location in this chapter. This time, instead of genealogically tracking the converging lines leading to a single production, I concentrate on three pivotal nodes of a theatre company’s life, all interacting with the city network in particular ways. For TSE, the first is the ebullient period of the group’s formation in the 1960s, especially tied to a bohemian downtown neighborhood of Buenos Aires, the so-called manzana loca (crazy block). The other two nodes correspond to productions twenty years apart, both based on plays penned by Copi: Eva Perón (1970), the company’s first truly sensational show in Paris, and Les escaliers du Sacré-Cœur (The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur, 1990), a queer tragicomedy in verse. These two productions evinced an arc of progressive integration of the Buenos Aires group into the cultural fabric of Paris: while the former was created at the struggling Théâtre de l’Épée de Bois, the latter took place at the city-funded Théâtre de la Commune, where Arias had been named artistic director and the company spent five 7  Bruno Latour, “On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications,” Soziale Welt 47, no. 4 (1996): 378. 8  Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 508. See, for instance, their treatment of the war machine as opposed to the boundaries imposed by the state apparatus. Ibid., 351–423.

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years in residence. While tracing the interactions among these main actor-­ networks—the theatre troupe and the two capital cities—I investigate how the city of Buenos Aires and its actors first facilitated the development of Arias’s theatrical language and then compelled his group to become a nomadic entity; how a performance like Eva Perón overflowed its theatrical space and operated as a component of extensive local and global assemblages not necessarily visible to the spectators; and how The Steps of the Sacré Cœur mischievously reinscribed one of the most sacrosanct urban spaces of Paris by placing a pissoir right in front of the famous church building, thereby creating an alternative vision of the not-too-distant real city location. Tracing the TSE group’s trajectory through these network nodes allows me to unpack the surprising variety of agencies involved in this process. Among the human actors, for instance, it becomes clear that Copi’s agency continued to operate even after his death; among the non-human ones, a simple pair of socks at a New Jersey department store had the power to completely alter the group’s direction; and certain theatre productions really counted as decisive actors for their impact on TSE’s fortunes. Overall, I also argue for a fundamental vitality of the group’s line of becoming that was nourished by a number of actors independently from their friendly or antagonistic attitude.9 In other words, although some of these actors strongly supported the group’s formation, such as the essential networks of Buenos Aires visual artists or welcoming Parisian theatres, and others opposed their freedom of expression, such as Onganía’s oppressive military regime in Argentina or a group of French hooligans, it is exactly thanks to the combined action of all these entities that TSE emerged as a successful professional theatre group.10 Given this chapter’s emphasis on space and location, I combine the critical tools of ANT and assemblage theory with the notion of “heterotopia” proposed by Foucault to refer to real sites that, unlike non-existing 9  As I explained in the introduction, Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of “line of flight/line of becoming” has been developed by Ingold, who sees it as a sustained direction, perceivable within the meshwork/network, that best describes the open-ended behavior of life. See Tim Ingold, Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description (New York: Routledge, 2011), 83. 10  Such situation arises in part from the fact, already mentioned in the introduction, that actors are often blind to the consequences of “what what they do does.” Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinaw, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Brighton, Sussex: The Harvester Press, 1983), 187.

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utopias, “have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites but in such a way as to suspend, neutralize, or invert the set of relations designated, mirrored, or reflected by them.”11 The manzana loca in Buenos Aires was just such a heterotopic space because of its cultural and commercial establishments, the people it attracted, and the performances it produced. Characterized as “an island, a minimal portion of modern and sophisticated territory, surrounded by Argentine provincialism,”12 the so-called crazy block was in relation but also opposition to the more muted and conservative city around it. Bordered by Calle Esmeralda to the west, Paraguay to the south, Florida to the east, and Charcas/Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear to the north, on this city spot were concentrated a large number of art galleries, independent theatres, bars, restaurants, bookstores, fashionable shops, and certain departments of the University of Buenos Aires.13 The Instituto Torcuato Di Tella (Torcuato Di Tella Institute) on Calle Florida, in particular, became the catalyst actor-network for an entire generation of Argentine visual and performance artists to meet, mingle, and develop their talents in remarkably interdisciplinary ways. Indeed, most members of TSE found themselves working at the Di Tella before the group officially existed. Of these, I focus on six who formed the core of the company from the outset because of their stronger personal and artistic associations: director Alfredo Arias (Alfredo Rodríguez Arias, b. Lanús, Greater Buenos Aires, 1944), costume designer Juan Stoppani (Juan Carlos Stoppani, b. Buenos Aires, 1935), set designer 11  Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” trans. Lieven De Cauter and Michiel Dehaene, in Heterotopia and the City: Public Space in a Postcivil Society, ed. Michiel Dehaene and Lieven De Cauter (New York: Routledge, 2008), 16–17. Foucauldian heterotopology as the study of sites that are or can become other also implies processes such as Brechtian defamiliarization (Verfremdung) or “queering” applied to heteronormative spaces, two approaches activated at the textual, material, and performative level by the TSE artists and Copi in the productions analyzed in this chapter. For a crossover of Foucauldian and queer theory, see Angela Jones, “Queer Heterotopias: Homonormativity and the Future of Queerness,” InterAlia: A Journal of Queer Studies 4 (2009), https://www.interalia.queerstudies.pl/issues/4_2009/ 13_queer_heterotopias_homonormativity_and_the_future_of_queerness.htm, accessed January 29, 2023. 12  Sergio Pujol, La década rebelde: los años 60 en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2002), 237. 13  A map of the area highlighting some of its venues appeared in the magazine Claudia in November 1968. An easily accessible online version is in David William Foster, “The Argentine 1960s,” Works and Days 39–40 (2002): 129.

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Roberto Platé (Roberto Plate, b. Buenos Aires, 1940), and actors Marilú Marini (María Lucía Marini, b. Mar del Plata, 1940), Facundo Bo (Facundo Martín Bó, b. Buenos Aires, 1943–d. Paris, 2016), and his sister Marucha Bo (Mabel Irene Bó, b. Morón, Greater Buenos Aires 1938–d. Paris, 2013).14 Without significant relations with either the commercial or the politically engaged independent theatre scenes of Buenos Aires,15 these artists began to generate avant-garde performances as a result of an intimate alliance with the visual arts, which provided living wages, opportunities for initial fame, money from official prizes, ideas for shows, access to performance spaces, and connections both at home and abroad. In fact, it was the visual arts network that encouraged the TSE members to venture outside of Buenos Aires with their performative work. As in the case of Jérôme Savary, whom I discussed in Chap. 2, the most vocal actor in this theatre group was director Arias, who helmed the company from the beginning and still represents the TSE brand today as he continues its line of becoming. Other actors have come and gone, and they have frequently 14  I designate each member with their main function within TSE although their skills and roles ranged more widely. Each of these artists performed in TSE shows at some point, and all but the women members were visual artists as well. Marilú Marini started her career as a dancer and choreographer. This list includes biographical data I gleaned from several sources, especially materials held at the Di Tella Institute archive and the short bios compiled by René de Ceccatty in Mes Argentins de Paris (Paris: Séguier, 2014), 411–49. In parentheses are the full legal names and official name spellings if different from the respective art names. As customary in Argentina, Arias originally used his two surnames, Rodríguez Arias, corresponding to the paternal and maternal lines respectively, but he dropped the paternal component after several years in France. Platé only recently decided to add an accent, conceivably to preserve his last name’s pronunciation within the context of French phonetics. I list all other participants in footnotes for each specific production. 15  The Argentine independent theatre movement of the 1930s—best epitomized by the Teatro del Pueblo, founded by Leónidas Barletta in service of art and opposition to commercial theatre—split in the 1960s into two currents. While realismo was more inclined to engaged political and social analysis, the avant-garde groups, or vanguardias, privileged aesthetic experimentation. Although the borders between the two tendencies were often blurred, the future TSE group members decisively veered towards formal artistic research devoid of political overtones while employing performers not trained within the professional theatre context. For a synthetic analysis of the most significant actors of the Buenos Aires theatre scene between the 1930s and 1960s, see Jean Graham-Jones, “Aesthetics, Politics, and Vanguardias in Twentieth-Century Argentinean Theater,” in Not the Other AvantGarde: The Transnational Foundations of Avant-Garde Performance, ed. James M. Harding and John Rouse (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2006), 168–91. Specifically on the 60s, see Jean Graham-Jones, “Transculturating Politics, Realism, and Experimentation in 1960s Buenos Aires Theatre,” Theatre Survey 43, no. 1 (2002): 7–21.

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expressed themselves more through their work than through words, as in the case of Stoppani or Platé. Yet, even as I maintain Arias as the spine of TSE’s story, my goal remains to recuperate as many associations as possible that nurtured the group’s growth and transformations. For this chapter, in addition to relations among people, I am particularly interested in detailing specific connections with city locations and actor-networks. For the future TSE group, it all started in downtown Buenos Aires with the formation of a small collaborative circle.16

Before the Di Tella: From the French Institute to the Costanera Beach The first significant city network leading to the formation of the TSE group was the Alianza Francesa (French Institute) located at Avenida Córdoba 946, just one and a half blocks south-west of the manzana loca.17 It was there that Arias, Facundo Bo, and Stoppani met around 1960–1961. After graduating at sixteen from a military high school chosen to escape from an oppressive family atmosphere,18 Arias had begun to study law out of obligation to his parents but also sought artistic stimuli in the theatre courses offered at the French Institute.19 Albeit dissatisfied with the rather conventional teaching style applied to traditional written plays, it was in that context that Arias first met Bo, with whom he shared a passion for more contemporary artists such as the US choreographer Merce Cunningham.20 Bo later introduced Arias to Stoppani, an architect more

16  I employ Michael Farrell’s definition for clusters of personal and artistic collaborators explained in more detail in Chap. 2: “a collaborative circle combines the dynamics of a friendship group and a work group.” Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics & Creative Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 7. The smallest unit within these circles is the collaborative pair. 17  Throughout the chapter I adopt the different local conventions for addresses: in Argentina the number appears after, whereas in France it appears before the street name. 18  The young Arias believed he had chosen the lesser of two evils, even if the school was culturally regressive and its atmosphere dangerously homophobic. Arias, Écriture, 53. More information on the director’s early years can be found ibid., 26–74. 19  These classes were taught by Jaime Jaimes, an Argentine of Russian descent educated in Paris who directed plays by European playwrights such as Jean Cocteau, Albert Camus, Jacques Audiberti, Harold Pinter, and Luigi Pirandello. For a wealth of archival materials see https://jaimejaimes.es/teatro/buenos-aires-teatro, accessed January 29, 2023. 20  Arias, Écriture, 80.

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interested in the visual arts who was taking pottery workshops at a ceramist’s atelier while also attending courses at the French Institute.21 Once Arias abruptly resolved to quit the university after just two years to focus on artistic activities, a crisis ensued: aggrieved by a prying mother who had long threatened to reveal her son’s homosexuality to his father and regarded theatre as yet another indecent dishonor for the family,22 the eighteen-year-old had no alternative but to move out of his parents’ home. Having found refuge in Stoppani’s household and urgently looking for ways to earn money, he joined him at the pottery atelier. In the meantime, he continued the theatre courses at the French Institute but with a disruptive twist. In league with Bo, for example, while participating in Georges Neveux’s La voleuse de Londres (The London Thief ) in 1963, he tried to “breathe a bit of a happening into that ageing theatre” by secretly sabotaging the performance and creating comical mishaps.23 It became clear, however, that that type of traditionally staged theatre was too far removed from what Arias really wanted to achieve in terms of performance. For a while, then, the visual arts became his chief focus. The period 1963–1964 was fundamental because it solidified Arias’s and Stoppani’s status as visual artists in Buenos Aires. First of all, in 1963 the two young men moved into an independent live-work space located at Calle José Andrés Pacheco de Melo 2952, not far from the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Fine Arts Museum) in the central upscale Recoleta neighborhood.24 The workshop was quite spacious and, over the years, would become an important base not only for Arias and Stoppani but also for a number of other artists to work, display visual art pieces, and

21  Odile Quirot, Marilú Marini: croniques franco-argentines (Paris: Les solitaires intempestifs, 2017), 37. 22  Arias, Écriture, 75. 23  Arias, Écriture, 81. For instance, they nailed a painting to the wall so it could not be stolen as required by the play. Arias and Bo’s role in the production titled La ladrona de Londres is unclear as the cast listed at http://www.alternativateatral.com/obra57356-laladrona-de-londres (accessed January 29, 2023) does not cite them. Presumably the two appeared as extras: a crowded picture of The London Thief shows more performers on stage than the 18 indicated by Alternativa Teatral. Arias seems to appear in a white shirt on the left. See https://jaimejaimes.es/teatro/buenos-aires-teatro#toggle-id-10 and scroll to the play’s pictures. 24  The exact address appears in “Pop: ¿Una nueva manera de vivir?,” Primera Plana, August 23–29, 1966, 72, which specifies that the space was apartment 1 of the building.

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live in an intentional creative community.25 In the same year, the collaborative pair exhibited for the first time at the risk-taking Lirolay Gallery, directed by French painter and critic Germaine Derbecq and located at Calle Esmeralda 869, just steps from the south-west corner of the manzana loca.26 Even as art critic Samuel Paz praised the originality of Arias’s “strange objects” in ceramic, he also spurred the artist to transcend the craft and aim for something freer and more radical.27 The first opportunity in that direction presented itself the following year, thanks to the encouragement of Alberto Greco, an old friend but also the founder of conceptual art in Argentina, briefly back in Buenos Aires.28 By then Arias and Stoppani had taken over the two floors of the Lirolay Gallery, where the former presented La casita de los enanos (The Dwarves’ Little House) and the latter Las aventuras de la Vicky (The Adventures of Vicky). Transforming cabinets and tables into cakes,29 Arias created niches into which he placed wire and papier-mâché doves, garden gnomes, swans, and Snow White, while Stoppani exhibited a series of life-­ size characters in the style of comic strips. Towering over the main room was their collaborative installation of the spacewoman Vicky, seated in a huge cart pulled by two majestic swans. At the conclusion of the e­ xhibition 25  Arias also recalls sharing the space with Marini and her husband, Oscar Palacio, in a generally pleasant atmosphere. Écriture, 81–87. A short clip showing Stoppani and artists Delia Cancela, Pablo Mesejean, and Susana Salgado at the workshop is at https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=k0jDVZF9heg, accessed January 29, 2023. 26  Inaugurated in 1960, the gallery was directed by Derbecq until 1963. It would move to Calle Paraguay 794 in the manzana loca proper in 1969 only to close in 1981 when the French founders Mario and Paulette Fano headed to New York City. See http://www.laprensa.com.ar/398374-La-leyenda-de-Lirolay.note.aspx, accessed January 29, 2023. On Derbecq, see Maurice Raynal, Germaine Derbecq (Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos Russo, 1953). 27  “Alfredo Rodríguez Arias,” in Magnet: New  York: Argentine Art from the ’60s, ed. Rodrigo Alonso (Buenos Aires: Fundación Proa, 2010), 226. 28  Greco (Buenos Aires 1931–Barcelona, Spain 1965) was an Argentine artist of international stature who resided in Paris for two years (1954–1956) and then traveled extensively in Europe and the Americas. He had become famous for his concept of Vivo-Dito that aimed at including everyday objects and people into the realm of art, for example, by just drawing a circle around them. 29  Arias, Écriture, 78. A picture showing a similar concept for the 1966 Di Tella Prize is in Edgardo Giménez, Jorge Romero Brest: La cultura como provocación (Buenos Aires: Edición de autor, 2006), 413: the caption explains that it was “[a]n ‘ephemeral’ art […], in which the complex paraphernalia of cream, sweets and colored icing is destined to be consumed and disappear.”

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in December 1964, the artists decided to throw their works into the River Plate from the Costanera-south beach portico.30 Arias avers that at the time he and Stoppani were well informed about happenings and similar performance practices, but Greco’s intervention raised the stakes because he mediatized the event by inviting the press, television stations, and fellow artists.31 This event’s assemblage of actors was particularly significant because it activated a great number of associations. First, the process literally connected the art pieces produced by Arias and Stoppani with Buenos Aires since it involved their transportation “on a rotten truck” through the city streets until their final sacrifice in the river.32 Then, on the conceptual level, the event suggested that Stoppani and Arias had joined other Argentine visual artists moving in the direction of the dematerialization of the work of art, thus shifting from immobile and tangible art pieces towards ephemerality, performance, and mediatization.33 Finally, the gathering represented an opportunity to connect with performance and visual artists who attended the event, such as Marta Minujín or Edgardo Giménez, who were already part of the multifaceted Argentine Pop movement. More importantly, the Pop movement was in turn backed by influential art critic Jorge Romero Brest, whose support was predicated on the significant resources of the Di Tella Institute. It was the Di Tella that would provide a nurturing space for Arias’s early directorial forays along with opportunities to display his, Stoppani’s, and Platé’s visual art works.

30  According to the Argentine government website, “[t]he Costanera Sur, or southern riverside was one of the most popular places to relax in the city in the first half of the 20th century.” https://turismo.buenosaires.gob.ar/en/atractivo/costanera-sur-southernriverside, accessed January 29, 2023. 31  Arias, Écriture, 79. Pictures of the event appear in Giménez, Jorge Romero Brest, 410–11. 32  Patricia Rizzo, “Juguemos al Di Tella,” Radar: ocio, cultura, y estilo en Página 12, May 24, 1998. https://www.pagina12.com.ar/1998/suple/radar/mayo/98-05-24/nota2. htm, accessed January 29, 2023. This whole action may be seen as a destruction of the works of art but also as an aestheticization of the city and the river, since every association entails a mutual transformation of the actors involved. 33  Particularly instructive as a roadmap for this accelerated movement from paintings to objects, environments, happenings, etc., which culminated in 1966 as “the year of the avantgarde,” is the volume edited by Ana Longoni and Mariano Mestman, Del Di Tella a “Tucumán Arde”: vanguardia artística y política en el 68 argentino (Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2013).

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The Capital of Heterotopia: The Di Tella Institute Supportive Actor-Network It was a court of miracles of sorts. People with different ideas found a place there where they could live and express themselves.—Alfredo Arias34

The Di Tella Institute was the pulsating center of the manzana loca. In August of 1963 the influential weekly magazine Primera Plana reported on the inauguration of the Di Tella’s downtown building, located at Calle Florida 936/940, and the inauguration coincided with the Institute’s first national and international painting prize.35 The article celebrated the fact that from that moment the modern world was within anyone’s reach: “It’s enough to step across this threshold to understand that, on par with politics and the economy, the visual arts are part of man’s life, they integrate and explain it.”36 Indeed, despite the building’s use for theatre performances as early as the 1920s,37 the Di Tella’s early activities had more to do with the visual arts, given that its redesigned performance space still remained under construction. Of course, these artistic activities were but the latest stages of a vast network that had made them possible: since the 1950s the upbeat economy and the intense process of modernization of Buenos Aires provided a key factor that underpinned the Institute’s financial assets stemming from its connection to the SIAM manufacturing company.38 Its founder entrepreneur Torcuato Di Tella, its factories and workers, the objects produced by them, and the city dwellers who bought appliances and vehicles were all actors who enabled the accumulation of capital necessary for the Di Tella 34  Arias in John King, El Di Tella y el desarrollo cultural argentino en la década del sesenta (Buenos Aires: Asunto Impreso, 2007), 272. 35  The article described the space as one of the largest venues in Buenos Aires with 35,000 square meters (about 37,674 square feet). Recently renovated by architect Clorindo Testa in collaboration with Francisco Bullrich and his wife Alicia Cazzaniga, it offered a welcoming space with a spacious lobby and a glass-window entrance opening onto Calle Florida. “De sala de teatro, en 1920, a sede del Instituto Di Tella, en 1963,” Primera Plana, August 13, 1963, 32. 36  Ibid., 33. The inauguration had taken place the day before on August 12. 37  The original performance space was on the first floor, then converted to one of the Di Tella’s museum halls. Ibid., 32. 38  Nicolás Cassese, Los Di Tella: una familia, un país (Buenos Aires: Aguilar, 2008), 12. Cassese’s volume currently offers the most comprehensive genealogy of the Di Tella family and its imbrication with Argentine industry, economy, politics, and the arts.

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Institute to come into existence.39 The prosperity of the family business allowed Torcuato Di Tella’s sons, Guido and Torcuato (Tucho), to pursue their interests outside their father’s company and study sociology and economics in the United States. In particular, it was Guido who, fascinated with the rich cultural life of New York City, spearheaded the idea of the Institute as the cultural flagship of the family business. Officially established on July 22, 1958, the private foundation held as its initial capital a sizable art collection initiated by Di Tella senior and around thirteen million dollars of SIAM shares. But the Institute also remained open to external funding from international sources such as the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, at the time interested in developmental projects in Latin America.40 With Guido as president and his friend, the engineer Enrique Oteiza, as executive director, the first concrete actions taken by the Institute in 1960 were the creation of the Centro de Investigaciones Económicas (Center for Economic Research), an exhibition of the Di Tella collection in a small room of the National Fine Arts Museum, and the first national visual arts competition. However, the artistic branch of the Institute did not seem to have found a cohesive mission yet since its activities lacked continuity, permanent headquarters, and an arts professional at its helm. Romero Brest and the Grupo Pop A clearer direction emerged only once Romero Brest, the National Fine Arts Museum’s director, accepted his appointment as director of the Di Tella’s Centro de Artes Visuales (CAV, Visual Arts Center), whose launch coincided with the opening of the Institute on Calle Florida in 1963. The 39  Particularly successful with the middle class were the vehicles that began to flood the streets of Buenos Aires. By 1960 forty thousand scooters had already been sold, some of them previously on display at a showroom in the very building that would house the Institute. In the same year production started for the Siam Di Tella 1500, a car model that became the best free publicity for the Di Tella brand due to its popularity with taxi drivers. All these should be counted among the actors who directly, if unwittingly, contributed to the development of TSE performances at the Institute down the line. In other words, cars and scooters could be said to materially connect the heterotopical place with the rest of the city not only in terms of their performance of trajectories on the city streets but also in terms of money flows. 40  King, El Di Tella, 18. Developmentalism was an economic approach that aimed at speeding up progress in Latin America through foreign investments under the aegis of the US Alliance for Progress.

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Institute’s building housed two other centers: the Centro de Experimentación Audiovisual (CEA, Center for Audiovisual Experimentation), helmed by professional actor and director Roberto Villanueva, and the Centro Latinoamericano de Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM, Latin American Center of Advanced Musical Studies), directed by composer Alberto Ginastera. Each of these centers operated independently, but their coexistence in such close quarters unquestionably facilitated interdisciplinary collaborations. For the future TSE members, the intertwining of the visual arts with theatre and performance was key to the development of a unique artistic signature. This process began in the context of intensely dynamic interactions with other, partially overlapping formations. The most important of these was the so-called Grupo Pop (Pop Group). In the visual arts world, Romero Brest was a high-visibility critic and provocateur who sought to transform Buenos Aires into a global art center on a par with New York City, especially since Paris seemed to have lost its centrality.41 And yet, the critic also felt that the latest waves of Argentine artists were insufficiently distinctive to aspire to international recognition: after all, they continued to produce paintings on canvas.42 The impasse was broken with the arrival of conceptual and performance artist Marta Minujín (b. 1943), the trailblazer for what would be called the Grupo Pop. After Minujín was awarded the first Di Tella National Prize (1964),43 Romero Brest decided to support her and Ruben Santantonín’s project La Menesunda (May–June 1965).44 This multisensory installation occupied 41  King, El Di Tella, 10. Art historian Andrea Giunta points out how the “new distribution of international power in the cultural sphere,” a time when a relatively young city like New York could overshadow Paris, gave Argentine artists hope to be able to emulate the North Americans. Avant-garde, Internationalism, and Politics: Argentine Art in the Sixties (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 143. However, Argentina never really managed to fully enter the international circuit since relationships were mostly unidirectional, from Argentina to other capitals but not vice versa. King, El Di Tella, 52. 42  Andrea Giunta, “Rewriting Modernism: Jorge Romero Brest and the Legitimation of Argentine Art,” in Listen Here Now! Argentine Art of the 1960s: Writings of the Avant-Garde, ed. Inés Katzenstein (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2004), 82. 43  The young artist had returned after three years spent in Paris and suddenly rose to prominence in Buenos Aires when her “installation to be toured,” made of garishly striped mattresses, won the competition thanks to French critic Pierre Restany and Romero Brest’s decisive vote. Ibid., 83. 44  The title derived from a lunfardo word for drugs and disorder. See Pujol, La década, 323 and Katzenstein, Listen, 23.

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two floors of the Florida building and led visitors on a journey through a sequence of highly diversified environments that included different smells, temperatures, and surprising circumstances such as the encounter with a naked couple in bed or hundreds of flies trapped between transparent walls.45 Brest saw this installation as the manifesto of the new Argentine art and explained it to the public as “a shift from the image to the object, and from that to the environment, i.e., from the suggestive and therefore symbolic form to form as experience in itself,” no longer for spectators but for “creators of their own reality.”46 In the critic’s opinion, it was the idea of “experience” that put Argentine art ahead of the United States and Europe. This innovative concept would become the basis for two exhibitions, Experiencias visuales 1967 and Experiencias 1968, in which Arias and Stoppani participated, joined by Platé for the second and more fateful event. But before then, the performance aspect of Arias’s work had started to develop in multiple directions. While devoting most of his time to the visual arts and creating ceramic artifacts with a pronounced theatrical quality,47 Arias maintained contact with live performance through connections with other Argentine pop artists. In 1964 he had already collaborated with Minujín, along with Marini and others, on the televised happening Cabalgata (Cavalcade).48 Then, in partnership with Danza Actual—a dance group founded by Graciela Martínez that included Marini and Ana Kamien and often associated dance with objects—he built “a cube that spat out larger and larger plastic objects, little by little hinting at parts of the human body. Until the cube released a flesh-and-blood dancer.”49 Furthermore, between February and April 1965 he participated with Marini, Stoppani, Giménez, Dalila Puzzovio, Carlos Squirru, and musician Miguel Ángel Rondano in Microsucesos (Micro-Events), a set of fifteen-minute pieces that parodied 45  For a lengthier description of this iconic installation, see Marcelo E. Pacheco, “From the Modern to the Contemporary: Shifts in Argentine Art, 1956–1965,” in Katzenstein, Listen, 23. 46  Jorge Romero Brest, Arte visual en el Di Tella: aventura memorable en los años 60 (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1992), 78–79. 47  See La pastora (The Shepherdess, 1964), La granja (The Farm, 1964), and Los nadadores (The Swimmers, 1966) in Giménez, Jorge Romero Brest, 407–14. 48  In this happening “horses ‘painted’ mattresses with buckets of paint tied to their tails, while a group of athletes popped balloons and two rock musicians were wrapped up in adhesive tape.” http://www.marta-minujín.com/happenings_performances.html, accessed November 22, 2019, no longer available. 49  Arias, Écriture, 83.

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the language and characters of advertising and required experiential audience participation.50 When, between September and November of the same year, Marini performed at the Di Tella in Danse Bouquet—an interdisciplinary exploration she choreographed with Kamien, with slides by Stoppani among others—the creative team gathered a number of artists who would soon converge in Arias’s theatre productions at the Di Tella.51 By August 1966, it became clear that the Grupo Pop had achieved cultural renown when the weekly magazine Primera Plana published a rare cover dedicated to the arts.52 The cover photo spotlighted, in order from left to right, Squirru, Rondano, Puzzovio, Giménez, Mesejean, Cancela, Stoppani, Susana Salgado, and Arias standing in a row like film stars in their stylish clothes over the striped letters of the word POP. It was, in the words of Argentine art scholar María José Herrera, “the image of the consecration of a springtime avant-garde, hedonistic, provocative, obsessed with its own image in a very conservative society that looked with distrust upon early success.”53 The irony, of course, was that there was no general consensus over what pop meant and no real unity in the group itself, apart perhaps from the common desire to entertain and surprise at all costs.54 As a matter of fact, in the very article dedicated to this group in the same issue, Arias argued that he had nothing to do with pop since the word was being applied to just about anything, “from Courrèges boots—a horror— to the rings sold in a shop on Calle Libertad.”55 In turn, Minujín confidently stated that Arias’s and Stoppani’s work were rather camp: “In the United States everything is much clearer; there, the avowedly showy, for 50  The show was produced by the company La Siempre Viva at the Teatro de la Recova in Buenos Aires. María José Herrera, Pop! la consagración de la primavera (Buenos Aires: Fundación Osde, 2010), 38. The performance period is reported in Primera Plana “Pop,” 72. Pictures of the Micro-Events, one of them with Arias and Stoppani among others, can be seen at http://www.edgardogimenez.com.ar/content/edgardo-gimenez_obra_happenings.php, accessed January 29, 2023. 51  These performers were Horacio Pedrazzini, Marucha Bo, Facundo Bo, and visual artists Delia Cancela and Pablo Mesejean. 52  The cover is republished in Giménez, Jorge Romero Brest, 223. Giménez opined that “[f]or art to find a place on the cover of the highest-circulation magazine at that time was an extremely unusual event, which testifies to the impact of this new language on Argentine cultural circles.” Ibid., 222. 53  Herrera, Pop!, 5. 54  Pujol, La década, 322. This effort to be the most innovative at times engendered fierce competition among subgroups. 55  Primera Plana, “Pop,” 72.

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example the lady who with her excess of baubles creates her own persona without imitating anyone, is called directly camp. […] Arias and Stoppani do camp.”56 That the future TSE artists were well aware of popular aesthetic modes and their nuances became apparent when, for the 1966 Di Tella national prize, Stoppani presented the installation Camp, Pop, Kitsch, three wooden grand pianos of equal size but different looks. Reinventing an object that belongs to high culture, one piano simulated costly marble by employing a readily available adhesive material (pop), another was covered in synthetic sable as a way to make it distinctively extravagant (camp), and the third was decorated with an ostensibly excessive layer of feathers of various colors (kitsch).57 Overall, Arias and his group’s productions of the 1960s can be framed as an exploration of the three flavors illustrated by Stoppani’s pianos while searching for an aesthetic center that would merge pop and camp and continue to influence TSE’s work in France.

Arias’s Early Theatre Productions at the Di Tella: Towards the TSE Group For the director Arias to find his unique voice, the Di Tella’s flexible stage represented an indispensable playground. One of four independent theatre venues that contributed to “the miracle of Calle Florida,” the Di Tella black-box flexible performance space was inaugurated in April 1965.58 While the CEA continued to host text-based productions such as the  Ibid., 74.  The installation is documented in Herrera, Pop!, 28. For a working definition of these often overlapping and highly contested categories, I concur with cultural studies scholar Anna Malinowska, who distinguishes pop and camp in terms of on and off culture: while pop’s strategy is to mainstream the products of culture (on), “[c]amp creates a fringe off aesthetics [that] produces unique versions and interpretations of universally employed themes and techniques.” “Bad Romance: Pop and Camp in Light of Evolutionary Confusion,” in Redefining Kitsch and Camp in Literature and Culture, ed. Justyna Stępień (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars, 2014), 15. As for kitsch, the principles enumerated by French sociologist Abraham Moles, that include a mix of mismatch (in relation to use, for example as excessive decoration), accumulation as plethora of devices, synesthesia, mediocrity, and comfort still seem valid. Abraham A. Moles, Le kitsch: l’art du bonheur (Montreal: HMH, 1971), 67–71. 58  “Cuatro paredes y un techo,” Primera Plana, December 29, 1964, 38. The address of the Di Tella performance space proper was Calle Florida 936. The other venues were Van Riel (shared with an art gallery), the Teatro del Altillo, and the Salón Kraft. 56 57

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controversial El desatino (The Blunder) by Argentine playwright Griselda Gambaro or happenings like Robert Whitman’s Ciruela chata (Prune Flat),59 Arias found himself uniquely situated as a creator at the crossroads of theatre and the visual arts. Of their many artistic products of the Di Tella years, the most relevant for the TSE group’s line of becoming were five collaborative theatre productions, Drácula, Aventuras 1 y 2 (Adventures 1 & 2), Futura, Love & Song, and Goddess, in addition to El baño (The Restroom), an installation by Platé. Drácula Pop “This is truly a painting in movement … it’s one of the most ‘pop’ shows,” commented a young woman after seeing Arias’s Drácula at the Di Tella, with Marucha and Facundo Bo among the six performers.60 Chronicling the show’s opening, Primera Plana described how “a noisy multitude grew impatient in front of the Di Tella Institute’s doors […] with an excitement that had something of anticipated, almost religious ecstasy.”61 After reading Bram Stoker’s popular novel (a gift from Marini), Arias decided to adapt it for the theatre in a minimalist version inspired by comic strips, a staple of pop art paintings such as Roy Lichtenstein’s.62 To drastically reduce the text, Arias made the story’s protagonist into an invisible

59  The happening featured Marta Minujín, Marucha Bo, Marilú Marini, and Leopoldo Maler (November 10–11, 1966). For the significant number of happenings and development of the genre at the Di Tella, see Liliana López, “El ‘happening’ y el Instituto Di Tella,” in De Eugene O’Neill al ‘Happening’: teatro norteamericano y teatro argentino, 1930–1990, ed. Osvaldo Pellettieri and George William Woodyard (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1996), 71–81. 60  Gente, September 29, 1966, 20. Planned for August–September 1966, the first iteration of the show ran from August 18 and was extended until October 9 with performances from Thursday to Monday. The show was reprised the following year (September 28–November 5, 1967). The other performers were Horacio Pedrazzini, Susana Salgado, Nélida Castelo, and Chacho Ríos for the original production; Arias, Marcia Moretto, Nora Iturbe, and Pedrazzini for the reprise. 61  Primera Plana, “Pop,” 70. Clearly the show had profited from the heightened exposure that the entire Grupo Pop had generated through a multitude of artistic actions that included happenings performed in the streets of Buenos Aires. 62  “What I did with Drácula was to take away from that story to the point that it looked like a comic strip, i.e., I reduced, synthetized, and amplified a popular story.” Arias, interview with María José Herrera, July 2005, in Giménez, Jorge Romero Brest, 416. The show lasted a little over an hour (La Razón, September 1, 1966; La Nación, September 2, 1966).

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presence and focused on the secondary characters instead.63 In this way, more space was left for a “massive use of music”64 that mixed pop songs with a soundtrack created by the Di Tella’s electronic sound lab.65 Moving in slow motion and speaking in monotones,66 the performers wore fashionable costumes by Cancela/Mesejean and Stoppani.67 Thus removed from the gothic atmosphere of the novel, the show’s contemporary music 63  The whole script preserved at the Di Tella archive amounts to about ten thickly typewritten pages. A concise but effective summary was provided by the magazine Confirmado: “The monstrous vampire, excited by the challenge of the modern Siegfried, who instead of a helmet sports an impeccable Italian-style haircut and instead of an armor wears very simple Bermuda shorts, resolves to leave the unknown castle and dedicate himself to his sucking ability. The chosen victim is Lucy, a deleterious little woman married to Arthur and friend of Hellen, the sinuous girlfriend of the heroic Jonathan. Lucy’s agony, barely interrupted by the reading of the endless letters that Jonathan sends from unknown regions, results in the formation of a vindictive expedition to destroy the powerful rival; they are joined by the clever Professor Van Helsing, who, despite his wisdom, cannot save Lucy’s life. Finally, Dracula is exterminated; the birth of Hellen and Jonathan’s son, an inevitable result judging from the amorous effusions of the couple before and after breakfast on the beach, before and after pagan baths of sea and sun, emerges as a symbol of love that triumphs over life.” “DráculaPop,” Confirmado, September 19, 1966, 49. 64  “Alfredo Rodríguez Arias” in Alonso, Magnet, 227. 65  This cluster of behind-the-scenes actors along with booth operators and technicians was acknowledged by La Nación, “Drácula sin espanto en el Di Tella,” September 2, 1966. The songs were by Sonny & Cher, Proby, and the Rolling Stones. The program misspelled Sonny as “Sony” (Di Tella archive). 66  Arias explained his anti-dramatic choice as an imitation of the language of publicity: “the characters don’t act but declaim their text with a monotonous even voice; it would sound like they were reading it. The text is made of short phrases, deliberately antipoetic, illustrating static scenes that recall the advertisements seen in the streets or on TV.” Gente, September 29, 1966, 20. The choice risked appearing as a sign of amateurism: an article in La Razón, even as it praised the show’s “reticent humor” alerted to the “danger that theatre could be made with weak actors disguised by the coherence of the exterior nuances.” “En el Di Tella Actualizan el Tema de ‘Drácula,’ con Humor y Coquetería,” September 1, 1966. 67  Sketches by the costume designers are published along with two photos of the show in Alonso, Magnet, 152–53. Other photos are available through Getty Images: https://www. gettyimages.com (nn. 593097640, 592139892, 599288696, 1450879759, 1450877306, and 1450846086), accessed January 29, 2023. A short video clip of the show with Marucha Bo slowly handling an envelope appears in the documentary by Colette Godard and Jacques Crier “TSE Avoir 20 ans à Aubervilliers,” broadcast on February 24, 1986 for the series “Tous en scène” of TV channel France 3 (INAthèque archive). The set design concept by Platé is at http://www.robertoplate.com/1973%2D%2D-dracula-73dafacaf30d95a3d3a32 b0e425644cf.html, accessed January 29, 2023. A collection of photos of the early shows, along with select fragments of texts, appears in the booklet TSE, les spectacles du groupe tse, available at the BnF (call number WNC-1842).

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and costumes—such as miniskirts, Bermuda shorts, or a voluminous afro wig—gave the performance a humorous twist: for the newspaper La Razón, “[t]he joke begins when an obviously anguishing story […] is set in the atmosphere of a tropical romance, fragmented by lively musical interruptions that remind us of the time we live in.”68 Of course, the jest was also that “vampires never appeared, there was no blood. On the contrary, there were bottles of milk, [Arias] opposed everything that had been done before,” reminisced Stoppani.69 This choice thus frontally defied the genre. Even as the show drew inspiration from a popular scary story, it constantly camped it up by playing on irony while emphasizing its sensuous potential.70 The daily La Nación described the show as a Drácula without fright, “innocuous like a children’s game [that] entertains visually and aurally”71; the magazine Gente found no other justification for the production than “its visual beauty” in line with the arts background of its authors72; and the weekly Confirmado argued that “Drácula is more of a men’s and women’s fashion show, of beach and sport outfits on stupendous figurines.”73 Highlighting the sensuous component of the show, critical reception thus aligned with the original press release by the Di Tella: “it’s the classic story of vampires but developed within an artificial universe, created from the ‘atmosphere’ proposed by advertising campaign photos.”74 In a nutshell, the fashioning of this man-made theatrical universe meant the creation of a heterotopia based on popular inspirations (the gothic novel, the comic  “En el Di Tella,” La Razón, September 1, 1966.  “Juan Stoppani” in Alonso, Magnet, 231. 70  At the time, Susan Sontag argued: “Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It’s not a lamp, but a ‘lamp’; not a woman, but a ‘woman.’ […] [c]amp is a vision of the world in terms of style, […] the love of the exaggerated, the ‘off,’ of things-being-what-they-are-not,” pointing out camp’s affinity for “[c]lothes, furniture, all the elements of visual decor, [that entail] emphasizing texture, sensuous surface, and style at the expense of content.” “Notes on Camp,” in Susan Sontag, Essays of the 1960s & 70s, ed. David Rieff (New York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2013), 261–63. Her text, originally published in 1964 (Partisan Review 31, no. 4 [Fall 1964]: 515–30), could have influenced the Di Tella artists’ and reviewers’ understanding of camp aesthetics. For the subsequent debate about camp inspired by Sontag, see at least Moe Meyer, The Politics and Poetics of Camp (New York: Routledge, 1994) and Bruce E. Drushel and Brian M. Peters, eds., Sontag and the Camp Aesthetic: Advancing New Perspectives (New York: Lexington, 2017). 71  La Nación, “Drácula sin espanto.” 72  Gente, September 29, 1966, 20. 73  “Drácula-Pop,” Confirmado, September 1, 1966, 49. 74  Di Tella archive. 68 69

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strip) but seen through the highly ironic lens of camp made apparent in the choice of contemporary costumes.75 Aventuras 1 y 2: Camp Experiments with Text and Movement Arias’s next show was a deepening of this research but a shift away from the mainstream (pop, on) and towards the marginal (camp, off ). In Adventures 1 & 2, staged the following year, the author-director deliberately chose “a simple anecdote, devoid of any dramatic interest,” which involved outer-space heroes and a goddess preparing to defend themselves from an invasion.76 The performers wore outfits designed again by Cancela/Mesejean and inspired by modern military uniforms such as the Mao jacket.77 In order to deconstruct theatrical realism, the director altered the relationship between words and gestures, “realizing the latter a little before, halfway, or well after the words they accompanied” while striving “to create multiple discrepancies between dramatic situations, movements, [and] meanings.”78 In a context that underscored the specificity of each performance code, “verbal language [was] here used fundamentally as acoustic image.”79 While the show was criticized for its scarce intelligibility by La Nación in a broad-sided critique of the “modality 75  For Foucault, theatre itself is a heterotopia as it “brings onto the rectangle of the stage a whole series of places that are alien to one another.” “Of Other Spaces,” 19. However, I understand heterotopia theatrically also as the attempt to devise an onstage universe that is remarkably different from and yet still connected with the real world. In the case of Drácula the clearest connection art-real was created through the contemporary clothes, whereas a stark contrast consisted in the manipulation of time and a general ironic cooling of emotions. 76  Raúl Escari in the program notes, Di Tella archive. The thin plot is reported by María Fernanda Pinta in Teatro expandido en el Di Tella: la escena experimental argentina en los años 60 (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2013), 195. The show ran October 6–November 3, 1967, Wednesday to Friday, in alternation with Drácula’s reprise offered during the weekends. With Stoppani as assistant director, the new show’s smaller cast was comprised of Marucha and Facundo Bo in both parts, with Marcia Moretto for Adventures 1 and Nora Iturbe for Adventures 2. Pictures of the show are in TSE, les spectacles. 77  “La elegancia en el hombre: aires nuevos. El saco Mao, una expresión revolucionaria de la nueva moda. La tristeza argentina,” La Gaceta (Tucumán), September 10, 1967. 78  Arias, Écriture, 99. 79  Escari, program notes. A textual example was provided by Primera Plana: “It’s dawniNGGG. We’ll get out of our HOMMME. The animals are waiting to attack us. We MUSSSST be vigilant.” (Está amanecienDO. Saldremos de CAZZZA. Los animales esperan atacarnos. Debemos ESSSTARRR alertas). Primera Plana, “El rompecabezas,” October 17, 1967, 66.

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­ isseminated by the Di Tella Institute,”80 Primera Plana praised it as “a d puzzle that disarms almost all the conventions of theatrical language and builds an unprecedented phenomenon.”81 Similarly appreciative, the magazine Claudia perceived the director’s growth “from the babbling of an unusual talent” demonstrated in Drácula to “the confirmation of an awakened spirit, […] with much of nonconformist and something of genius,” thereby marking a transition from the “well-known visual artist to a discussed and debated theatre author.”82 And for the first time Arias himself had a sense of possessing a real language in the form of scenic writing.83 One of the concrete results of Arias’s artistic growth was his being selected among the quartet of already proven directors to create the following year’s season at the Di Tella.84 Futura: A Postdramatic Scenic Essay Continuing his work in a decidedly postdramatic direction,85 in 1968 Arias abandoned narrative altogether when he proposed Futura, a scenic translation of “The Environment of the Home,” a theoretical work by architect Eduardo Polledo.86 Of this essay the dramaturg-director retained “only the statements concerning the pursuit of pleasure and well-being, the satisfaction of the senses, and the fulfillment of the individual, in the present  “Lo acústico y lo visual en Di Tella,” La Nación, October 10, 1967.  Primera Plana, “El rompecabezas.” 82  “Reincidencia feliz,” Claudia, December 1967, [n.p.] (Di Tella archive). 83  Arias, Écriture, 99. The French term écriture scénique (scenic writing) was first used by director Roger Planchon during a recorded conversation in reference to Brecht. See Émile Copfermann, Planchon (Lausanne: La Cité, 1969), 123. 84  While in the previous three seasons the Institute had accepted a broad variety of more or less experienced artists (overall forty-seven experimental shows of necessarily uneven quality), the 1968 season was built around more solid proposals: in addition to Arias, the other directors were Di Tella regulars Roberto Villanueva, Jorge Petraglia, and Mario Trejo. See Futura program, Di Tella archive. 85  The postdramatic de-emphasizes narrative and representation in favor of the materiality of performance. For the various articulations of the term, see Hans-Thies Lehmann, Postdramatic Theatre, trans. Karen Jürs-Munby (London: Routledge, 2006). Although Lehmann analyzes examples approximately between the 1970s and the 1990s, Futura falls squarely within the category of “scenic essays”: “‘Theoretical,’ philosophical or theatre aesthetic texts are dragged out of their familiar abode in the study, university or theatre studies course and presented on stage.” Ibid., 112. 86  Eduardo Polledo, “El ambiente de la vivienda,” Summa: revista de arquitectura, tecnología y diseño 8 (April 1967): 53–56. 80 81

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and in a utopian future.”87 One of Polledo’s arguments was that housing structures interfered with the happiness of human beings because they forced repetitive rigid movements and therefore sustained a larger oppressive order.88 To theatricalize this text, Arias organized the performance into four separate areas and composed a choreography of gestures in counterpoint for a group of seven performers that included the Bo siblings and Stoppani, who also designed the costumes.89 Accompanied by Carlos Cutaia’s live music, a voice off regulated the movement on stage by reciting the list of statements from the essay, resulting in what the director described as “museum theatre.”90 Reviews were generally positive with regard to the artistic side but with a few important caveats: the magazine Inédito acknowledged that the show was probably going to “disgust many traditionalists,” an occurrence that could “become the necessary spark for the controversy to ignite around the validity of ‘Futura,’ a work that dares to refer scenically to anecdotes without representing them.”91 Confirmado, in turn, cutting through what it saw as too-abstruse intellectualizations, praised “an effective musical arrangement […] and, above all, a wonderful group of mime actors […] with impressive make-up,”92 while alerting its readership that the show was not for everyone but rather for a minority of spectators willing to appreciate such an intelligent combination of dramatic and poetic elements.

87  Javier Arroyuelo and Rafael Lopez Sanchez, Futura, trans. unknown, in Katzenstein, Listen, 72. This published version is a later revision of the script prepared for performances in France, but the original dramaturgy was by Arias himself. The Buenos Aires production ran from April 3 into mid-May 1968, Thursdays through Sundays. 88  This could clearly be reflected in city structures external to the private home: Argentine scholar Ezequiel Gatto sees Futura as a call for “an ecstatic horizon in which well-being and intensity merge,” a way to counteract the interpersonal distances created by Buenos Aires’s increased urbanization process. “‘Podría ser así, o quizá todo lo contrario, o nunca existió.’ Futura: diseñando una utopía sensible,” La Biblioteca 12 (Spring 2012): 487. https://doi. org/10.35305/rp.v3i5.111, accessed January 29, 2023. The article also contains two photos of the show. 89  Arias, Écriture, 99. 90  Giménez, Jorge Romero Brest, 416. Cutaia played with three musicians, adding to the electronic soundtrack produced by the Di Tella music lab. The other performers were Pedrazzini, Marta Esviza (Luxemburgo), Marcial Berro, and Yoel Novoa. 91  J. C. K., “Imágenes del difícil tiempo nuevo,” Inédito year 2, no. 41, April 17, 1968, 28. 92  “¿Específico poético?,” Confirmado, April 2, 1968. A rehearsal photo showing the futuristic make-up is in Giménez, Jorge Romero Brest, 416. Other photos are in TSE, les spectacles.

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Drácula’s Actor-Network, Leo Castelli, and Lawrence Alloway So far, I have purposely concentrated on Arias’s dramaturgies and aesthetic trajectory to highlight the intense reciprocal influences between theatre and the visual arts in his earliest productions. The director’s artistic journey was by no means concluded, but the three shows discussed above developed the core of a highly visual, auditory, movement-based language for the stage that would travel abroad and constitute the trait d’union between Buenos Aires, Caracas, New York, and Paris in terms of repertoire. I have also illustrated how, in the process of finding his voice, Arias pursued an ever more rarefied “cool” atmosphere, a camp approach that devalued mainstream playtexts and stories in favor of the theatrically marginal (e.g., insignificant episodes or a scholarly text) elevated to the status of art through the manipulation of performative codes. Yet, the paradox of Adventures 1 & 2 and Futura in their postdramatic oscillation between theatre and visual arts was that, although artistically valid, they risked appealing only to a minority of spectators. In order to appreciate the divergence between artistic aspirations and audience reception, one could note that, in the case of Drácula, Stoppani had secured 20,000 pesos of seed money (ca. $770 today) and spent them all for the realization of the costumes93; however, as company treasurer he also received from ticket sales about seven times the initial investment (ca. $5,400).94 In stark contrast, 93  Stoppani attributes the donation to banker Alejandro Shaw (“Juan Stoppani” in Alonso, Magnet, 231), but the contribution was acknowledged in the program as “the generous collaboration of Mrs. Raquel Silva Shaw” (Di Tella archive). All the monetary figures derive from receipts available at the Di Tella archive. The approximate value in today’s US dollars in parentheses was calculated by dividing the amount of pesos by the historical exchange rate (in this case, 238.29 pesos per US dollar in June 1966) and then adjusting the resulting number for inflation at http://www.in2013dollars.com to obtain a value for January 2023. Historical exchange rates for Argentine pesos are based on the table originally obtained from the Argentine government’s website and now available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Historical_exchange_rates_of_Argentine_currency, accessed January 29, 2023. 94  118,930 pesos were received for the period August 20–October 9, 1966 and 43,568 pesos for the reprise of September 28–November 5, 1967, for a total of 162,498 pesos (equivalent to 464.24 dollars in October 1966 and 124.65 in November 1967, 588.89 dollars in total at the time). In addition to the company’s investment, direct costs shouldered by the Institute for Drácula’s initial two months amounted to 184,926 pesos (ca. 776.05 dollars at the time), which included technicians, programs, eight hundred invitations, advertising in the press, municipal permit, playbill permit, and stamps. As part of its production responsibilities, the Di Tella also funded a video recording of the show that took place on September 27, 1966.

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the company’s income from Adventures 1 & 2’s single run amounted to a mere 19,147 pesos (ca. $487)95: Arias’s postdramatic propositions were indeed innovative but came at the cost of a significantly reduced audience turnout. From the above figures it becomes clear that the most dynamic actor-network remained Drácula because it was able to attract the largest number of spectators.96 As a consequence, it conceivably provided funds for subsequent shows. But Drácula’s actor-network was also crucial for an unexpected personal connection, one that would open the doors for the TSE group in both New York City and Paris. Between the first production of Drácula and its rerun in tandem with Adventures 1 & 2, Arias made his first trip to Europe.97 There he joined Stoppani and the couple Cancela/Mesejean, who had together won the 1966 Braque Prize, a visual arts competition sponsored by the French government that offered grants to visit Paris for six months.98 Ironically, despite the numerous art galleries he could visit, the director’s first impression of the city was underwhelming. Having just been immersed in the “swinging London” on his way to France, he felt more of a connection with the effervescence of the British capital. Conversely, from the outside, Paris struck Arias as a nineteenth-century city whose walls were covered in black soot; from the inside, an oppressively small attic room at the Hôtel de Senlis on Rue Malebranche seemed ridiculously cramped and stifling compared to the large space afforded by the Pacheco de Melo living quarters in Buenos Aires.99 Since the city of Paris in itself did not immediately prompt a desire to move there, it took a large number of other mediators, i.e., entities that “transform, translate, distort, and modify” what happens

95  The exchange rate for November 1967 (349.50 pesos for one dollar) yields ca. $54.78 at the time. 96  I was unable to find box office receipts for Futura at the Di Tella archive. However, in an article on the subsequent show, reviewer Jaime Potenze implied that the production was a fiasco: “two fiascos in a fairly short time.” “Song of a Crash,” Criterio, June 13, 1968. 97  All my research points to 1966–1967 for this trip rather than 1965–1966 as indicated in Arias, Écriture, 96. 98  Stoppani won the first prize for sculpture and Cancela/Mesejean for painting. Their works are visible courtesy of the Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero at http://www. untref.edu.ar/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Premio-Braque.pdf, accessed January 29, 2023. See also Stoppani’s interview in Quirot, Marilú Marini, 37. 99  Arias, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, August 5, 2017.

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in unexpected ways, for the group’s translocation to the French capital to occur.100 Back in Buenos Aires, the first crucial mediator was Leo Castelli, an American of Italian and Hungarian descent and one of the most famous art dealers at the time. The director met him at the end of one of Drácula’s performances, when Castelli suggested that Arias show his talents abroad.101 The art dealer’s ex-wife, Romanian gallerist Ileana Sonnabend, would become the first professional contact for TSE in Paris later on, but more immediately relevant was that Castelli introduced Arias to Lawrence Alloway, the British art critic and curator at New York City’s Guggenheim Museum who had officially christened the pop movement.102 Alloway, an invited juror for the 1966 Di Tella Prize, wrote a theoretical introduction to Drácula and was instrumental in securing its acceptance at New York City’s Hunter College Playhouse with funding from the Center for Inter-­ American Relations.103 Thus, it was thanks to a visual arts critic and an art dealer interested in Drácula’s pop version that the mechanism of TSE’s performance tour was put in motion, primarily in the direction of the North American arts capital. At the outset, none of TSE’s members planned to continue to Paris. Love & Song Kitsch and an Art Auction The fourth and last show publicly performed by the group at the Di Tella was a musical comedy experiment in one act titled Love & Song, Arias’s first collaboration with Marini as performer and choreographer.104 With Arias as “general coordinator,” the production ran between June 1, 1968 and mid-July and had a cast of eleven that also included Platé, Marucha 100  Latour opposes mediators to transparent, irrelevant “intermediaries” that do not modify what is translated. Reassembling, 39. 101  Arias, Écriture, 86. 102  See, for example, Alloway’s article “The Arts and the Mass Media,” Architectural Design and Construction (February 1958): 84–85. 103  “Alfredo Rodríguez Arias,” in Alonso, Magnet, 226. 104  The show’s English title that appears in the program has also been cited as El Love y Song or El lobizón (“The werewolf” in Spanish), punning on the near homophony of the syntagms in the two languages. See Ceccatty, Mes Argentins, 290 and 476. Between 1966 and 1967 Marini had spent a year and a half studying with Merce Cunningham in New York City (ibid., 289) before returning to Buenos Aires, where she choreographed two American musicals, Hair and Applause.

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Bo, Facundo Bo, and Stoppani,105 a soundtrack by Cutaia, and slide projections by three other artists.106 Thematically, the show marked a return to a popular story, this time inspired by Argentine folklore: the gaucho myth that a family’s seventh male child turns into a werewolf (lobizón) on full-moon nights. Marini recounts that the show was an attempt to respond to critiques suggesting that the group was disinterested in Argentine culture,107 but it was in fact more of a spoof: “We didn’t build it as a work but as a trap, to see if critics responded to this delirious pastiche we had set on the stage. I think the reviewers were pretty happy. But my memory is pretty vague.”108 In reality critics were unevenly divided, between a minority supportive of Arias’s style combined with an hilarious take on an improbable story and a majority variously dissatisfied with what they saw as a childish text, too simplistic choreographies, or sloppy technical aspects.109 Some reviews noted that the production seemed to imitate 105  Arias’s responsibilities also included costumes, Stoppani designed the ambience [ambientación], and Facundo Bo created the props. See “Musical en el Di Tella,” Clarín, May 30, 1968 and “Estrena el Di Tella,” El Cronista Comercial, June 1, 1968. The other performers were Marcial Berro, Jorge Centofanti, Marta Esviza, Yoel Novoa, Horacio Pedrazzini, and Ellen Plate. The show lasted one hour and a half. Bonnie Tucker, “Love, song and scoffs among hippie Indians,” Buenos Aires Herald, [s.d.] (Di Tella archive). 106  These were by Roberto Alvarado, Humberto Rivas, and Mariana Romandini. 107  Quirot, Marilú Marini, 41. 108  Ceccatty, Mes Argentins, 290. Arias described this experiment from the point of view of his own artistic trajectory: “I made a show on this ‘corruption,’ i.e., what would happen if I lost my rigor and made a show to please the audience, the way they imagined an alternative place would look like. […] a kind of satire.” Interview with the author, Buenos Aires, August 4, 2017. 109  Primera Plana seemed happy to find a plot again: “in a Mesopotamian tribe—that offer themselves with skimpy loincloths and abundant feathers and fringes to wobbly choreographic interpretations of Anahí [the only child of an aboriginal chief] and other fictions— the captive, speaking in German and dressed in the manner of Romy Schneider in Sissi like some big Viennese cake, is visited by the terrifying werewolf […], whose bites slowly weaken the unhappy girl. In vain the Chief and his wife resort to the spells of the tribe’s doctor (an incredible Roberto Platé, dressed almost like a female nurse): the Viennese cake—Marilú Marini as a prodigious comic actress—starts disintegrating under the perverse caresses of the monster (Jorge Centofanti, just like Fu-Man-Chu) and finally succumbs. But the captive, turned vampire, returns from the grave to destroy the gentle little Indians, who judiciously sip LSD in a huge mate, Chief Vick Vaporub who meditates on the transience of human things, and even his wife, in whose clothes and ornaments triumphs the infallible seduction of the fascinating Marucha Bo. […] [Their] greatest merit is, perhaps, in their lack of any pretensions other than to make people laugh. And they achieve that to the point of delirium.” “Viva el folklore,” Primera Plana June 11, 1968, 82.

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other recent shows, amateurishly and only for a restricted circle of friends110; others—and these must have been particularly biting for Arias— compared Love & Song unfavorably to his previous successes or hinted at an “unexpected vulgarity” surfacing from the atmosphere of a party of LSD-steeped friends.111 In sum, while thematically harking back to Drácula, although in folkloric garb, this delirious pastiche veered in the direction of kitsch—and not camp—by presenting a plethora of elements for the comfort of the audience, heightened to excess and mixed in what appeared to be a mediocre, insufficiently rehearsed production. If nothing else, the show was useful because it helped the director center his poetics with more clarity in a territory between pop and camp, while rejecting kitsch aesthetics. It is not surprising then that he scrapped this show from the group’s repertoire when it went on tour. But apart from the desire to provoke, one of the reasons why Arias departed from the sophisticated line of his previous shows may have been quite mundane and determined by more material necessities. As disclosed in a later article, the group had hoped to use the show’s ticket sales to finance their upcoming international tour headed to New York.112 Thus, the return to story and even folklore appears like an attempt to repeat the success of Drácula and tap into the city’s cash reservoir by engaging a comparably large number of paying spectators. However, since critics railed against the show, the production did not attract enough audience to raise the hoped-for-funds. In the end, funding for the tour came from other arts when “the meager income obtained pushed two cast 110  J.[aime] P.[otenze] saw the show as too similar to the recent Crash by Argentine choreographer Oscar Araiz (Group Biuty Pipls, Di Tella, 1967). “Experimento fallido de Alfredo Arias,” La Prensa, June 5, 1968. Then, in his regular newspaper column, he doubled down by criticizing the show’s lack of humor and “the new wave of plastic artists’ incapacity for stagecraft.” “Song of a Crash,” Criterio, June 13, 1968. Confirmado noted the lack of an author and saw the show as a hybrid, a “half fiasco” redeemed only by some of Arias’s ideas. “Futurevistahs!,” Confirmado, June 13, 1968. 111  “From the moment when Juan Stoppani, camouflaged as a Venetian black man, circulates a huge papier-mâché mate labeled LSD, an unexpected vulgarity arises over Love & Song […]. With shows like Drácula, Adventures and the recent and fleeting Futura, Alfredo Arias had revealed himself as the leader of a type of original theatre, conceived more as an aesthetic than as a dramatic object, executed with clarity and really exceptional discipline. His proverbial rigor has deserted him in the coordination of Love and Song, the slides falter, the soundtrack dissolves noisily, and continuity is, for now, an aspiration.” “Love, Song & Money,” Análisis, June 17, 1968. 112  “Subastas,” Análisis, August 20, 1968.

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members, Yoel Novoa and Marta Esviza, to come up with [an] auction.”113 On August 20, 1968, at the Arte Nuevo Gallery, three neophyte auctioneers—performer Jorge Bonino, musician Enrique Villegas, and model Perla Caron—sold the audience paintings and manuscripts donated by Argentine visual artists and writers.114 This episode illustrates how a large number of actors selflessly contributed to TSE’s initial launch abroad: they included performers who would not join the tour, the artists who donated their works, those who bought them, the auctioneers, and the gallery that generously hosted the auction itself.115 The event was thus sustained by a large network of associations built over time by members of the company across the Buenos Aires art world. The TSE Group Name In the meantime, with New York City as the group’s final destination, other tour dates had materialized in Caracas, Washington, D.C., and Madison, New Jersey. Probably because of the necessity to describe the production for the tour hosts, it was at about this time that a definitive name for the group was selected. The first instance I found of Arias’s group identified with a name other than the director’s was a March 1968 article that called it Grupo de Trabajos Experimentales (Experimental Works Group).116 At some point in the following few months, however, the name became TSE, a mysterious designation that has long puzzled critics and journalists. Arias and some of the company members like Platé have insisted that the name itself does not mean anything in particular nor

 Ibid.  According to Análisis, paintings were donated by such noted artists as Antonio Berni, Luís Seoane, Vicente Forte, Rómulo Macció and Juan Carlos Distéfano and manuscripts by Ernesto Sábato, Manuel Mujica Lainez, Dalmiro Sáenz, and Leopoldo Marechal among others. Distéfano had defined “the [Di Tella] Institute’s image with his very personal design of catalogues, programs, and brochures.” King, El Di Tella, 47. 115  Apparently, only one prestigious visual artist refused to participate, Quino (Joaquín Lavado): “I’m not interested in Arias, nor in the crap he makes, nor that he goes to show it abroad,” he explained. Análisis, “Subastas.” 116  See “Imagen del Futuro,” El Cronista Comercial, March 11, 1968. 113 114

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is it an acronym but rather simply an easy-to-remember short name.117 No matter its genealogy, however, the name turned into a brand that has operated like an “immutable mobile,” or what Latour defines as possessing “the properties of being mobile but also immutable, presentable, readable and combinable with one another.”118 In other words, the company in fact agreed on a name no longer linguistically constrained like their earlier definition nor tied to any particular group member or content. It could therefore become an easily readable, unchanging vessel that contained whatever and whoever belonged to the group’s trajectory. In this way the name could travel to other locations and cultures and effortlessly combine with them while also staying the same through time.119 By the second half of 1968, TSE had developed most of the material it would present on its first international tour. The city of Buenos Aires and the Di Tella had supported their development throughout successful and less successful experiments. In the meantime, however, they had also given the group some serious reasons for concern that led them to consider moving away for good.

The Authoritarian City: Police Threats and a Banned Restroom I live my life independently, but we are connected by generation, nationality, our common origins, the Di Tella Institute of Buenos Aires. Everything we have done… Things are so imbricated that they’re very difficult to disentangle.—Roberto Platé120

117  Roberto Platé in Roberto Platé: Tableau de scène, ed. Marie Binet (Paris: Artlys, 2013), 25. Arias also declined to spell out the acronym entirely: “I don’t know about it myself and will only give its meaning in my will. All I can tell you is that T means theatre.” Interview with Robert Serrou, Le Match de Paris, [s.d.] in Alfredo Arias’s biographical file, INAthèque archive, Paris. Others have offered more detail: Stoppani recalls lifting it from Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong), an explanation grounded in the historical moment of the sixties (interview with the author, Buenos Aires, August 12, 2017), while Marini suggested more creative versions, from a reference to T. S. Eliot to the tsetse fly. Quirot, Marilú Marini, 44–45. 118  Bruno Latour, “Drawing Things Together,” in Representation in Scientific Practice, ed. Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990), 26. 119  In France, TSE would later be unpacked as “Théâtre Sans Explications,” but that is just a projection a posteriori. 120  Roberto Platé in Binet, Roberto Platé, 40.

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In relation and yet opposition to the artsy heterotopical city, the conservative city that surrounded Buenos Aires’s manzana loca felt uneasy vis-à-vis what it perceived as a dissident enclave that was spreading dangerous mores. Although not really new, the struggle between actor-networks with such divergent aims had grown worse starting from June 28, 1966, with the onset of General Juan Carlos Onganía’s military dictatorship.121 In an atmosphere rendered incandescent by the confluence of “growing liberationist movements” such as the Cuban Revolution or the French May “and the period’s general climate of vitality, renovation, and utopianism, all signs pointed toward […] a direct confrontation between Onganía’s authoritarian regime and politicocultural radicalization,” explains Jean Graham-Jones.122 Indeed, as John King points out, the Di Tella was closely surveilled as the heart of a dreaded countercultural youth movement, whose fashionable clothes and long hair were viewed as politically dissident in the regime’s moralist interpretation.123 Furthermore, David William Foster underscores the “grimly heterosexist” mold created by the convergence of “the moral cleansing of the neofascist dictatorships,” the “archconservatism of the Argentine Catholic Church,” and even regressive left-wing politics, which left little space for “anything constituting public consciousness or cultural production of homoerotic desire.”124 Germán Garrido documents how the Di Tella offered an island of relative tranquility for both Arias and Stoppani, who were openly out of the closet, and those artists who were not, “enabl[ing] a certain queer sociability between subjects who did not declare themselves ‘homosexual.’”125 However, outside the crazy block the situation could get icy for behaviors outside the norm: one day, for instance, Arias was “exiled from the Colón [theatre]’s auditorium because he dared show up in a black velvet jacket, burgundy trousers, an orange shirt, and a crimson

121  For the period of the so-called Argentine Revolution under Onganía, see David Rock, Argentina 1516–1987: From Spanish Colonization to Alfonsín (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006), 346–49. 122  Graham-Jones, “Transculturating,” 10. 123  King, El Di Tella, 106. 124  Foster, “The Argentine 1960s,” 123. 125  Germán Garrido, “Cuerpos del pop porteño: las poses desobedientes de Alfredo Arias y Juan Stoppani en los sesenta argentinos,” in Fragmentos de lo Queer: Arte en América Latina e Iberoamérica, ed. Lucas Martinelli (Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2016), 256.

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tie.”126 It was no wonder, then, that the Di Tella artists preferred to cluster in a place where they could find a warmer atmosphere, an artistic refuge.127 A public territory where the two cities clashed was the bars that populated the manzana loca. Musician, actor, and publicist Jorge Schussheim recalls the Di Tella group gathering first at the Augustus and then at the Florida Garden, “a meeting point for all the possible fauna,” or at the Bárbaro, “the bar of bars, […] the place where you knew you would meet someone”; in his view, these venues operated like cultural centers and extensions of the Di Tella.128 Precisely because everyone gathered in the same places, these bars offered easy targets when the police wanted to harass that creative crowd.129 However, by 1967 no place in or around the Di Tella was safe. Primera Plana denounced police raids directed at “hippies” for the mere fact of sleeping in parks or singing in the street.130 Arias himself was involved in a series of episodes that progressed from a hostile interrogation at a deserted mall in the middle of the night to an encounter at the corner of Florida and Paraguay, where a policeman promised immediate arrest if he ever saw Arias there again. And the director was not alone among those categorized in police dossiers as “communists and homosexuals”131: Stoppani, Facundo Bo, and Marcial Berro, another company actor, were arrested for similar reasons.132 None of the TSE artists were interested in overt left-wing political actions, but sexual orientation must have constituted an additional powerful actor that pushed these group members to keep looking for more accepting urban milieus like  Primera Plana, “Pop,” 70.  Marini in King, El Di Tella, 271. 128  Ana Laura Massetti et  al., Recuerdos Re Locos (Buenos Aires: Grupo de Escritores Argentinos, 2012), [n.p.]. 129  Arias explains that the police parked their vans in front of the establishments, went to the cash register, forced the customers to pay their bill immediately, and then took them to the precinct under the pretext of checking their criminal records. These repressive tactics prompted the artists to create a mutual aid network of people who would repeatedly call the police station to make clear that those arrested were not alone. Écriture, 95. It should be noted that, etymologically, the police are the military force directly emanating from the city actor-network (from Gr. polis). Here, it became the mediator between the state and the individual artists, causing decisive changes in their artistic and personal trajectories. 130  Primera Plana, February 12, 1968. According to the article, these arrests had started in November 1967. 131  Arias, Écriture, 98. 132  Quirot, Marilú Marini, 44. On May 28, 1968 Primera Plana reported that Arias and Stoppani were arrested by a policeman Morel simply for the way they looked and accused of being homosexual and subversive. Quoted in King, El Di Tella, 123. 126 127

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Paris.133 In the meantime, of concern for every group member were police violations of the boundaries of the Institute itself. As Oteiza reports, “the Institute began […] to suffer attacks by far-right groups, presumably vigilantes, who broke windows or threw tear or emetic gases into the museum.”134 Arias remembers police surveillance even during the creative process: for this reason, the entire team of Futura once ended up behind bars.135 Roberto Platé’s The Restroom: The Last Straw Of all the episodes involving the larger Di Tella network, the most decisive for the future of the TSE group occurred because of an untitled installation by Platé that would later be known as The Restroom. Having lived in Europe since 1960,136 Platé graduated in 1965 from the Munich Akademie der Bildenden Künste (Academy of Fine Arts) in Germany and by 1966 was exhibiting his visual art works in Buenos Aires.137 His connection with Arias’s group was initially quite personal as he had begun dating Marucha Bo.138 Platé won the second prize at the April 1968 Ver y Estimar competition held at the Museo de Arte Moderno: his two fake elevator installations deceived visitors into pushing the call buttons and waiting for the actual car to arrive.139 This practice of incorporating an artwork into the

133  After his first trip to Paris, Arias realized that he had “lived there in a sort of carelessness and freedom that, upon my return to Argentina, only made more terrible the impact of the change due to the repression.” Écriture, 96. Paris has been described as a “queer metropolis” since the nineteenth century. Florence Tamagne, “Paris: ‘Resting on its Laurels’?,” in Queer Cities, Queer Cultures: Europe Since 1945, ed. Matt Cook and Jennifer V. Evans (New York: Bloomsbury, 2014), 240. 134  Enrique Oteiza, “El cierre de los centros de arte del Instituto Torcuato Di Tella,” in Cultura y política en los años ’60, ed. Enrique Oteiza et  al. (Buenos Aires: Oficina de Publicaciones del CBC, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1997), 99. 135  Arias, Écriture, 95–96; Gente, “El caso del baño prohibido,” May 30, 1968, 39. 136  Ibid., 38. 137  Platé exhibited at the Lirolay Gallery in 1966 and won the George Braque Award in 1967. In 1968 he showed his work at the Vignes, Lirolay, and El Taller galleries. 138  Ernesto Schóó, “Marucha Bo: la argentina que fue reina de París,” La Nación, January 30, 2013, 6. 139  Patricia Rizzo, Experiencias ’68: muestra de reconstrucción histórica (Buenos Aires: PROA Fundación, 1998), 60; Gente, “El caso,” 38. For a photo of the elevators see Platé, Portrait (Paris: Plume, 1999), 14 and http://www.robertoplate.com/ascenseurs-7183e079 0cbdfaaea8264f3a22e33335.html, accessed January 31, 2023.

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real interior architecture continued in his project for the Di Tella but with a more experiential turn. With Experiencias visuales 1967 the Di Tella’s support for visual artists had undergone a notable transformation: eliminating the competitive prize for a single winner, Brest allotted an equal share of the available funds to each invited artist as a commission for the realization of their artworks. Arias, Stoppani, and Cancela/Mesejean were selected among the twelve for this new format and Platé joined them for the following year’s Experiencias 1968, which dropped the word “visual” to encompass more embodied experiences. Contributing to a series of environments that invited the spectators to interact with their three-dimensional spaces, Platé’s minimalist project for The Restroom sounded like a perfect recipe for creating a heterotopic space. On the one hand, it would seamlessly connect with its environment, while on the other hand, its interior would contradict the space’s expected function. Once built, this wooden structure displayed two external doors, painted in white like the museum’s walls and marked with the customary signs for gendered restrooms, black silhouettes of a lady and a gentleman. Inside, however, the space offered identical stalls with “precarious little doors,” no gender separation between areas, and no sanitary facilities.140 Platé’s aim was that “the users would not just carry out acts of pleasant physical discharge, but rather, sensing their intimacy protected […], would carry out acts of discharge at an emotional level.”141 According to the author this installation had no immediate political aims142: in truth, it represented a continuation of Platé’s previous trajectory aimed at integrating works of art into the real architecture. By privileging process, spectator activation, and a relational aesthetics,143 this new work also approached the notion of experience that Brest had indicated as a common and innovative trait to be pursued by Argentine visual artists. The significant difference was that the larger context in which the work appeared made it more politically charged than originally intended. The Experiencias 1968 exhibition took place between May 15 and 23 amid a period of heightened political tensions. Argentine scholars Ana Longoni and Mariano Mestman defined as “the itinerary of ’68” a  “Di Tella: el vacío relleno,” Análisis 376, May 27, 1968, 43.  King, El Di Tella, 131. 142  Rizzo, Experiencias ’68, 99. 143  French philosopher Nicolas Bourriaud believes that the artwork’s role is “no longer to form imaginary and utopian realties [sic], but to actually be ways of living and models of action within the existing real.” Relational Aesthetics (Dijon: Les presses du réel, 2002), 13. 140 141

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“sequence of productions and public interventions carried out between April and December […] that revealed a shift for several clusters of experimental visual artists from an alternative position to one of opposition” to artistic institutions, the military regime, and the capitalist system.144 Aspects of this radicalization surfaced within the Di Tella itself. For instance, Roberto Jacoby’s tripartite Message in the Di Tella (Mensaje en el Di Tella) suggested that art could develop from explicit ideological content.145 In quiet contrast to these politicized proposals, Arias continued in his pop direction with a cinema poster portrait of Freud seen as “the person who found the key” in the twentieth century.146 Stoppani presented the colorful Todo lo que Juan Stoppani no se pudo poner (Everything that Juan Stoppani couldn’t put on), two hundred meters of light blue taffeta that ran from the entrance through the museum’s rooms to reach a female model wearing a turban and surrounded by two-hundred green apples.147 Whereas the apples prompted a spontaneous performance by the public, who ate them all on inauguration day, Platé’s white space inspired more closeted interventions that were only later outed by the press. On May 21, at least two articles remarked on the graffiti that visitors had drawn on the walls of Platé’s installation. Primera Plana celebrated the fact that The Restroom achieved its goal of blending in with its environment while acquiring a new function: a palimpsest that visitors continued to inscribe despite daily clean-up attempts by the museum management.148 Conversely, La Prensa lamented “an unusual aggression for the public” that included “the most profane swear words, as well as drawings, appointments with corresponding phone numbers, and everything of the worst taste one could imagine.”149 Whereas Platé observed more innocuous, potentially theatrical genres such as “stories, little verses, dialogues,” others noticed that some of the inscriptions were directed against General  Longoni and Mestman, Del Di Tella, 21.  See Roberto Jacoby, El deseo nace del derrumbe: acciones, conceptos, escritos, ed. Ana Longoni (Barcelona: La Central, 2011), 117–19. 146  La Nación, supplement Vía Libre, May 21, 1998, 28. 147  For this installation’s photos and a critical anthology, see Rizzo, Experiencias ’68, 102–05. The reason for the title was that Stoppani had been discouraged by Romero Brest to personally wear the clothes to avoid potential police intervention. Garrido, “Cuerpos,” 262. 148  Primera Plana, “Di Tella: La sangre llega al Río,” 70. For attempts at scrubbing the installation’s graffiti, see Brest’s interview in Gente, “El caso,” 39. 149  “Exhibe el Instituto Di Tella las llamadas Experiencias ’68,” La Prensa, May 21, 1968, 28. 144 145

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Onganía himself, 150 and it soon became clear that these “subgenre[s] of urban folklore”151 had transformed The Restroom into a forum for active political contestation. As a consequence, on May 22 a Federal Police inspector and the area chief for the City Inspection of Public Entertainment showed up with an authorization to close the whole exhibition: the injunction purported an infringement of penal code articles against offending public officials and the display of obscene images or objects. When Oteiza protested that the entire exhibition ought not be closed for actions impossible to monitor, the police decided to limit access to Platé’s installation alone. In this way, visitors soon became spectators of a performance of power over the installation’s contested space: with judicial seals placed on its doors, the police were tasked with guarding the Platé installation day and night.152 The following day, the Buenos Aires Herald mocked the tragicomic situation with the headline “Di Tella’s Toilet Too Real for Cops,”153 but such explicit censorship also prompted the artists to take their artworks to the street, destroy them, and use the resulting pieces to build a symbolic barricade, thereby blocking foot traffic and triggering further interventions by the police that included some arrests.154 Platé’s installation was remarkable in many respects. First, its conceptual porosity invited spectators to intervene and integrate its meaning with their own performances, ideas, emotions, and creativity; as a result, it offered a white canvas for citizens to manifest a dissent otherwise 150  Gente, “El caso,” 39. According to Roberto Jacoby, someone scribbled “Onganía faggot” (Onganía puto). El deseo, 116. 151  “Di Tella: el vacío relleno,” Análisis 376, May 27, 1968, 43. 152  Rizzo, Experiencias ’68, 60–61. A photo of the policemen sealing the installation, originally in Primera Plana 283, May 28, 1968, is reproduced in King, El Di Tella, 130. A photo of the sealed doors, is available at http://www.robertoplate.com/toilettes-publiques.html, accessed January 31, 2023. 153  Quoted in Oteiza, “El cierre,” 100. 154  Arias, Écriture, 97. The whole event lasted about one hour, from 7 to 8 pm according to Gente, “Artistas ‘pop’ tiran sus obras a la calle,” June 6, 1968. Even though the police quickly cleaned up the street, they later forced the artists, including Stoppani, to collect the damaged remains of their works. A piece that was not carried outside was Arias’s Freud portrait: mounted on a large metal plate it could not pass through the Institute’s partially locked door. Rizzo, Experiencias ’68, 63. Ironically, the portrait would later end up as the roof of a Di Tella employee’s henhouse. Arias, Écriture, 97. Compared to the elegant and rather smooth mediatized event on the Costanera beach, this time Stoppani and Arias’s attempt to destroy their own artworks and release them into the city was full of hiccups: if destruction was the ultimate sign of freedom, even that act was becoming hard to perform.

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impossible to express in other public areas of the city.155 It thus became a visible manifestation of the political struggle over a contested territory concentrated into a single artistic object: the police barring entrance to the installation’s interior was nothing but the tentacle of a much larger repressive actor-network attempting to impede further enrollments into what it saw as a dissident competing network in the heart of Buenos Aires. Finally, this unexpected assemblage between the two cities, the heterotopical and the authoritarian, turned into a highly combustible mix that impelled the collective enrollment of nearly the whole exhibition group into the impromptu street-performance. Arguably this was the most collaborative performative achievement of an artistic movement that Arias described as a “choral work” and “a collective pulsion,”156 but that had often displayed signs of fierce competition.157 For the TSE members, Platé’s Restroom was a key mediator that, due to the reaction it elicited, shattered any residual illusion of creative freedom. It was the culmination of several other events that convinced the artists it was necessary to leave: “We spoke to many,” says Arias, “and we formed a troupe. We left, because we had to leave. Everything that happened in Argentina later confirmed our fears and proved that they weren’t hallucinations. […] We had felt it since the exhibition Experiencias visuales.”158 Similarly, for Platé “there was nothing else to do, but leave.”159 The gradual emergence of a collective decision like this illustrates how for ANT “action is dislocated,” i.e., it does not pertain to single individuals but “should rather be felt as a node, a knot, and a conglomerate of many surprising sets of agencies that have to be slowly disentangled.”160 Amid this conglomerate of actors were the artists with their aspirations for international recognition and their contacts abroad facilitated by the Di Tella but also a chain of regressive state agents that started with Onganía on top and ended with the threatening policemen and vigilantes on the ground. In a 155  Platé later observed: “It wasn’t my work that was shuttered, it was the public’s.” Gente, “El caso,” 39. 156  La Nación, supplement “Vía Libre,” May 21, 1998, 28, quoted in Longoni and Mestman, Del Di Tella, 115. 157  On the same day, the exhibition artists and their supporters signed a final statement decrying the police’s substitution of “the weapons of criticism with the criticism of weapons.” “Final Statement of the Participants in Experiences 68” in Katzenstein, Listen, 291. 158  Arias, Écriture, 97. 159  Platé in Binet, Roberto Platé, 24. 160  Latour, Reassembling, 44–46.

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synergy that pulled the TSE members in an outward direction, certain actors attracted the TSE group to foreign cities while others pushed them away from Buenos Aires. Perhaps a sign of how the cultural climate had changed was the contrast between the colorful trendy clothes paraded by the Grupo Pop on the cover of Primera Plana just two years earlier and the 1968 stern black and white photo by Ruben Santantonín that captured the TSE group members in a statuary pose, serious-looking, and completely naked.161 The group that was about to leave Buenos Aires on tour included Arias, Stoppani, Platé, the Bo siblings, Cutaia, and performer Jorge Centofanti. Since the director had cut Love & Song from the repertoire, Marini had no definite role and planned to catch up with the group later on, once it reached the US.

TSE On Tour: The Unexpected Agency of a Pair of Socks and the Meeting with Copi With Drácula and Adventures 1 & 2 ready to tour and Futura temporarily tabled,162 the last activities of the TSE group at the Di Tella were closed-­ door rehearsals for another show, Goddess, by Argentine playwright Javier Arroyuelo. It was a parodic ceremony in which an English-speaking tyrannical deity dominated a South American nation, devouring anything she found on her path until she finally annihilated the last human male, the Macho, before sinking into complete solitude. With the lead female role played by Facundo Bo and the Macho performed by Platé, the show constituted a diptych with Drácula, its ironic camp atmosphere enhanced by elaborate costumes designed by Arias himself.163 But it was also the first time that the director employed someone else’s text, a shift that felt like a dramatic loss of his own language: for a long period to come, he would

161  The photo is published in Herrera, Pop!, 42 and still hangs on a wall of Stoppani’s living room in Buenos Aires. 162  Futura would later be reprised in Paris in 1969 at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and then at the Théâtre de l’Épée de Bois, and in 1973 at the Galerie Cité Internationale. 163  Arias, Écriture, 102. The show’s cast eventually included Marucha Bo, Arias, Zobeida Jaua, Nyrma Prieto, and Hermine Karagheuz. Photos are available on the Getty Images website (https://www.gettyimages.com, accessed January 31, 2023), nn. 1450893946, 1450885373, 1450848790, 592295094, 592266218, 592264702.

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need to rely on others to provide texts for his shows.164 When Goddess premiered at the Teatro Ateneo in Caracas in October 1968, it was little understood: even if the people were welcoming and Spanish was a shared language, there seemed to be no communication from the point of view of theatre-making.165 After Caracas, the company headed to the East Coast of the United States: performance dates were scheduled for December 3 and 4 at the Argentine Center in Washington, D.C.,166 and shortly after they would travel to Farleigh Dickinson University in Madison, New Jersey, where TSE had been invited by German-born Uruguayan artist Luis Camnitzer. However, the main destination remained New York City, where TSE seemed to have the strongest connections through the Center for Inter-­ American Relations and was scheduled to perform at the tour’s conclusion. Nevertheless, the situation quickly devolved in an unforeseen and chaotic direction when Stoppani and Facundo Bo were caught stealing a pair of socks from a New Jersey department store.167 French writer René de Ceccatty, echoing Bo’s point of view, later described this action as “the theft of an object without value and without need, done only for the beauty of the gesture.”168 Without necessarily questioning this aestheticizing aspect, I would add that, in ANT terms, those apparently valueless items exerted a very palpable attraction, likely enhanced by the totality of

164  Arias clarifies that this was not simply a matter of giving up Spanish but rather the loss of “the structures I had put in place during the first years of my artistic existence. […] a perception of reality that gave identity to this writing.” Écriture, 100. 165  Écriture, 102. The exception were two Venezuelan performers, Zobeida Jaua and Nyrma Prieto, who were cast locally and incorporated into the group for the remaining tour dates. The information on this stage of the tour is minimal: pictures and cast are available in the booklet TSE, les spectacles. I assume this was the Fourth Festival of Venezuelan theatre based on the available program for the third festival of 1967 held at the same venue, Tercer Festival de Teatro Venezolano: Teatro Ateneo de Caracas (see https://catalog.hathitrust. org/api/volumes/oclc/19911094.html, accessed January 31, 2023). 166  “Un elenco teatral de Buenos Aires actuará en Washington,” Crónica Buenos Aires, November 30, 1968. 167  Stoppani, interview with the author, August 12, 2017; Arias, interview with the author, August 4, 2017. 168  Ceccatty, Mes Argentins, 206.

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the other objects on display at Christmas time.169 Once assembled with the troupe members’ action of picking them up without paying, the pair of socks became a decisive, radical mediator for TSE’s destiny/destination. Once Arias arrived in New Jersey with Marini, he was informed of the recent events and accompanied to the nearby police station, where he had to pay for the release of the two men with the limited company funds. Then, once out of the hands of the local policemen who had maltreated them, Bo and Stoppani were immediately detained by US immigration agents ready to expel them from the country. Even though Camnitzer was able to negotiate a delay to allow the whole troupe to perform at the Hunter College Playhouse,170 by December 10 Stoppani and Bo were already on a flight to Paris, leaving the TSE group in shambles. Marini and Cutaia decided to return to Buenos Aires while the others stayed in New York, looking for contacts in the art world and preparing The Fashion Show Poetry Event, a happening on the theme of fashion created by avant-garde artists.171 Still, at that point the degree of the group’s deterritorialization was such that its future looked disastrously dire: “I found myself in a sort of quagmire, without really knowing what to do nor where to go,” recalls Arias. “Going back to Argentina was out of the question for me […].

169  In an essential study on the agency of things, political theorist Jane Bennett uses assemblage theory as she follows “the scent of a nonhuman, thingly power, the material agency of natural bodies and technological artifacts.” For Bennett, “[t]hing-power gestures toward the strange ability of ordinary, man-made items to exceed their status as objects and to manifest traces of independence or aliveness.” Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), vii–xvi. 170  Arias, interview with the author, August 4, 2017. Based on Stoppani’s date of departure from New York on December 10 (interview with the author, August 12, 2017), this performance must have taken place on either December 8 or 9, 1968. 171  The happening took place at the Center for Inter-American Relations at 680 Park Avenue on January 14, 1969 between 2:30 and 7:00 pm. It was organized by Argentine Di Tella artist Eduardo Costa and American artists John Perreault and Hannah Weiner. Platé created a “naked costume” worn by Marucha Bo (Binet, Roberto Platé, 22), and Arias presented a suit by Stoppani, “a collage […] over a model’s body” using several materials “from fruits to rags and cotton.” “Alfredo Rodríguez Arias,” in Alonso, Magnet, 227.

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Obviously, we’d dreamed of remaining in New York, but we didn’t have a choice anymore.”172 Indeed, various factors weighed on the dislocated decision to continue the journey in the direction of Paris: among the TSE members, Stoppani and Bo had found a job as assistants at a costume shop directed by Argentine Héctor Pascual and were working to reactivate contacts with the Parisian visual arts network.173 In turn, Marucha Bo must have wanted to stay closer to her brother and Platé was inclined to go with her. Furthermore, as graphic designer Rodrigo Alonso noted, the New York scene in general did not seem too interested in welcoming foreign artists at a time when the United States was building its own cultural identity.174 Even Alloway suggested that Arias head to Europe when he put him in contact with the Two Worlds Festival in Spoleto, Italy.175 On top of all this and in the midst of confusion about the future of the group, a key event occurred in a New York City bar: Arias and Copi met.176 Copi’s brother Jorge Damonte, a photographer still living in Buenos Aires, had told the author about the director and Copi was being hosted in New York City by writer, poet, and art critic Julian Cairol, one of his diasporic Argentine friends.177 Once Cairol introduced the two artists, Copi told Arias about his Eva Perón and the director convinced the author with his ideas for its

172  Arias, Écriture, 103. Aria’s and TSE’s situation is aptly captured by Bourriaud’s notion of “radicant artists” who, “take to the road, and […] do so without having any place to return to. Their universe contains neither origin nor end, except for those they decide to establish themselves”; “a troop that is defined by its speed and direction, a nomadic tribe cut off from any prior anchorage, from any fixed identity […] a mobile population […] choosing to go in the same direction. A start-up, an exodus.” The Radicant, 52 and 43. 173  At the time, they worked on costumes designed by Leonor Fini for a show directed by Lavelli, Oskar Panizza’s Le concile d’amour (The Council of Love), staged at the Théâtre de Paris from February 5, 1969. 174  “Alfredo Rodríguez Arias,” in Alonso, Magnet, 227. 175  Ceccatty, Mes Argentins, 206. TSE would perform their repertory at the festival, which took place between June 27 and July 13, 1969. 176  Arias does not remember any other detail about the location or name of the bar. Interview with the author, August 4, 2017. 177  Arias, interview with the author, August 4, 2017. Cairol was one of Copi’s friends mentioned in the preface to Río de la Plata, now in Copi, ed. Jorge Damonte (Paris: Christian Bourgois Éditeur, 1990), 82. The detail about Copi’s brother is in Arias, Écriture, 106.

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staging.178 It would take more than a year before the show premiered but the path towards the French capital was finally clear.

The Panorama City: Eva Perón The story with Paris goes beyond myself. It’s built through other people like Copi, Jorge Lavelli, Víctor García […]. As I settled there, I glided without realizing it into the heart of an already woven network, where Copi reached out to me. It was he who allowed me to establish a point of contact with France.—Alfredo Arias179

Arias landed in Paris on February 17, 1969, and again stayed for a while at the Hôtel de Senlis, in the heart of the Latin Quarter, where Platé and Marucha Bo also lodged.180 Shortly afterwards the director moved in with Copi, who lived nearby.181 Until that moment, the visual arts world had acted as the true supporter of TSE’s tour and it was thanks to Ileana Sonnabend that the group presented Goddess at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.182 At some point, writer and stage director Simone Benmussa, who had often worked with Barrault, put the group in touch with the Théâtre de l’Épée de Bois and created a theatrical connection 178  The published play is dedicated to Cairol, who attempted to have it staged in New York City by the Shakespeare Public Theater in a translation by Remy Inglis Hall (“‘Eva Peron’ de Copi, à Munich et à Belgrade,” Combat, May 8, 1970). However, the deal did not go through because the theatre wanted a different director and Copi decided against the change. Isabelle Barberis, “Copi: Le texte et la scène: Mimesis parodique, mise en scène de soi, et subversion identitaire dans les années parisiennes (1962–1987),” PhD diss. (Université de Paris X—Nanterre, 2007), I:80. I could not find any specific data on potential New York directors proposed by the Public. As for Copi’s choice to entrust the play to Arias instead of Lavelli, the playwright declared: “I wrote a second work, thinking I’d give it to [Lavelli]. But in the end another group did it. We thought that it would only interest a certain Parisian avant-garde.” José Tcherkaski, Habla Copi: Homosexualidad y creación (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1998), 79. 179  Arias, Écriture, 104–05. The director also speaks of an “Argentine supply chain.” Ibid., 128. 180  Arias’s date of arrival in Paris is in Alfredo Arias, “...mes parents m’ont placé au lycée militaire,” interview by Jessica Azoulay, Paris Match, April 15–21, 2010, 146. Marucha Bo speaks of living with Platé in Binet, Roberto Platé, 23. 181  Copi lived at 4 Boulevard Saint Germain, in what Facundo Bo described as “a living, poetic and dilapidated apartment” “Angel” in Cachafaz program, Archives nationales, Paris, [n.p.]. Facundo Bo would also move into Copi’s place at the end of January 1970. 182  Colette Godard, “Une dame signée Copi,” Le Nouvelles Litteraires, March 5, 1970.

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that would lead to the production of Eva Perón.183 In October, the Buenos Aires magazine Claudia published a short note with a group photo showing Arias, Platé, Stoppani, Marucha and Facundo Bo, Cancela, and Mesejean as they walked on a bank of the Seine: with smiles on their faces and once again dressed in trendy clothes, the group seemed fully at ease in their new city. But what group was it exactly? In reality things were a little more complex. Cancela and Mesejean had always been quite independent and may have been around because of the revivals of the older TSE shows, but before moving to Paris they would live in New York and London between 1969 and 1975. And by September 1969 Stoppani had had enough of the group’s dynamics and decided to move to London with Facundo Bo. Hence, Arias describes the state of deterritorialization of the company at that time with a healthy degree of fatalism: “The group TSE remains as an entity, a nebula in which people come and go at the whim of unexpected events, trips, exiles.”184 A similar state of uncertainty loomed over the Théâtre de l’Épée de Bois. About two months before the premiere of Eva Perón, a Le Monde journalist wondered if, by the time the show was ready, the venue would still exist. Located at 15 Rue de l’Épée-de-Bois, in March 1969 the theatre had received an eviction notice because of plans to broaden the adjacent Rue Jean-Calvin and build a luxury residence. But despite being literally under siege by other actors of the Paris network, “the little shack managed to embed itself, to survive, to become one of the key attractions of the neighborhood.”185 Founder Claude Berthelot believed in supporting young experimental groups, including foreign ones that would not otherwise find a place to self-produce in Paris. It is in this liminal situation, before the theatre moved to its current location within the Cartoucherie theatre complex, that TSE found an opening for presenting the show that 183  At l’Épée de Bois, the Grupo TSE Argentina, as the name appeared on the posters, first played Goddess and Futura on April 12 during the Festival du Jeune Théâtre International (Festival of International Young Theatre), followed by their whole repertory including Drácula and Adventures 1 & 2 between May 19 and 28. The poster for the event with the group name and later performance dates appears in the video by Dominique Darzacq “Biographie du groupe Tse,” broadcast by TF1 on November 8, 1985 (INAthèque archive). The date for the April festival is in Ceccatty, Mes Argentins, 475. 184  Arias, Écriture, 106. 185  N. Z., “Le Théâtre de L’Épée-de-Bois en sursis,” Le Monde, January 6, 1970. For more details about the history of the theatre see Joël Cramesnil, La Cartoucherie: une aventure théâtrale (Paris: l’Amandier, 2005), 65–66, 82–85, and 108–09.

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truly launched the group in the French capital. The production for Eva Perón assembled at least five sources of funding: according to the Buenos Aires monthly Panorama, of the twenty thousand pesos invested overall (ca. 43,700 dollars today), half was contributed by the theatre and the rest, in four equal parts, by the French and Italian publishers, Copi, and Arias.186 The plan was to keep the show running beyond two months in order to break even.187 Finally, the actors would be asked to accept minimum wage in order to spend more on costumes.188 Gearing up for the production, in November 1969 Arias and Copi convinced Stoppani and Bo to return to Paris.189 Copi’s Myth-Busting Play Copi’s play was inspired by an iconic personality and a mystery. María Eva Duarte, affectionately known as Evita, an actress who had become more politically engaged after marrying Perón, had died from cancer at age thirty-three right after being named Spiritual Leader of the Nation by the Argentine Parliament. On display for two years while a memorial monument was being planned, her body mysteriously disappeared after Perón’s fall in 1955, in line with the new military dictatorship’s ban on images and even mention of the Peróns.190 Despite these efforts to erase her memory, Evita soon grew into a myth, as Graham-Jones has shown in her study of the “many, many lives” of this female icon in performance.191 In France, 186   20,000 pesos were equivalent to ca. 5,714 dollars in February 1970, then adjusted for inflation to January 2023 dollars at http://www.in2013dollars.com/us/ inflation/1970?amount=5714, accessed January 31, 2023. I assume the article speaks of Argentine pesos, although the author calls them dollars. 187  Tomás Eloy Martínez, “El revés de la trama: Eva Perón semidiosa de Hollywood,” Panorama, February 24, 1970, 44. 188  Le Figaro, “Bogomoletz,” February 20, 1970. 189  Arias called Stoppani. Stoppani, interview with the author, August 12, 2017. See also Facundo Bo, “Angel,” where the actor recalls a phone call from Copi. 190  Eva Perón died in 1952. Her body’s whereabouts remained a mystery until 1971, when it was revealed that it lay in a crypt in Milan, Italy, under the false name Maria Maggi de Magistris. Of course, in 1969 Copi could not know. For biographies of Eva Perón in English, see Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro, Evita: The Real Life of Eva Perón (New York: W.  W. Norton & Company, 1996) and Alicia Dujovne Ortiz, Eva Perón (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996). 191  Jean Graham-Jones, Evita, Inevitably: Performing Argentina’s Female Icons Before and After Eva Perón (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2014), 60.

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where the history of the Peróns had become more widely known at the time of Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino’s documentary La hora de los hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces, 1968),192 journalists speaking of the TSE production reminded their readers that Evita was considered a “holy Pasionaria” and portrayed her as “Argentina’s Joan of Arc.”193 Because of their personal history, the playwright and the director were in a unique position to be influenced by both the historical and mythical dimensions of Eva’s figure. Copi declared that, as a child, he imagined Evita as “a fairy covered in diamonds.”194 And although Arias’s family was anti-Peronist and did not go see the mummified body, for the young Alfredo she was “a marvelous mirage […], a princess escaped from Walt Disney movies, […] a pop star in whose arms [children] could take refuge.”195 Indeed, for the director, staging the play was “much more than a choice, an imperative. The echo of Eva Perón was still vibrant […], it was she, at least her aura, who had allowed me to challenge my family, to break with them by enrolling at seven into the Peronist Youth.”196 Eva’s mythical aura echoing after her death is of course another way of describing her agency: as Latour has convincingly argued, ANT actors are not limited to the present of face-to-­ face interactions but include beings from other times and spaces, provided they contribute to a verifiable modification of an event, i.e., all those entities that “make people do things.”197 Publicly, however, the two artists downplayed the biographical dimension in favor of a more universal interpretation of Evita’s character. Copi declared that he sought to write a “tragedy about power”198 and highlighted a different, non-human actor: “the play is not historical at all, in fact it’s the story of a cancer.”199 The playwright also repeatedly denied any

 César Fernández Moreno, “La dama no es para la hoguera,” Periscopio, March 10, 1970.  For the former definition, see Matthieu Galey, “Eva Peron de Copi,” Le Nouvelles Litteraires, March 12, 1970 or Lettres Françaises, “COPI Eva Peron (à l’Épée-de-Bois),” March 11, 1970; for the latter, see Le Figaro, “Bogomoletz,” or André Ransan, “À l’Épée de Bois: ‘Eva Peron’ de Copi,” L’Aurore, March 7, 1970. 194  Martínez,“El revés,” 43. 195  Arias, Écriture, 42–43. 196  Ibid., 112. 197  Latour, Reassembling, 235. 198  Martínez, “El revés,” 43. 199  Copi and Jean Dumas Delage, “Copi à propos de la pièce de théâtre Eva Peron,” Inter actualités de 13H00, March 5, 1970. https://www.ina.fr/audio/PHD94025012, accessed January 31, 2023. 192 193

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political intentions for or against Peronism:200 he could have written about Marilyn Monroe or Jackie Kennedy but had chosen Evita simply because she was the only mass myth he had actually experienced as an Argentine.201 Nevertheless, the actual playtext was by no means a kind of pop hagiography but came with a robust dose of myth-busting. Colette Godard drew a parallel with Copi’s visual art when she portrayed the main character as “a sort of personal myth of the woman, just as invasive and monstrous as the lady of his drawings.”202 And in an imaginary dialogue published in Le Figaro, Copi asked Evita what tone she wanted him to give to his play: “I’d like it to be atrocious,” her imagined self replied.203 Indeed, the protagonist let go of all restraint in what became a tragicomic, black-­ humor farce. The play opens with a hyperactive Evita keen on organizing a public ball and reinforcing her image after ten days spent holed up in her residence.204 In private she is much less dignified. “Shit. Where’s my presidential robe?”: an overt reference to Jarry’s Ubu Roi (King Ubu), her first line sets the tone for an entire play full of expletives by a woman who stubbornly resists all those who take her imminent death for granted.205 Among them, her cynical mother is more interested in obtaining the combinations to Evita’s safe boxes located all over the world than in comforting her

200  Jacques Olivier, “Les dernières heures d’‘Eva Peron’ vues par Copi à l’Épée de Bois,” Combat, March 4, 1970. 201  Fernández Moreno, “La dama.” 202  Colette Godard, “‘EVA PERON,’ deuxième pièce de Copi,” Le Monde, March 5, 1970. 203  Copi, “Le mot de l’auteur: dialogue avec Eva Peron,” Le Figaro, February 24, 1970. 204  Argentine theatre scholar Marcos Rosenzvaig suggests that Evita may have been high on cocaine and/or ephedrine, the most used drugs at the time. Even if Copi does not reference them explicitly, he “shows us an Evita who is about to die, [but] with a dose of superlative energy” in Copi: sexo y teatralidad (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2003), 147. 205  Copi, Eva Perón, in Four Plays, trans. Anni Lee Taylor (Richmond, UK: Oneworld Classics, 2012), 7. David William Foster sees the first expletive as “a veritable motif” of the text. Sexual Textualities: Essays on Queer/ing Latin American Writing (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997), 28. Graham-Jones also notes how “the play exaggerates the historical Eva Perón’s attributed predilection for the invective and local slang stereotypically associated with the popular classes.” Evita, 224.

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daughter. While Perón’s migraine keeps the dictator mostly off-stage,206 the secretary Ibiza carefully plans Evita’s politico-religious legacy: “We’ll leave here with your embalmed corpse and you’ll be forever the very image of saintliness. Evita, the Virgin Mary.”207 In the street, the people, journalists, ambassadors, ministers, and American televisions are eager to learn any news of her passing. The unexpected twist that reveals the play as a suspense thriller is that Evita has been acting all along and hatched a plan to fake an early death: she convinces her nurse to wear her jewels and a magnificent white robe and, aided by Ibiza, has the nurse stabbed and her body left for the embalmer. In the end Perón seals her enduring legacy with a farewell speech.208 In truth, with the information given it is impossible to determine with certainty if the protagonist is dying naturally, if there is a plot to assassinate her, or if she has decided to fake her death and disappear with her friend Fanny to ensure the birth of her myth.209 In this rather succinct one-act play Copi employs very few stage directions, mainly limited to the performers’ physical actions and necessary props, thereby

206  At the time, Fernández Moreno suggested that Perón’s sidelining in the play stemmed from “a central idea: at some point, the ‘Lady’ had absorbed all of Perón’s political substance” “La dama.” More recently, Perón’s fundamental absence has led Argentine scholar César Aira to see him as a ghost. Copi (Rosario, Argentina: Beatriz Viterbo, 2003), 106. Rosenzvaig in turn views him as an impotent in a context where “the heroine has the guts that he lacks and that a transvestite has in abundance.” Copi, 139. 207  Copi, Eva Perón, 12. 208  “Eva Perón is not dead, she is more alive than ever. Until now we have loved Evita, from this day on we will worship Evita. Her portrait will be reproduced many times […] so that her memory will remain alive in every school, in every place of work, in every entrance hall.” Copi, Eva Perón, 33. 209  Martínez, “El revés,” 43–44. While I emphasize here the concrete actors at the time of production, Copi’s Eva Perón has received sustained critical attention: see at least Rosenzvaig, Copi, 139–49; David William Foster, “El escenario de Eva Perón de Copi como caja negra,” Hispanic Journal 30, nos. 1–2 (2009): 205–11; Graham-Jones, Evita, 105–08; Ángeles Mateo del Pino, “Ni es cielo ni es azul: Simulación y parodia en la literatura hispanoamericana: Copi y Eva Perón,” in La literatura pop: Consideraciones en torno a una tendencia literaria (Las Palmas: Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 2006): 87–144; Isabelle Barberis, Les mondes de Copi (Paris: Orizons, 2014), 65–69; Aira, Copi, 105–12; and Osvaldo Obregón, “Una obra iconoclasta y polémica de Copi: Eva Perón (1969),” Imagen de la cultura y el arte latinoamericano: boletín del Instituto de Historia del Arte Argentino y Latinoamericano 2, no. 2 (2000): 45–54.

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leaving plenty of room for the director and designers to creatively contribute at the level of mise en scène.210 Assembling All the Pieces In terms of casting, things remained in flux at least until the first week of January.211 For the protagonist’s part Copi initially wanted La Grande Eugène, a drag performance artist who worked at the cabaret Michou and may have been the playwright’s lover.212 However, the performer showed up drunk for rehearsals and was too used to lip-synching to actually memorize the text.213 At that point, the director considered asking famous actress Delphine Seyrig to record the part for playback, but he soon realized it would be more practical to cast an actor he already knew. The choice of Facundo Bo was not surprising, considering that he had played a female mythical role in Goddess.214 Thus, if Copi wanted a professional drag queen to play the part of Evita, Arias ended up choosing an actor who played in drag, a subtle difference that was not always clear to critics and spectators.215 At the time, the director explained that he chose a male performer because “the wider-set eyes and the greater distance between the chin and the mouth give [a man’s] face a certain command without which the character would be self-contradictory.”216 Later, he argued that 210  Pictures of the show appear in Damonte, Copi, 12–16. Fernández Moreno, “La dama” published a photo with Copi on stage with the cast while he moves a set piece. It is the only photo to my knowledge that shows the nurse’s costume, now republished at https://www. magicasruinas.com.ar/revistero/argentina/teatro-evita-segun-copi.htm, accessed January 31, 2023. An iconic black and white photo of the production is available on Platé’s website at http://www.robertoplate.com/1970%2D%2D-eva-peron-095538527c04b422c3d8716 6d66d7149.html, accessed January 31, 2023. 211  N.  Z., “Le Théâtre,” Le Monde, January 6, 1970. This article still floated names of performers who would not make it into the final cast. 212  Arias, Écriture, 106. The performer’s real name was Eugène Couvri. See Barberis, Le mondes, 65. 213  Copi, “Le théâtre exaltant,” 57. 214  This detail was noted by Panorama: “In London and New York he presented Goddess, […] and trained Facundo Bo in the art of drag. Eva will be the culmination of those exercises.” Martínez, “El revés,” 44. 215  This misunderstanding was fanned by the press that continued to use the term travesti well into the play’s run. See, for instance, “entrusting the role of beautiful Evita to a dragqueen,” L’Express, March 16, 1970 or “Eva Perón played by a drag queen,” Le Nouvel Observateur, March 30, 1970. 216  Martínez, “El revés,” 43. Translation from Graham-Jones, Evita, 107.

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drag as a form of distancing was necessary for Copi and himself, given their personal stories, to be able to put those characters on stage with all their violence.217 Ultimately, in an effort to present “not a strange woman, but an incredible woman,”218 Arias conceived a “monstrous assemblage” of at least three actors: a historical woman, a male performer, and an illness.219 In this way, the protagonist in drag represented the boldest choice for a production that, as Graham-Jones underscored, “by exaggerating and deforming the image of Evita” made it impossible “to ignore her ‘performed’ condition in the personal, political, and collective imaginary.”220 Such exaggeration and theatricality were, as literary critic José Amícola notes, signs of a camp sensibility that “transform[ed] a controversial, but socially interesting, character into a classic like the one a Marlene Dietrich could play.”221 As for the rest of the cast, Marucha Bo joined in the role of the nurse, Philippe Bruneau was Perón, and Jean-Claude Drouot played the secretary Ibiza. Another performer from Copi’s circle, Emmanuelle Riva, took part in the first ten rehearsals as the Mother but did not click with the director and was eventually substituted by Michèle Moretti, “a Valkyrie with red and scrambled hair that seem[ed] escaped from a poem by Baudelaire.”222 Noting that the Mother was cast as a young woman and the two male roles interpreted by two physically similar men of about the same age, Godard remarked that the whole cast was not only against type (contre-emploi) but also out of type (hors-emploi) in order to create the

 Arias, Écriture, 142.  Godard, “Une dame.” Olivier explained to his readers that “Drag [gave] a dramatic, gigantic dimension, it [was] a theatrical, not psychological choice. In fact, Eva Perón had nothing masculine and the actor in drag [was] a young man with nothing feminine about him.” “Les dernières heures.” 219  Copi stated that “the fact that she’s played by a man, gives a monstrous dimension to the cancer.” Copi and Delage, “Copi à propos de la pièce.” Godard spoke of “monstrous aspect” “‘EVA PERON.’” The term also evokes an association with ANT’s “sociology of monsters.” 220  Graham-Jones, Evita, 108. 221  José Amícola, Camp y posvanguardia: Manifestaciones culturales de un siglo fenecido (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2000), 71. The mechanism is typical of camp, i.e., taking an element that has become pop(ular) and turning it into a unique specimen. 222  Martínez, “El revés,” 43. Riva had been the protagonist of Copi’s earlier play La journée d’une rêveuse (The Day of a Dreamer), directed by Lavelli in 1968. 217 218

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unusual.223 Of course this was another way of describing Arias’s camp approach that extended to every part of the production. Rehearsals started towards the end of December 1969 and were regularly attended by the playwright.224 Without changing or cutting the text, the director had divided it into sections and inserted a series of movement-­ based scenes that included tango numbers.225 At the beginning, a twenty-­ minute prologue in front of the curtain illustrated Eva’s biography in the style of a silent film: performers dressed in 1940s clothes “mov[ed] inside a rectangle of light at the rhythm of signs that presented ‘Eva’s Father and Mother,’ ‘Eva and [tango and milonga] singer Agustín Magaldi,’ ‘Eva in the City,’ [or] ‘Eva meets Perón.’”226 To prepare for coaching performers, the director had assembled a folder with his own scene-by-scene drawings of the characters’ facial expressions and reference poses.227 Towards the end of rehearsals, he was portrayed working tirelessly every day from 4 to 8 pm, polishing the details: “he dances along with [the performers], transfigures his voice until he finds the exact tone of Perón or Ibiza, simulates faints or attacks of fury to introduce them to the hysterical and unreal atmosphere he intends for the play.”228 Clearly Arias was continuing his research on movement and voice initiated in Drácula, Adventures 1 & 2, and Futura, always looking for specifically theatrical means, styles, and stereotypes to disrupt any appearance of realism or predictable overlaps between text and movement.229 Well acquainted with TSE’s work, Godard later observed how “everything [was] expressed through tones, gestures,  Godard, “‘EVA PERON.’”  I deduce the beginning of rehearsals from Panorama: “It has been more than two months since Alfredo Arias started to rehearse.” Martínez, “El revés,” 43. Copi’s assiduous attendance is mentioned by Godard, “Une dame.” 225  Godard, “‘EVA PERON.’” A full-cast dance concluded the show, described by a reviewer as “demonic saraband.” Tomás Eloy Martínez, “Teatro: Los muertos que vos matáis,” Panorama, March 17, 1970, 45. 226  Martínez, “El revés,” 44. An impatient reviewer for the actual performance later counted that he waited “twenty-two minutes—not one less—[…] to hear the first line.” Lorne, “Une Evita.” Another article described the performers’ movement as puppet-like and reported other section titles, “Childhood in Junín, Eva Actress, Eva Speaker,” announced by a “trembling voice, from up high.” Martínez, “Teatro,” 44. 227  Godard, “Une dame.” 228  Martínez, “El revés,” 43–44. 229  Godard aptly described TSE’s aesthetics as “research of a kind of writing in movement, specifically theatrical, which presents itself as a series of hieroglyphics or ideograms carrying in themselves their meaning, without any logical, psychological, or emotional input.” Godard, “‘EVA PERON.’” 223 224

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and sophisticated attitudes that together became as striking as magazine covers or large advertising posters. […] [T]he actors [could] pass in the course of the same tirade from the tone and muffled attitudes of musical comedies to the excesses of expressionism.”230 Additionally, the text’s natural flow was frequently interrupted by sounds, noises, and onomatopoeias in counterpoint to the text: for instance, Perón interspersed his final speech with belches, screeches, and tongue-produced flatulence effects.231 Supporting the director’s emphasis on cinematic stereotype were Stoppani’s glittery costumes and accessories:232 matching her extravagant and voluminous blond wig, Eva’s long pleated yellow dress was an exact reproduction of a 1951 model designed for her in white by Christian Dior; Perón wore a golden suit with matching gloves, yellow boots, and a sequins-embroidered presidential band on his chest that made him look like “a romantic officer from the Folies-Bergère”233; in a similar style but with a chromatic variation, Ibiza sported a shimmering coat and green lamé vest with silvery pants and shoes; over a lightly-colored dress, the Mother displayed an apron with precious stones on her waist, complemented by long and sparkly earrings; and the nurse, “asphyxiated by her dress of pearls and sequins”234 on top of an ice skater miniskirt, paraded “an immense red wig that made her resemble a character [illustrated by] Audrey Beardsley.”235 Drawing on such “baroque extravagance,”236 an advertisement in Le Nouvel Observateur announced what looked like a novel assemblage: “avant-garde theatre in rhinestone clothes.”237 A costume-­related change to the original stage directions, however, challenged that polished surface when toward the play’s end Eva fled her 230  Godard, “Une dame.” Another reviewer situated Eva Perón “between Frankenstein and Dracula,” noting how the director, influenced by American comic strips and the cinema of the fantastic, transported the spectators into an uncanny universe, full of stereotyped and grimacing characters, “rich in color and high on horror.” Olivier, “Les dernières heures.” 231  Martínez, “Teatro,” 45. 232  I merged information on the costumes from several sources, including pictures of the show: the most thorough description is in Martínez, “El revés”; other details are in Galey, “Eva Peron” and Dumur, “Aux âmes sensibles,” Le Nouvel Observateur, January 1, 1970, 43. 233  Dumur, “Aux âmes sensibles,” 43. 234  Martínez, “El revés,” 44. 235  Dumur, “Aux âmes sensibles,” 43. 236  Godard, “‘EVA PERON.’” 237  Le Nouvel Observateur, March 30, 1970. Of course, for those knowledgeable about Stoppani’s trajectory as visual artist, these shiny costumes were not too far from the idea of the spacewoman Vicky and other works inspired by space suits.

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chambers disguised as a rat, an outfit that some critics saw as Mickey Mouse but was in fact the performative debut of Copi’s fetish animal.238 It was at this point that, by a process of de- and re-territorialization, the monstrous Evita assemblage materially shed any residue of woman to assume an explicit animal component. Completing the overall visual impact of the production was Platé’s scenography, his first significant contribution as designer to a TSE show. Since the artist was living at a hotel and had no workshop, this set was truly home-made, built and painted in Copi’s living room with tools and materials bought at a supply store nearby. The result was a “miniaturized Buenos Aires”239 that combined a panoramic view of the city painted on canvas with physical models of iconic landmarks: the Obelisk, upstage center, was flanked by the Congress (stage left) and the ATLAS building (stage right); downstage were the Cabildo (left) and the Opera movie theatre (right).240 Since none of the set pieces was taller than five feet, one could even sit on them.241 In fact, any movement by the actors made the pieces shake and squeak and thus gave away their wooden structures.242 Due to the paradoxical size inversion of actors and buildings, it appeared to some as if Evita and her entourage were haunting Buenos Aires: after the first twenty minutes from the beginning of the show, remarked Martínez, it was still impossible to determine if the story was “a nightmare of Carmen Miranda in a 1940s Hollywood or the adventure of a tribe of opulent King Kongs.”243 Such confusion could also serve to underscore that, by merging two otherwise incompatible spaces, the outside of the whole city with the inside of the presidential residence, Platé succeeded in creating yet another heterotopical space. More importantly, what started as an imaginative but rather transparent intermediary, meant to provide a colorful backdrop and practical seats, would soon become an essential 238  See “Eva, disguised as Mickey Mouse, flees through the sewers,” Lettres Françaises, “‘Eva Peron’” as opposed to “this hermaphroditic witch will change […] into a gigantic rat that we will see pacing the scene.” Dumur, “Aux âmes sensibles,” 43. 239  Godard, “‘EVA PERON.’” 240  The Cabildo was the colonial town hall and is now the National Museum of the Cabildo and the May Revolution; with its forty floors, the ATLAS was the tallest building in Buenos Aires between 1950 and 1966: it was constructed with public funds during the Peronist period and communicated directly with a defensive bunker built for Perón. See https:// huellasdebuenosaires.wordpress.com/tag/edificio-atlas, accessed January 31, 2023. 241  Binet, Roberto Platé, 29. 242  Martínez, “El revés,” 43. 243  Ibid.

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mediator of the show’s success. But before then, the show had to grapple with its rather mixed critical reception. Tepid, Puzzled, or Outright Hostile: The Initial Reception The first public performance for an invited audience including journalists occurred on March 3, 1970.244 Crombecque reminisced about the hours he and Copi spent in cafés preparing invitations for Tout-Paris, the fashionable and affluent elite of the city.245 Their efforts were successful: more than two hundred people were present at the premiere and about fifty remained outside in the snow.246 But despite the full house, initial critical reactions were mostly tepid, puzzled, or outright hostile. While praising the staging and text separately, France Soir critic Jacqueline Cartier perceived an excess of distancing performative material that stretched the text from sixty to 135 minutes with no intermission.247 Her response was echoed by several others for similar reasons: César Fernández Moreno thought that the attempt to enrich the text made it disappear in the maelstrom of repetitive physical actions248; Le Monde’s Bertrand Poirot-Delpech found the crudeness of both text and acting redundant, viewing the actors’ grimaces and guttural sounds as gratuitous along with their mysterious movements across the stage that gave the impression of tangos danced by automata.249 In a particularly scathing review, Le Figaro’s Maurice Rapin indignantly blasted the text’s “unparalleled poverty peppered with arbitrary profanity,” coupled with “inarticulate screams, grunts, belching, yelling, or barking” appropriate for a zoo,250 while Claude Lorne of the far-right weekly Rivarol slammed the actors’ movements as an oscillation

244  Martínez repeats the date twice in “Teatro,” 44 and 45, a detail supported by the announced opening for the general public for March 4 (“‘Eva Peron’ de Copi creée en mars,” Combat, January 27, 1970). The French edition of the play indicates Monday March 2 for the premiere, but this detail is not backed by any other contemporaneous source to my knowledge. 245  Odile Quirot, “Copi conforme,” Le Nouvel Observateur, January 6, 1999, 53. 246  Martínez, “Teatro,” 44. 247  Jacqueline Cartier, “‘Eva Peron’ de Copi: 60 minutes de texte pour 2 h 15 de répresentation,” France Soir, March 7, 1970. 248  Fernández Moreno, “La dama.” 249  Bertrand Poirot-Delpech, “‘EVA PERON’, de Copi,” Le Monde, March 7, 1970. 250  Maurice Rapin, “Eva Peron de Copi,” Le Figaro, March 7, 1970.

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between a cataleptic torpor and Alzheimer attacks, wondering if Copi’s imagination had dried up so that it needed that much padding.251 Amid this barrage of unfavorable reviews stood a few more encouraging ones. Godard highlighted the correspondence between Arias’s hypertheatricality and Copi’s own closed universe, parallel to reality.252 In Le Nouvel Observateur Copi’s friend Guy Dumur framed the same performance ingredients criticized by others in a more sympathetic way: “Thanks to Alfredo Rodríguez Arias’s superb staging, the eye and ear are equally activated: the mime and the most absurd intonations play a role as big as the text. It feels like […] a circus for ghosts.”253 Furthermore, the Paris edition of the Herald Tribune praised how this “surrealistic fantasy[’s …] grotesque stylization [lent the show] the complexion and consistency of a vivid nightmare” and concluded: “If you are seeking novelty in the theater, here it is with a vengeance.”254 Even otherwise perplexed reviews particularly praised Facundo Bo, separating his acting from the other components of the production: Martínez found that “with his resounding voice, his violent gestures, and the fever he was able to pull out from his eyes, Bo conferred on the character the authority and charisma that didn’t appear in Copi’s text.”255 Fernández Moreno found Bo’s acting endowed with “a precise balance” as opposed to Drouot, whose less substantial role had forced the director to exaggerate his “gesticulations and eccentricities” without benefit for either character or actor.256 For L’Express, for whose critic the play “possibly satirical and almost sacrilegious, [had] neither sense nor force,” the choice of a male performer with a hoarse voice constantly interrupting phrases, movements, and dances, allowed the director to achieve a vision of “a giant, creaking puppet.”257 Despite the lead performer’s skills, a particular point of contention was the character of Evita, due to either her debased representation or its assemblage with a male performer. Indignant at both, Rapin found the treatment of Eva Perón cynical and morbid, qualifying the play as the worst of the season, “sinister, inept, indecent, obnoxious, disgusting, and

 Lorne, “Une Evita.”  Godard, “Une dame.” 253  Dumur, “Aux âmes sensibles,” 43. 254  Herald Tribune, March 18, 1970. 255  Martínez, “Teatro,” 44. 256  Fernández Moreno, “La dama.” 257  “Eva Peron,” L’Express, March 16, 1970. 251 252

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dishonest.”258 Galey regretted that spectators would henceforth feel a revulsive shudder at the sheer name of Perón’s wife, even though he understood the intention “to debunk a statue, to show the ignoble comedy of this agony used for political ends.”259 And Martínez, the same reviewer who had so praised Bo’s interpretation, cringed at directorial choices that made the historical character into what he saw as a grotesque caricature: “a decrepit monster under her Sunday dress, walking with her shoulders back and a threatening belly, in the same attitude with which Walt Disney represented the perverse queen of Snow White”; he also felt disgusted at Evita’s physical interactions with the Buenos Aires buildings—licking them with a tongue painted red, offering her body, smearing them with her mascara—in a body that flaunted masculine traits such as Bo’s armpit and chest hair; and, finally, the reviewer slammed the “virulence with which Copi wanted to describe Eva and Perón, disguising them as traitors.”260 Although the author and director had tried to extricate their work from history, the political theme became unavoidable when a multitude of real actors were activated in France, Spain, and Argentina. At the time, Arias “thought that an impermeable film was stretched between France and Argentina”261 and even ventured making light of the Peróns’ imagined reactions to the show.262 However, journalists and even cast actors insisted on the relevance of real politics: Bruneau declared that the work was steeped in politics up to its ears, an anti-Peronist pamphlet.263 Martínez was particularly keen on exposing the playwright’s ideology, observing how “at every knot of the work politics strides like an imperial character, against the grain of the actors and the director himself.”264 Even if I concur with the playwright’s and director’s argument that the production was primarily an artistic fact and that Copi’s budding theatrical work would

 Rapin, “Eva Peron.”  Galey, “Eva Peron.” 260  Martínez, “Los muertos,” 44–45. 261  Arias, Écriture, 110. 262  “If Eva could see it, she would laugh like crazy. But Perón wouldn’t like it, I think. He’s already too decrepit for these things. He doesn’t understand anything.” Martínez, “El revés,” 44. 263  Martínez, “Teatro,” 44. 264  Ibid., 45. 258 259

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consistently remain provocative independently from its subject,265 it is difficult to ignore a difference between the two artists, namely the very concrete political and economic connections and enmities of Copi’s family with the Peróns themselves, which Arias did not have. Amid an apparent amnesia in the press about Copi’s past, a hint of a more personal feud was captured by Martínez at a time when the playwright was more off-guard, over a bottle of Beaujolais at the La Chope confectionery at the Contrescarpe. To a French architect asking if Evita really was such a “ridiculous crazy one,” the author replied: “Eva was a nothing who wanted to become a goddess. But what does that matter? Starting tonight, she will be a goddess in disgrace, a useless bejeweled corpse.”266 Transatlantic Actor-Networks: Shock and Violence Yet, in the meantime, both the topic and style of the show began to seriously irritate actors on a transatlantic scale. Rumors that certain groups were preparing to wreak havoc at the premiere had been circulating for some time, although it was yet unclear “if the demonstrations were plotted by Peronists, anti-Peronists, or advocates of heterosexuality.”267 After performances started, the Peronist Youth and the Nationalist Justicialist Movement overtly “repudiated those responsible for the sacrilege (whom they described as ‘well-known amorals’), invoked the traditional Franco-­ Argentine friendship, […] and ultimately asked the French government to prohibit the work because they could not take responsibility for ‘the consequences, product of the Peronist Movement’s reaction.’”268 Signs of the religious dimension acquired by Evita were the reparation mass held in a Belgrano church or the ceremony organized at the Chacarita cemetery in Buenos Aires to atone for the profanation of Evita’s memory.269 Copi, in turn, received threatening letters from Madrid, where Perón lived in exile,

265  Arias convincingly argues that he and Copi were not naive, but it was rather a matter of theatrical language: “Copi’s is violent and poetic. This trait runs through his entire oeuvre, becoming at times extremely acute. What has been perceived as the whim of an angry young man to disown a historical figure, was totally visionary but we couldn’t afford to say it at the time!” Arias, Écriture, 113. 266  Martínez, “Teatro.” 267  Fernández Moreno, “La dama.” 268  Martínez, “Teatro,” 45. 269  Ibid.; “Protestations contre l’Eva Peron de Copi,” Le Monde, March 20, 1970.

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although his actual role remains unclear.270 Eventually, the situation degenerated and the show became the target of actual physical violence. On March 24 a group of young men of the extremist right-wing group Ordre Nouveau (New Order, formerly Occident271) decided to make a bold statement against the production and arrived together at the theatre in a Citroën panel van.272 Their heads covered with helmets and stockings, wearing leather jackets and carrying batons, iron bars, and chains, the attackers started by destroying the theatre’s offices and beating up two employees. Wasting no time, the aggressors immediately entered the auditorium. It was about 9:20 pm and the performance had started ten minutes earlier for an audience of some 130 spectators.273 At the beginning, the audience thought that the attack was meant as a deliberate segment of the performance and even the French actors were late to realize the seriousness of the situation. Arias and Facundo Bo, however, immediately fled the theatre and tried to take refuge in a hole in a wall, only to discover that it was full of trash. Hiding in the garbage with the actor still dressed in his Dior costume, the two of them could hear explosions and cries.274 Arias offers a vivid account of this “incredible episode” and how memory instantly triggered a connection with Argentina:

270  Binet, Roberto Platé, 29. Arias confesses he does not know what role some people who witnessed rehearsals might have had in informing Perón. It seemed that a commando aimed at assassinating Copi had come from Buenos Aires, but Perón had dismissed the idea saying: “No, it’s not worth it, he’s just a fag.” Arias, Écriture, 109. 271  The nationalist movement Occident was founded in 1964 and officially dissolved in 1968. It became notorious for its interventions against leftists and homosexuals in the Latin Quarter. Ordre Nouveau would transform into the Front National in 1972. See Joseph Algayz, L’extrême droite en France de 1965 à 1984 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1989) and Frédéric Charpier, Génération Occident (Paris: Seuil, 2005). 272  Jean-Pierre Leonardini, “Plumes de paon: ‘Eva Peron,’ de Copi au Théâtre de l’Épée de Bois,” L’Humanité, March 26, 1970. This article speaks of about twenty young men, which seems the number closest to reality considering the middle-sized truck that carried them. Claude Berthelot, the theatre’s director, speaks instead of about fifty attackers, a larger number that may depend on a subjective amplification from the point of view of the attacked. “Des jeunes gens masqués ont attaqué hier le Théâtre de l’Épée de Bois où l’on jouait ‘Eva Peron’ et blessé deux personnes,” Paris Presse, March 26, 1970. Unless otherwise noted, my chronicle of the episode combines these two contemporaneous sources. 273  Thus, if the house was only partially full because of the “catastrophic press” received by the show, it would be an exaggeration to say that it “remained empty” as in Colette Godard, Le théâtre depuis 1968 (Paris: J. C. Lattès, 1980), 106. 274  Arias, Écriture, 108.

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Immediately I had the impression of being in Buenos Aires and of reliving the nightmare. I had a crisis of paranoia that would last for years thereafter. Everything merged together. We had fled Buenos Aires, the repression, and, by this assault, Argentine violence was slapped back in our face. It was incarnated here by this hostile group of extreme right.275

Spreading throughout the auditorium, the young men started a fire by throwing a smoke bomb onto the stage. Luckily, Drouot managed to smother the fire with an extinguisher. Then, the attackers completely destroyed the set and ransacked the theatre boxes. Before leaving the theatre, they had time to spray the outside walls with the slogans “Long live justicialism” and “Eva Perón won’t be soiled,”276 along with a Celtic cross, a symbol adopted by many Neo-Nazi white nationalist groups. Finally, they ran to their van, threw in their guns and helmets, and fled separately in cars and scooters parked nearby in advance. This highly deterritorialized assemblage of men, combat attires, guns, and vehicles was particularly effective: the whole blitz lasted only about five minutes but was brutal.277 Amid the chaos, Crombecque managed to stop the driver of the van, Jacques Charasse, who would later justify his actions by claiming that Bo was a real transvestite working as a hustler.278 Berthelot was flabbergasted and his theatre was left with ten thousand francs of damages. He planned to hire private guards since threatening phone calls continued. Eventually, however, the policemen, who were normally stationed less than a hundred yards from the theatre, were moved closer thanks to the pressures of the communist city officials.279 Despite the damages, the troupe and the theatre decided to continue the planned performances without the set until it could be rebuilt: in principle this was announced as a defense of freedom of expression, but in practice the producing partners were well aware of the even more disastrous economic  Ibid., 108–09.  “Un commando d’extrême droite interrompt la représentation d’‘Eva Peron’ de Copi,” Le Monde, March 26, 1970. 277  Paris Presse, “Des jeunes gens.” 278  Charasse was defended by Jean Marie Le Pen (who would become president of the Front National in 1972) and convicted to six months in prison. Details about these proceedings are culled from Olivier Bérubé-Sasseville, “‘Contre l’État policier.’ Article publié dans le journal Pour un Ordre Nouveau (n° 1, 1971),” Parlement[s], Revue d’histoire politique 28, no. 2 (2018): 79–85; Arias, Écriture, 110; Arias in Damonte, Copi, 13. 279  P. L., “Vive Eva Peron!,” Le Nouvel Observateur, March 30, 1970. 275 276

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impact of interrupting the run.280 To offset the damages and materially help the theatre and troupe, a fund-raising operation was publicized by Le Monde while Le Nouvel Observateur invited spectators to go see the show and thus help the troupe financially.281 Luckily, the costumes had been spared.282 The aftermath of such an experience was subjectively different for each artist. Arias felt as if they were “playing on the ruins of the production. It was catastrophic, […] we were afraid.”283 For him the event also meant that “the door to Argentina was definitively shut. I had to henceforth accept exile. For good.”284 Copi seemed more detached: his publisher remembers him sneering at the events.285 Platé had to re-make the set, although he later blackboxed the rebuilding time and claimed that everything was back in place the next day.286 What is certain is that such a reception, previously reserved only for Jean Genet’s Les paravents (The Screens) within the French context, was the best form of free publicity the show could obtain and effectively launched the group as a more recognizable presence on the Parisian theatrical landscape.287 Platé’s Set from Intermediary to Mediator To unpack the relevance of this production with a focus on the city and ANT, a few more observations are in order. Although Latour, in his search for concrete associations, privileges the perspective of the ant, he also concedes the usefulness of a bird’s eye view that allows a perception of the whole. Yet, in order to keep matters local, he proposes to employ panoramas as an example of tools that show everything but simultaneously “see nothing since they simply show an image painted (or projected) on the tiny wall of a room fully closed to the outside.”288 The set conceptualized  Le Monde, “Un commando.”  Ibid., and P. L., “Vive Eva Peron!” 282  Paris Presse, “Des jeunes gens.” 283  Arias, Écriture, 120. 284  Ibid., 112. 285  Christian Bourgois in Quirot, “Copi conforme,” 52. 286  Platé in Binet, Roberto Platé, 29. 287  Colette Godard, “Les compagnies sans budget: auto publicité et affichettes clandestines,” Le Monde, March 4, 1971. Genet’s play had been attacked by the Occident group in 1966 while performances ran at the Théâtre de l’Odéon. See Lynda Bellity Peskine et al., La bataille des Paravents: Théâtre de l’Odéon, 1966 (Paris: IMEC, 1991). 288  Latour, Reassembling, 187. 280 281

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by Platé was very similar to such a panorama, an iconic representation of the real Argentine capital for the closed space of a theatre, a tangible miniature of Buenos Aires recreated within the tiny urban micro space of a Parisian living room. Once removed from the workshop and translated to the Théâtre de l’Épée de Bois, his set pieces and painted backdrop functioned mostly as simple intermediaries: Latour explains how objects frequently recede to that invisible role and cease to speak about their agency but can be reactivated as mediators if “accidents, breakdowns, and strikes” occur.289 Precisely when the extremists unleashed their violence upon the set, it acquired a stronger status of mediator, since the interaction clearly marked a change of direction in the event: this was no longer a “free speech protest” but became a reason for police protection and for the activation of a larger city-wide network that included a larger influx of spectators. All in all, the set started out as “faux-vrai” (faux-real), as Romanian critic George Banu describes Platé’s design style,290 but the miniature city of Buenos Aires soon summoned very real forces from the not-so-distant real Latin American city. Looking to annihilate the twisted icon of Eva Perón but unable or unwilling to kill the performers, the hooligans hurled their iron bars against the fake city, which bore the brunt of the attack. As a consequence, the Paris police was activated to offer protection and the show stood out for everyone. This sequence is an excellent example of the complexity of actors involved in an event. Latour explains how several times, spaces, unseen actors, and levels of pressure are involved in any interaction, which cannot therefore be called synchronic, isotopic, synoptic, or isobaric. In other words, an action can be the effect of actors that exist at different times or places and therefore are not simultaneously visible or wield the same power. The city of Buenos Aires is an obvious example of a different space involved; Evita, Perón, and the Argentine Peronists are among the unseen actors, along with the tools bought at a different time by Platé to build the set; and clearly, the right-wing extremists show a level of pressure that trumps all other intentions by the artists or the spectators. It should also be added that the event had a number of other far-reaching consequences that trickled down the associative paths in all directions: in Buenos Aires,

 Ibid., 81.  Georges Banu, “Roberto Platé, le vertige du faux vrai,” in Portrait by Roberto Platé (Paris: Éditions Plume, 1999), 82–85. 289 290

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Copi’s brothers had to go into hiding, fearing repercussions,291 while, in Paris, the Théâtre de Poche-Montparnasse had to reimburse its spectators for their tickets to Michael McClure’s The Sermons of Jean Harlow & the Curses of Billy the Kid, because Drouot, who would normally play in that show right after Eva Perón, had become unavailable.292 Asked how he could make the two engagements work without glitches, Drouot had stated that everything was perfectly timed:293 in other words, two shows at two separate theatres were quietly working as an assemblage and only once the mechanism broke down did the blackboxed items become more visible.

“The Group Is Launched” What happened over the following twenty years for TSE is well summarized by Godard: “the group is launched, it imposes its baroque humor, its absolutely personal vision with L’histoire du théâtre (The History of Theatre) at the Palace already in 1971. […] In fact, it’s no longer about the TSE group, but about Arias and his team that scatters and regroups depending on circumstances.”294 As a matter of fact, this process of de- and reterritorialization entailed important shifts in the composition of the group determined by unpredictable and rather serious circumstances. In 1974 Stoppani was run over by a car—ironically on the Pont des Invalides— remained in a coma for a while, and then needed to find serious work to pay for his physical rehabilitation. Since TSE could not afford to support him, that event became the reason he worked for Savary’s Good Bye Mister Freud in collaboration with his partner Jean Ives Legavre, whom he had met in Paris.295 From the point of view of the director as representative for the company’s actor-network, this departure may have looked like the  Mathieu Lindon, “Copi: On a perdu l’original,” Libération, December 15, 1987, 36.  Le Monde, “Un commando.” The French adaptation by Roland Dubillard was titled Jean Harlow contre Billy the Kid. 293  Copi and Delage, “Copi à propos de la pièce.” 294  Godard in Binet, Roberto Platé, 30. Like Savary, Arias insisted that it was his aesthetics, creative authorship, and the works he decided to do that informed the group and not a case of collective creation. Écriture, 135. The History of Theatre was produced thanks to a Guggenheim Foundation grant. It covered the history of the theatre from the origins to Tennessee Williams, presented as a fashion show. For Arias it was a key production because it was the first he created in France with his own scenic language. It was hosted again by the Théâtre de l’Épée de Bois, a sign of a good relationship maintained with the venue. Ibid., 121. 295  Stoppani, interview with the author, August 12, 2017. 291 292

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straw that broke the camel’s back: nothing would speak as loudly of this artistic divorce as Arias’s silence on Stoppani’s name in his biographical interviews, where a founding member of TSE turned into a generic “friend.”296 The following year, yet another historic member was forced to interrupt her collaboration when Marucha Bo suffered a cerebral aneurism in the midst of rehearsals for Vingt-quatre heures (Twenty-Four Hours), a show set to premiere at the Théâtre National de Chaillot in November 1975.297 With the performer’s acting career abruptly cut short, upon Arias’s suggestion Facundo Bo telephoned Marini and asked if she would be willing to spend three months in Paris and step in for Marucha.298 Marini did not hesitate to say yes: her earlier choice of returning to Buenos Aires had meant spending twenty-five days in prison, fearing for her life, and being banned from international travel for three years.299 She arrived in Paris on September 22, 1975 and rejoined TSE for several shows. Nevertheless, as Arias started working more on a European repertoire, the period after Twenty-Four Hours represented a fracture with the people who had accompanied his artistic journey until then. Platé, for example, decided to concentrate on painting.300 As for Copi, after the Eva Perón scandal, he had been banned from entering Argentina and was only able to see Buenos Aires for a last time in 1987, about three years after the end of the last Argentine dictatorship and shortly before his death.301

 Arias, Écriture, 76.  Arias described this production as “a colossal and utopian show […]. Twenty-four tableaux, twelve during the day, twelve at night, tracing a theatrical itinerary” Écriture, 128. Of these twenty-four tableaux, twelve presented comedic situations whereas in the next twelve the theatrical dream became a nocturnal nightmare. 298  Quirot, Marilú Marini, 51. 299  The father of a minor had accused Marini of statutory rape for wearing a too-revealing t-shirt during the performances of Euripides’s Bacchae, directed by Villanueva at the Di Tella. Ibid., 45. 300  Arias, Écriture, 128. 301  The election of president Raúl Alfonsín of the UCR in October 1983 concluded the so-called Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (National Reorganization Process), a notorious and particularly oppressive regime that had started with a military coup in March 1976. See Rock, Argentina, 367–403. 296 297

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The Nocturnal City: Les Escaliers du Sacré-Cœur Copi is more related to Paris than to Argentina, he is my link to French culture. This man has always been a curiosity to me: he adhered totally to Paris, which we roamed together whole nights on the lookout for amusing things to see, transvestites, queens, nightclubs. This osmosis with the city can be found in The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur.—Alfredo Arias302

After the psychological trauma from the scare of Eva Perón, Arias felt that he should take a break from Copi’s artistic universe: “Obviously, Copi and I continued to see each other, we were very close, and we loved strolling through the shady places of the capital, but it was kind of evident that we couldn’t work together anymore for some time.”303 As a matter of fact, despite going to see Copi’s plays directed by others,304 during the next twenty years until The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur Arias approached Copi’s work only once with an adaptation of his blunt but light-hearted comic strip, La femme assise (The Seated Woman, 1984).305 The desire to stage one of Copi’s shocking plays again resurfaced only after the author’s death, an homage to a friend prematurely lost to AIDS in 1987 but also the effect of a considerably improved context for TSE, which materialized thanks to a constellation of French actors. In 1985 the French Minister of Culture Jack Lang, upon advice from Robert Abirached, then director of the Department of Theatre and Spectacles, offered Arias the direction of the National Dramatic Center of Aubervilliers, also known as Théâtre de la Commune.306 Financial support for this peripheric, Off Paris theatre came mostly from the working-class city of Aubervilliers and its mayor Jack Ralite.307 Located at 2 Rue Edouard  Arias, Écriture, 164.  Ibid., 114. 304  Ibid., 162. 305  Originally staged at the Théâtre des Maturins, with Marilú Marini and Jérôme Nicolin alternating with Alain Salomon, the show would be reprised in 1999 at the Théâtre de Chaillot (under Savary’s artistic direction) in combination with Copi’s Le frigo (The Fridge), with Arias himself in place of Nicolin. 306  Arias, interview with the author, August 5, 2017. Arias succeeded the founder Gabriel Garran, who had managed and developed the theatre and its troupe since 1965. 307  Elected in 1973 to the Seine-Saint-Denis constituency for the French Communist Party, Ralite had been elected mayor of Aubervilliers in 1984 after working as Mitterrand’s minister for health and minister for employment in the period 1981–1984. I take the “Off Paris” definition from an article by Rosette Lamont, “Stage View; Innovation Blossoms on the Fringes of Paris,” New York Times, May 18, 1986. 302 303

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Poisson, just north of Paris, it was the first permanent theatre in the Parisian suburbs. With an emphasis on contemporary playwrights, La Commune became a National Dramatic Center in 1971 and in 1975 completed a modernization of its building, redesigned by René Allio. The space that Arias took over consisted of two main performance spaces, a larger rectangular one for 362 spectators with a proscenium stage of about 30 by 24 feet and a smaller experimental 166-seat black box.308 For Arias, the appointment to artistic director offered an opportunity for the “TSE family” to gather once again while mingling with newly arrived performers.309 In a documentary film about the group, Godard and Jacques Crier illustrated the installation of the company into their new location through a sequence of urban views that situated the theatre in the northern suburbs, the department of Seine-Saint-Denis, and the satellite city of Aubervilliers.310 During Arias’s tenure as director (January 1, 1985—December 31, 1990), the theatre was known as “Aubervilliers— Groupe TSE” and produced twenty-four shows for about 190,000 spectators.311 Arias describes his engagement with Aubervilliers as doubly beneficial. Managing a large institution and having to attract the audience kept him busy and helped him “shelve certain anguishes or preoccupations.”312 At the same time, as he began experimenting with different aesthetics, he learnt to better define his own personal artistic signature. This was the moment when he also returned to Buenos Aires, seventeen years after his departure, to present Pierre de Marivaux’s Le jeu de l’amour et du hazard (The Game of Love and Chance), created at Aubervilliers: “I resume contact with the city, […] I rediscover this part of myself, and it’s at that time that I decide to reconnect theatrically with Copi and stage The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur.”313 Furthermore, towards the end of his mandate at Aubervilliers, Arias evidently felt that he could stop

308  For details on the history of this theatre see Micheline B. Servin, une [sic] aventure... le Théâtre de la Commune d’Aubervilliers (Paris: Encre, 1980). 309  Arias, Écriture, 134. 310  Godard and Crier, “TSE Avoir 20 ans à Aubervilliers.” 311  http://www.theatreonline.com/Theatre/Theatre-de-la-Commune/206, accessed January 31, 2023. 312  Arias, Écriture, 170. 313  Ibid. This is an example of Buenos Aires’s action contributing to Arias’s artistic decisions.

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worrying about pleasing the audience with “an image of charme and light poetry” and take more risks with Copi’s “sulfurous love stories.”314 Copi’s Sulfurous Montmartre Written in verse but in a language that abounds in unambiguous sexual terms,315 this tragicomedy in two acts is set at the foot of the La Butte-­ Montmartre hill. It depicts the tribulations and territorial skirmishes of a couple of unscrupulous elderly transvestites, a homosexual in search for adventure, his estranged wife, their sixteen-year-old gender-fluid daughter Lou, Ahmed (the Arab boy who loves her), a squadron of lesbians, and Martin, a black city policeman.316 Everyone dies at the end, except the two 314  Colette Godard, “Copi à Aubervilliers,” Le Monde, January 6, 1990. Starting in March of the same year, Arias also presented Copi’s surrealist monologue Loretta Strong in the theatre’s smaller performance space. 315  An example juxtaposing sacred and profane is the following: “Mimi. You speak of the Sacred-Heart! / Here, it’s the Sacred-Cock. / And you will suck it, / you buggered bastard!” (“Tu parles du Sacré-Cœur! / Ici, c’est la Sacrée-Queue. / Et tu vas-me la sucer, / espèce de sale enfoiré!”) Copi, Théâtre, vol. 2, 302. 316  In the first act, the transvestites Fifi and Mimi meet at the steps of the Sacré Cœur near a pissoir, attack a “faggot” who encroaches on their territory, rape him, and leave him for dead. Fifi and Mimi are then attracted by the fortune of Lou, a young lesbian dressed as a boy. Lou shows she can defend herself with her knife, but the ensuing quarrel is interrupted by Ahmed. A tribe of four “armed dykes” (Copi, Théâtre, vol. 2, 317) helmed by Sappho defends Lou, chases Fifi and Mimi away, and threatens Ahmed. The young man expresses his desire for Lou beyond the limits of gender, a proffer that Lou initially rebuffs. In the meantime, the homosexual has returned to his senses and unsuccessfully tries to seduce Ahmed by offering money. When Fifi and Mimi again seek to catch Lou, agent Martin tries to restore order until the arrival of La Solitaire, a richly dressed woman who turns out to be Lou’s mother and Martin’s lover. Even if she publicly confirms her daughter’s sex, Lou argues that (s)he can choose her/his own illusion. In the morning, Lou and Ahmed meet and mate after a torrid scene rendered between the poetic, the obscene, and the funny. The second act takes place nine months later. The homosexual, in fact a rich aristocrat, has hired Fifi and Mimi to carry his sedan chair, but the two reiterate the murder of their master once he finds out that they sold his furniture for money. With Lou pregnant yet unenthusiastic about motherhood, Ahmed insists on a wedding and asks Fifi and Mimi to be their witnesses. Helped by the Sappho gang, Lou is coincidentally ready to give birth. Once the homosexual resurrects for the second time, the Solitaire recognizes him after seventeen years as her former husband and Lou’s father. When Lou gives birth, disowns her child, and dies after poisoning herself, Sappho, Ahmed, the Homosexual, and the Solitaire fight over the baby and kill each other. The newborn is eventually found by Fifi and Mimi, who rob everyone of their possessions and take the infant boy away in the dawn of Montmartre.

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transvestites, who take with them Lou and Ahmed’s newborn.317 As the product of multiple diversities, the child becomes a tangible manifestation of Copi’s break with any notion of a purity of identity, be it social, racial, or sexual.318 Combining in the same text the grace of verse with the rawness of sexual language, comedy and tragedy, the sacred and the profane,319 this time Copi set his play in the French capital, on the Montmartre hill that provides one of the best vantage points over Paris. Situated in the 18th arrondissement, it is also not far from Aubervilliers. The play itself created an otherwise impossible heterotopia by assembling the steps leading to the Sacré-Cœur with the vespasienne, an element Copi confessed to having naughtily introduced into his version of the city.320 These multi-­ compartmented urinal structures were installed starting in 1877 and reached a peak of about 1,300 during the 1930s before the Paris City Council voted for their progressive elimination in 1961.321 Brassaï, the photographer who in the 1930s immortalized the most secret corners of 317  This play has been less critically analyzed than Eva Perón, with some notable exceptions. An in-depth analysis in terms of gender and sexuality opens Rosenzvaig’s volume dedicated to Copi: for him, the playwright makes what for Genet was shameful into something normal, in an atmosphere where tragedy becomes impossible. Copi, 25–37. Aira considers this “auto sacramental in verse” as “the most sublime and moving” of Copi’s plays. Copi, 121. Yet another Argentine writer, José Amícola, perceives the setting of the Sacré-Cœur as the location of a semiotic violence stemming from the anomalous sexuality displayed. Estéticas bastardas (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2012), 158. For Barberis, in the play Copi “dramatizes exile employing a savage dramaturgy where blood, violence, tribalism, sex, love, and death prevail, themes carried by a lyrical language that approaches singing.” Les mondes, 92. 318  An exchange between Ali’s parents speaks to the child’s nature as assemblage: “Ahmed. Will this be girl or boy? / Albino or fairy? / Lou. This won’t be a man! / This will be neither girl nor boy! / I know, this is the sum / of all additions! […] I fear this will be born abnormal / with the head of my mother / and the body of an animal!” (Ahmed. Sera-t-il fille ou garçon? / Albinos ou maricon? Lou. Il ne sera pas un homme! / Il ne sera fille ni garçon! / Je le sais, il est la somme / de toutes les additions! […] J’ai peur qu’il naisse anormal / avec la tête de ma mère / et le corps d’un animal!”), Copi, Théâtre, vol. 2, 359–60. 319  Michel Cressole remarked that Copi made Peynet’s lovers take the postures of Genet’s characters. “Arias-Copi: vue sur la bite,” Libération, January 12, 1990. Guy Dumur noted the clarity of the evening program in juxtaposing the location’s architectural features: “Below the pissoir, above the Basilica” “Copi, Copi! Un spectacle du Groupe TSE,” Le Nouvel Observateur, [before January 9, 1990], 78. 320  See the documentary by Marc Dondey and Fabienne Strouve, “Copi sur Les Escaliers du Sacré-Cœur,” Antenne 2, November 12, 1984 (INAthèque archive). 321  These were eventually substituted by the unisex, self-contained, self-cleaning Sanisettes for one person at a time.

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Paris, noted that “at nightfall, the urinal lamps lit up with the streetlamps. These tiny chapels served an odd religion. They were public conveniences, but also meeting grounds and cruising areas.”322 At the time of writing the play, Copi lived steps from the Sacré-Cœur near Rue Lepic and several commentators noted that his story was directly inspired by “the teeming underworld of Montmartre”323: much like Brassaï’s black and white photographs, The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur revealed a corner of Paris that the casual tourist would hardly perceive during the day. However, these were not the real Rue Lepic or the real steps of Montmartre (if nothing else, because the gardens of the Basilica were closed at night324) but rather theatrical and more malleable versions that afforded a reappropriation of the sacred space of the Basilica by the queer family of Copi’s characters. The first transition from text to stage was a reading by Copi himself, dressed in a light blue suit, who played all the roles on the bare stage of the Théâtre de la Bastille in November 1984.325 It was at one of these readings that Arias first thought he could stage the play because he recognized in it a common past, a universe of the night that Copi had led him to discover when the director arrived in Paris.326 “I wanted to stage the Steps”—stated Arias—“because it speaks of the territories of love. Of the freedom of ghettos. You do what you want but, to get inside, you have to show your passport.”327 Proof of these otherwise invisible borders was an episode that occurred when the entire troupe went to take some promotional photos in Rue Houdon, in the heart of the transvestites’ 322  Brassaï, “The Urinals of Paris” in The Secret Paris of the 30s, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), n.p. 323  Dumur, “Copi, Copi!” 78. The exact address was 10 Rue Cauchois, a block from the main street (Facundo Bo, Cachafaz program). 324  Cressole, “Arias-Copi.” 325  Lindon, “Copi,” 36. The show ran for twenty-three performances from November 6 to December 1, 1984. In the documentary Copi sur Les Escaliers du Sacré-Cœur by Dondey and Strouve, Copi drew an outline of the Sacré-Cœur basilica on a blackboard and explained that the story was not inspired by any real episode: except for an actual band of lesbians, all other characters were imaginary and belonged to the mythology of Paris. A picture of Copi reading the play sitting on a sofa with Lavelli was shown during Matin bonheur, Antenne 2, March 3, 1988 (INAthèque archive), pointing to a potential interest for the play by the other director. 326  Irène Sadowska-Guillon, “Les escaliers du Sacré Cœur et Loretta Strong de Copi en souvenir,” Acteurs/Auteurs 77–78 (1990): 47. 327  Colette Godard, “Copi à Aubervilliers: Alfredo Arias, qui dirige le Théâtre de la Commune, présente deux pièces de Copi, dont une inédite, ‘les Escaliers du Sacré-Coeur,’” Le Monde, January 6, 1990.

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­ eighborhood near Montmartre. The mingling of performers as characn ters with real “night workers” created an uproar: “Blessed Virgin, what a stir! There was one who was really a wreck […]. And she screamed because we impeded her work. Indeed, in front of my actors, the passers-by shouted: At least, those are beautiful!” recalled Arias.328 Downstage the Vespasienne, Upstage the Basilica: The Production at Aubervilliers The performance that premiered for an invited audience on January 8, 1990, shifted time by moving what would normally occur in the nocturnal ghetto to an earlier slot for everyone to see.329 For the production at Aubervilliers, Platé’s set captured the play’s stark contrasts with great simplicity of design: downstage the vespasienne, upstage the Basilica, one in front of the other in direct line and connected by ten steps that ran the breadth of the stage.330 Describing Platé’s work, Banu noted the artist’s ability to theatricalize certain spaces by simultaneously oversizing and fragmenting them.331 In this space, we see precisely these operations as the overpowering basilica in the background was shielded by the all-grey metal 328  Emmanuel Dayde, Jean-Louis Galesne, and J.P. Gede, “Un homme est une femme cha ba da ba da,” 7 à Paris, February 21, 1990. Some of these promotional pictures are visible at https://www.gettyimages.com, accessed January 31, 2023 (nos. 583415338, 583430640, and 583457820). 329  For the general audience the show ran from January 9 to February 25, 1990, a total of forty performances. The full cast included (in order of appearance): Larry Hager (Mimi), Facundo Bo (Fifi), Alain Salomon/Alfredo Arias (alternating as The Homosexual), Stephanie Schwartzbrod (Lou), Wally Chetout (Ahmed), Zobeida Jaua (Sappho), Bass Dhem (Martin), Marilú Marini (The Solitaire), and Chloe Jouval with Thaliana Vida (the Sapphettes). Other artistic contributors were Patrick Lebreton (costumes), Patrice Trottier (light design), and Suzanne Pisteur (make-up). Aided by the Théâtre de la Commune’s larger structure, the program acknowledged several assistants in addition to Lebreton’s costume atelier, the set construction workshop R.T.L.D., and various providers of materials. 330  Marini joked that actors needed to be athletes, constantly climbing the stairs up and down. Tcherkaski, Habla Copi, 94. Clips from the production are visible in a reportage by Dominique Darzacq broadcast during the TV news at 8 pm on January 14, 1990 on TF1 (INAthèque archive). A large set of production photos by Daniel Cande is available at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9064266n, accessed January 31, 2023. An interview with Arias and Marini on the show is at https://www.ina.fr/video/I08118197/theatre-alfredo-arias-et-marilu-marini-a-propos-de-la-piece-les-escaliers-du-sacre-coeur-video. html, accessed January 31, 2023. 331  Banu, “Roberto Platé,” 84.

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structure of the vespasienne. As opposed to the shuttering of his Buenos Aires Restroom, Platé could now freely refashion the most public and sacred space of another city in plain view. Then, for the show’s playbill the artist used the vespasienne as billboard to list the contributors to the performance, thereby reactivating a function of this city structure that had faded with the appearance in 1868 of the Morris columns, tall cylindrical advertising structures that began to punctuate the Parisian sidewalks. Since Copi’s versification had already camped everything in his “savage parade,”332 Arias’s approach to the text was lighter on theatricality in the first half of the show: “I kept myself in an unstable balance”—declared the director—“in order never to force the crudeness of the text. To make Copi’s poetry heard, I tried not to always show what he says.”333 In order to achieve this balance, the first act was conceived through “a much contained realism,” whereas the second “doubled down on theatricality while pushing toward a sort of phantasmagoria […]: thus, the two transvestites who become servants [were] inspired by the character played by Copi himself in The Fridge named Goliatha, the mother played by Marilú Marini evoked Eva Perón, and the lesbians [evoked] the homosexuals of The Homosexual.”334 Interestingly, the fact that the director saw some characters as embodiments of earlier types in Copi’s oeuvre led him to use the same model of a costume originally designed by Stoppani for Goliatha.335 Additionally, the second act attempted to let Copi’s original sources emerge through the format of the Argentine revue, in which the performers who had influenced Copi’s imaginary world “came to speak directly to the public in a rather crude and vulgar way in the comic interludes of the story.”336 This split approach was noted by Pierre Marcabru, who distinguished a rather repetitive first part in which the author’s writing seemed to spin on itself, at times verging on banality and boredom, and a second part in which the characters became “more threatened, more touching” and produced “a real despair, an unhappy sensibility that create[d] a sort of charm 332  Michel Cournot, “Situation critique: ‘Les Escaliers du Sacré-Cœur,’ de Copi’; ‘La Traversé de l’hiver,’ de Yasmina Reza: deux spectacles qu’on aurait voulu aimer,” Le Monde, January 13, 1990. 333  Dayde, Galesne, and Gede, “Un homme.” 334  Sadowska-Guillon, “Les escaliers,” 49.  References are to Copi’s plays  Le frigo and L’homosexuel ou la difficulté de s’exprimer (The Homosexual or the Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself). 335  Stoppani gave his explicit permission. Interview with the author, August 12, 2017. 336  Sadowska-Guillon, “Les escaliers,” 49.

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well illuminated by Alfredo Arias with his comical, unstable staging.”337 The transition from page to stage surprised Michel Cournot, who felt that the intended naturalism adopted by Arias failed to live up to the “imaginary cinema” of the hallucinated text and found the realistic acting out of the rape scenes as a demonstration of an “overwhelming voyeurism.”338 Such strong reaction was disputed by other reviewers. Emmanuel Dayde, Jean-Louis Galesne, and J.P. Gede wondered what one could see after all: “An old vespasienne […] lit in a poetic realism way […] wherein two pairs of high heels confusedly agitate themselves while gripping slashed pants fallen to the ground.”339 Indeed, Arias declared he had not seen in the text any provocation whatsoever nor tried to shock or propose any sort of exhibitionism: “We live it on stage completely naturally beyond good or evil,”340 he stated. Against too-intellectualizing interpretations of the play, the director underscored his instinctive approach: “I open […] all possibilities of accessing Copi’s oeuvre, but materialized, felt, lived, made flesh. […] He lived it in his own flesh, with all the risks involved in his play, with the excess, the dream, [and] death.”341 According to the majority of reviewers this approach was successful and could be summarized in the words of Armelle Heliot: “Copi’s universe and inspiration can shock, but one should be able to perceive, beyond the jokes and rhymed endings, the profound song of those who walk in darkness in the lonesome night.”342 Overall, the troupe’s familiarity with Copi produced a rather smooth and generally well-oiled performance.343 Among all the encouraging reviews, one by Michel Cressole in particular highlighted elements pointing to this production’s assemblages: “TSE’s performers […] have 337  Pierre Marcabru, “Provocations candides: ‘Les Escaliers du Sacré-Coeur’ de Copi,” Le Figaro, January 11, 1990. 338  Cournot, “Situation critique.” 339  Dayde, Galesne, and Gede, “Un homme.” 340  Sadowska-Guillon, “Les escaliers,” 48. 341  Ibid., 46–50. 342  Armelle Heliot, “Les Escaliers du Sacré-Cœur.” Le Quotidien, January 11, 1990. 343  Marcabru found that “the Tsé group, from Facundo Bo to Larry Hager, is here at home” “Provocations candides.” Guy Dumur spoke of “a cheerfulness, a lightness that the actors of the TSE Group enact marvelously. Especially the two ‘transvestites,’ Facundo Bo and Larry Hager, not to mention Alfredo Arias himself.” “Les gros mots de la vie,” Le Nouvel Obervateur, January 18–25, 1990, 67. The only partially negative criticism of the acting came from Heliot: “It’s played quickly, lively, rough. But unevenly”; praising all other performers, the critic singled out Facundo Bo for an excess of histrionics and Wally Chetout for ruining his scenes. “Les Escaliers.”

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descended from their inhuman tableaux vivants. In the way the characters of The Steps of the Sacré-Coeur discover themselves as parents in the end, in the tradition of classical theatre, the South American cousins of Paris find themselves in Copi’s family. […] Their accents […] are appropriate for a Sacré-Coeur turned Tower of Babel.”344 In this way, Cressole made explicit the players’ performative parallel to the characters’ diversities, namely the variety of nationalities actually speaking the words: along with the Argentine and French performers, there were a Venezuelan (Jaua), a Senegalese (Dhem), and an American (Hager).345 But the critic also underlined a further shift in TSE and Arias’s trajectory: if Eva Perón staged almost a dichotomy between Copi’s playtext and Arias’s performance-­ based segments,346 in the case of The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur the director seemed to bring to the table a more traditionally integrated way of doing theatre, developed in part through his work on earlier productions at Aubervilliers. Seeing The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur as the final translation of all these creative threads would not be complete without a look at production costs and responsibilities. Since the Aubervilliers theatre relied heavily on subscribers, the income forecast from ticket sales of 420,000 francs was almost exactly matched at the end of the run with a total of 422,325 francs (ca. 165,200 dollars today) for 4613 paying spectators out of an overall attendance of 9921.347 These figures testify to the luxury of a public theatre that could afford to welcome about fifty-five per cent of the spectators with a complimentary ticket. A productive barter deal that involved the streets of Paris was struck with Europe 2 radio: in exchange for its logo appearing on a number of posters all over the city, the director of  Cressole, “Arias-Copi.”  Cressole spoke of Larry Hager as the most intriguing: his “American accent makes him create a Mimi in drag familiar and comical like Laurel and Hardy.” Ibid. Hager had seen the Drácula performance in New York and later joined the group. He is currently Arias’s partner. Larry Hager, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, August 5, 2017. 346  In Eva Perón Arias literally inserted long movement-based sections that had their roots in his performance work developed in Argentina and were transported into France. However, the text and the inserts remained quite independent from each other. 347  Tickets were priced between 45 and 120 francs. The amount in today’s dollars derives from ca. $72,746 of January 1990 adjusted for inflation to January 2023 at https://www. in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1990?amount=72746; for a currency converter, see https://fxtop.com/en/historical-currency-converter.php, both accessed January 31, 2023. 344 345

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communication Yann Arribard committed to advertising the show three times a day from January 1 to February 8. This letter of agreement is also relevant because it indirectly pointed to precise locations of the promotional posters, based on a map of the city that indicated five metro areas by different colors.348 Even so, a projected deficit of about 1,365,000 francs (ca. 533,900 dollars349) would be covered by the city of Aubervilliers and the Conseil général de Seine-Saint-Denis, both of which were actor-networks that encompassed of course a large number of tax paying citizens.350 At around the same time of this production Arias fully comprehended how significantly the French resources had facilitated TSE’s translocation: “It’s taken me twenty years to admit that I live here. I didn’t arrive in Paris saying: How wonderful! However, I quickly realized that there was in France the possibility of putting down roots and a nice artistic effervescence likely to allow us to exist.”351 By comparing the ca. 43,700 dollars of Eva Perón’s production with the roughly 700,000 invested for The Steps of the Sacré-­ Cœur one can gain a concrete sense of TSE’s improved standing in the Parisian theatre scene.352 Despite these generous funding sources and the obvious advantages for theatre production, remaining a spokesman for the theatre as artistic director was not Arias’s main aspiration after all. The 1989–1990 season at  These promotional materials comprised 40 double posters in the Fuchsia, 70  in the Peony, and 40 in the Dahlia zone, including those affixed on Morris columns. These colorcoded zones corresponded at the time to commercial advertising tariffs set by the Paris transportation authority RATP (Régie Autonome des Transports Parisiens). For an example of the tariffs, see https://docplayer.fr/10724739-Tarifs-conditions-commerciales-2006-metrobus.html, accessed January 31, 2023. The Aubervilliers theatre sat on the threshold between the Fuchsia and Peony zones, while the Dahlia connected the other two with downtown Paris. The agreement with Europe 2 also required a half auditorium reserved for one date and another optional date. 349  ca. 235,124 dollars of 1990 adjusted for inflation to January 2023. 350  The minimum-cost production budget requested 200,000 francs for artistic honoraria; 520,000 francs for set, costumes, stage management, and sound; 455,000 for personnel; 340,000 for the five weeks’ running costs; and 270,000 for publicity for a total of 1,785,000 francs (equal to ca. 307,470 dollars at the time, ca. 700,000 in January 2023). A video of about 90 minutes was filmed on February 19, 1990, for 32,085 francs. The liaison for funds coming from the city was theatre co-director Marie Dominique Besson. 351  Arias, Écriture, 103. 352  These approximate figures are both adjusted to January 2023 values and are therefore comparable, but do not take into account other variables such as increased production costs determined by the passage of time, different kinds of theatre building, etc. 348

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Aubervilliers became an opportunity to wrap up his long journey with the original TSE members and pursue a more personal line with a multinational and multilingual group that continues to perform in both France and Argentina.

Conclusions: Bridging Cities I’d love to solidify this bridge, having the impression that one can go by foot from Buenos Aires to Paris.—Alfredo Arias353

In this chapter I have tracked the complex peripeteias of the TSE actor-­ network through several nomadic phases of territorialization and deterritorialization spanning more than twenty years, from the time in Buenos Aires when the group had yet to officially coalesce to the period of its elevation to resident company for a national theatre located in a Parisian suburb. Because of an abundance of materials related to its director, who remains the standard bearer for the company to this day, it has been easier to follow the line of becoming of his practical aesthetic research, which stemmed directly out of the visual arts and then developed from experimental performances to theatre productions for more traditional audiences. Arias’s merit has been to truly lead the way in TSE’s journey, persist despite serious resistances, and constantly transcend what became stale or untenable to seek an artistic way forward. At the same time, I have attempted to complement this narrative with an attention to other company members who, especially in the early phases of the group, participated in a variety of capacities. One example is costume designer Stoppani, who also acted as producer, coordinator, assistant director, set designer, and performer at different times. In truth, all the group members contributed to the company’s dislocated actions with varying degrees of pressure. More broadly, this research has allowed me to illustrate the gamut of human actors that supported, willfully impeded, or unwittingly affected certain directions of the group’s evolution. Some of the actors were undoubtedly sympathetic, as in the case of the network of visual artists, the Di Tella Institute, or the French theatres and institutions. Others behaved in an openly antagonistic way and maneuvered to curb these artists’ freedom, and these range from the judge who authorized the closing of Platé’s installation under Onganía’s regime to the hooligans who destroyed the 353

 Arias, Écriture, 183.

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set of Eva Perón. Yet another group of “neutral” actors were influenced by their context: while the police became an instrument of oppression in Buenos Aires, it offered protection to TSE members in Paris; Stoppani and Facundo Bo devoted a great deal of energy to the group, but they also caused a dramatic bout of deterritorialization once they arrived in the US; and journalists were at times influenced by their political leanings or friendship with the artists themselves. Overall, however, all these forces ultimately contributed to the company’s accomplishments. Indeed, it can be argued that without the Buenos Aires judge and the Parisian hooligans, the TSE group would not have left Argentina for good or obtained their decisive success in France, a result certainly not intended by their adversaries. Copi was of course one of the most relevant actors and mediators for Arias and other TSE members to become Argentines of Paris: he offered a concrete play to stage and partially produced it, he hosted the director at his place, put him in touch with his artistic networks, and enabled a wealth of associations that ultimately convinced Arias that his group could thrive in France more than elsewhere. In turn, Copi had the opportunity to see one of his playtexts assembled with a movement- and image-based performative language fully developed in Argentina. Finally, the playwright continued to exert his agency even from the afterlife and provided Arias with an opportunity for wrapping up their artistic relationship. The typology of actor-networks investigated here also comprises several non-human ones, intertwined at different scales. Among these, cities also oscillated between supportive or adversarial behaviors: while Buenos Aires nourished the artistic effervescence of the 1960s within the manzana loca, it nevertheless pushed its artists away when the modernizing heterotopical city succumbed to the pressures of the authoritarian one; conversely, Paris looked unconvincing at first because of its antiquated appearance, but it eventually pulled Arias and his company in thanks to a more welcoming embrace of all diversities. Theatre productions operated as actor-networks as well: they progressively clarified an aesthetic direction and tested group dynamics by rehearsing potential assemblages of a core group willing to share a common nomadic path. To varying extents, they also engaged with the city archive by offering heterotopical depictions and extending their reach into the real through posters, photo opportunities, and outdoor performances. The list of non-human actors could continue with a series of objects that demonstrated a pronounced level of agency: Platé’s shuttered installation and the set for Eva Perón elicited strong reactions

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and clearly modified the group’s course. Other less artistic, everyday objects also intervened: even apparently insignificant items like a pair of socks at a New Jersey department store had a great deal of agency if it could trigger the events that first catapulted two TSE members from New York to Paris in a matter of days and ultimately propelled the whole group in the same direction. Throughout this journey, interactions among these actor-networks gave rise to some surprising discoveries. At the local level, the fact that a performer played roles in two productions during the same evening created a higher-scale assemblage that was exposed only once the mechanism broke down with the Eva Perón incident. At the transatlantic level, the same production revealed tangible connections when it became clear that actions executed in Paris were quickly relayed to Buenos Aires actors and just as quickly bounced back: indeed, the journalists who criticized Copi’s and Arias’s choices created real-life problems for the artists and the theatre hosting them. Other actors had a more subtle and yet decisive effect on TSE’s long-term line, such as when the casual meeting of Arias with Castelli at the Di Tella simultaneously connected the director with the Guggenheim Foundation through Alloway and with the Parisian art world through Sonnabend. I have also revealed some of the data that is usually completely blackboxed when an aesthetic focus prevails, namely how some of these productions represented the final expression of substantial economic streams generated by Buenos Aires and Paris citizens, further translated and transformed: Drácula drew from resources accumulated by SIAM-Di Tella thanks to its sales of appliances and vehicles, and, in Aubervilliers, the city and region covered the sizable deficit of the Théâtre de la Commune by tapping into a large network of public funding. Apart from these more punctual examples, this chapter has shown how intercultural bridges between cities are actually built out of a sequence of very material translations. By following this movement from the point of view of a theatre troupe, it has been possible to appreciate the value of the Di Tella’s financial investment in Arias’s performance codes that flowed into the Parisian production of Eva Perón after traveling through Caracas and New York City. It is because of this sequence of minute associations among human and non-human mediators and innumerable events of translation over a long period of time that these artists found themselves rooted in the French capital. As Arias continues to draw from the city of

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Buenos Aires to find hidden and forgotten stories to be translated for his Argentine and French audiences, the transatlantic bridge between Buenos Aires and Paris becomes increasingly bidirectional.354

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354  On his website, Arias proposes two videos that show him walking around Buenos Aires in search for inspiration, just like a nineteenth-century flâneur: the first for Comédie Pâtissière (Pastry Comedy, 2015) and the second for the story of Fanny Navarro, an actress close to Eva Perón, depicted in Argentine playwright Gonzalo De María’s Deshonrada (Dishonored, 2016). See https://www.alfredo-arias.com/new/comedie-patissiere and https://www. alfredo-arias.com/new/deshonoree, accessed January 31, 2023.

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Katzenstein, Inés, ed. Listen Here Now! Argentine Art of the 1960s: Writings of the Avant-Garde. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2004. King, John. El Di Tella y el desarrollo cultural argentino en la década del sesenta. Buenos Aires: Asunto Impreso Ediciones, 2007. Latour, Bruno. “Drawing Things Together.” In Representation in Scientific Practice, edited by Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar, 19–68. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990. ———. “On Actor-Network Theory: A Few Clarifications.” Soziale Welt 47, no. 4 (1996): 369–81. ———. Paris: Invisible City. http://www.bruno-­latour.fr/virtual/index.html. Accessed January 29, 2023. ———. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Lehmann, Hans-Thies. Postdramatic Theatre. Translated and with an Introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby. London: Routledge, 2006. Longoni, Ana, and Mariano Mestman. Del Di Tella a “Tucumán Arde”: vanguardia artística y política en el 68 argentino. Buenos Aires: Eudeba, 2013. López, Liliana. “El ‘happening’ y el Instituto Di Tella.” In De Eugene O’Neill al ‘Happening’: teatro norteamericano y teatro argentino, 1930–1990, edited by Osvaldo Pellettieri and George William Woodyard, 71–81. Buenos Aires: Editorial Galerna, 1996. Malinowska, Anna. “Bad Romance: Pop and Camp in Light of Evolutionary Confusion.” In Redefining Kitsch and Camp in Literature and Culture, edited by Justyna Stępień, 9–22. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. Massetti, Ana Laura, Déborah Bassow, Florencia Reynoso, and Mariana Escapa. Recuerdos Re Locos. Buenos Aires: Grupo de Escritores Argentinos, 2012. Mateo del Pino, Ángeles. “Ni es cielo ni es azul: Simulación y parodia en la literatura hispanoamericana: Copi y Eva Perón.” In La literatura pop: Consideraciones en torno a una tendencia literaria, 87–144. Las Palmas: Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 2006. Meyer, Moe. The Politics and Poetics of Camp. New York: Routledge, 1994. Moles, Abraham A. Le kitsch: l’art du bonheur. Montreal: HMH, 1971. Obregón, Osvaldo. “Una obra iconoclasta y polémica de Copi: Eva Perón (1969).” Imagen de la cultura y el arte latinoamericano: boletín del Instituto de Historia del Arte Argentino y Latinoamericano 2, no. 2 (2000): 45–54. Oteiza, Enrique. “El cierre de los centros de arte del Instituto Torcuato Di Tella.” In Cultura y política en los años ’60, edited by Enrique Oteiza, Jorge Cerdanas, Ana Filippa, Claudia Gilman, Andrea Giunta, Ana Longoni, and Mariano Mestman. Buenos Aires: Oficina de Publicaciones del CBC, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 1997.

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Pacheco, Marcelo E. “From the Modern to the Contemporary: Shifts in Argentine Art, 1956–1965.” In Listen Here Now! Argentine Art of the 1960s: Writings of the Avant-Garde, edited by Inés Katzenstein, 16–27. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2004. Pinta, María Fernanda. Teatro expandido en el Di Tella: la escena experimental argentina en los años 60. Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2013. Platé, Roberto. Portrait. Paris: Éditions Plume, 1999. Polledo, Eduardo. “El ambiente de la vivienda.” Summa: revista de arquitectura, tecnología y diseño 8 (April 1967): 53–56. Pujol, Sergio. La década rebelde: los años 60 en la Argentina. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 2002. Quirot, Odile. Marilú Marini: croniques franco-argentines. Paris: Les solitaires intempestifs, 2017. Raynal, Maurice. Germaine Derbecq. Buenos Aires: Talleres Gráficos Russo, 1953. Rizzo, Patricia. Experiencias ’68: muestra de reconstrucción histórica. Buenos Aires: PROA Fundación, 1998. Rock, David. Argentina 1516–1987: From Spanish colonization to Alfonsín. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006. Romero Brest, Jorge. Arte visual en el Di Tella: aventura memorable en los años 60. Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1992. Rosenzvaig, Marcos. Copi: sexo y teatralidad. Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2003. Sadowska-Guillon, Irène. “Les escaliers du Sacré-Coeur et Loretta Strong de Copi en souvenir.” Acteurs/Auteurs 77–78 (1990): 46–50. Servin, Micheline B. une [sic] aventure... le Théâtre de la Commune d’Aubervilliers. Paris: Encre, 1980. Solga, Kim, with D.  J. Hopkins and Shelley Orr. “Introduction: City/Text/ Performance.” In Performance and the City, edited by D. J. Hopkins, Shelley Orr, and Kim Solga, 1–9. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Sontag, Susan. “Notes on Camp.” In Essays of the 1960s & 70s by Susan Sontag, edited by David Rieff, 259–74. New  York: Literary Classics of the United States, 2013. Tamagne, Florence. “Paris: ‘Resting on its Laurels’?” In Queer Cities, Queer Cultures: Europe Since 1945, edited by Matt Cook and Jennifer V.  Evans, 240–60. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014. Tcherkaski, José. Habla Copi: Homosexualidad y creación. Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1998. TSE. les spectacles du groupe tse. Paris: Jean Mussot, n.d.

CHAPTER 4

The Argentine Network in Paris: Lavelli, Copi, the TSE Group, and Other Stealthy Actors at the Top of French Decentralization

It did seem during a certain period […] with Alfredo Arias, Ariel Goldenberg and myself running theatres as if it were an added bonus to be Argentine if you wanted to run a theatre in Paris! —Jorge Lavelli (Maria M. Delgado, “An Argentine in Paris: An Interview with Jorge Lavelli,” in The Paris Jigsaw: Internationalism and the City’s Stages, ed. David Bradby and Maria M. Delgado (New York: Manchester University Press, 2002), 223.

During the second half of the 1980s, a trio of Argentine stage directors were appointed to prestigious positions at the helm of French publicly funded theatres. Shortly after Arias’s 1985 nomination to the National Drama Center of Aubervilliers, in 1987 Jorge Lavelli inaugurated his decade-long tenure at the Théâtre de la Colline in Paris, a brand-new addition to the elite group of national theatres that included the famed Comédie Française. Lavelli’s quote above omits Savary, who obtained the directorship of the Théâtre National de Chaillot in 1988 thanks to François

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Boselli, Actor-Network Dramaturgies, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32523-6_4

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Mitterrand, the French president he had often endorsed well before the first socialist electoral victory in 1981.1 Mitterrand’s commitment to diversity and tolerance prompted a watershed shift in cultural policy that created the conditions for the effective integration of Latin American artists into the institutional fabric of the French state.2 Even so, despite their common Argentine birth, the three directors—so different in their personal and aesthetic journeys—would not have coalesced into a social or theatrical network in Paris but for their shared relationship with Copi.3 As a matter of fact, the only times they presented shows at theatres headed by one of the other two directors, as was the case of Lavelli and Arias, the author of the play or inspiration for the 1  Goldenberg (1975–2021) was an Argentine-born theatre organizer who began his career as administrator of the Buenos Aires Teatro Payró, was invited to the Nancy Festival in 1975, and then began to work as director of a French theatre festival in Madrid. He stayed there until 1989, when he was nominated director of the Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-­ Denis at Bobigny, commonly known as MC93). Arias remained at Aubervilliers until 1990, Lavelli at La Colline until 1996, and Savary at Chaillot between 1988 and 2000, when he moved to the Opéra Comique (2000–2007) while Goldenberg took over Chaillot until 2008. Savary’s represents a case of constructive associations and reciprocal influence between arts and politics: in 1974 the director gave a speech at the end of his shows to back Mitterrand’s campaign. The Magic Circus was among the few performance groups committed to the planned celebrations despite Mitterrand’s defeat in that year’s elections. Jérôme Savary, La vie privée d’un magicien ordinaire (Paris: Éditions Ramsay, 1985), 264. The director was later asked to introduce the French president’s political meetings during the 1988 re-election campaign, which led to a personal invitation to accompany Mitterrand on his official visit to Argentina in October 1987. Jérôme Savary, Ma vie commence à 20 h 30 (Paris: Stock—Laurence Pernoud, 1991), 219. 2  French historian Denis Rolland observed that Latin America was the part of the world outside Europe best represented, at the end of May 1981, “in the Parisian mise en scène at the Pantheon” that celebrated the beginning of Mitterrand’s mandate. Personalities included Mexican essayist Carlos Fuentes, Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez, Venezuelan writer Miguel Otero Silva, the widows of Chilean President Salvador Allende, Hortensia Bussi, and of poet Pablo Neruda, Matilde Urrutia. As one of his government’s first acts, Mitterrand also granted French nationality to Argentine novelist Julio Cortázar. L’Amérique latine et la France: acteurs et réseaux d’une relation culturelle (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011), 96. 3  In spite of Savary’s birth credentials, it seems that his relationships with his Argentine colleagues were not very tight, as Lavelli’s omission of his name in the opening epigraph above suggests. For instance, when Arias staged the double bill of Copi’s Le frigo (The Fridge) and the dramaturgy of Copi’s comics La femme assise (The Seated Woman) at Chaillot in 1999, TSE’s connection with the theatre was not directly through Savary but rather through his chief administrator, Marie Gabardin. Arias, interview with the author, Buenos Aires, August 5, 2017.

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dramaturgy was always their common friend Copi. Indeed, the playwright emerged as a central actor-network precisely because of his sustained ability to connect socially and artistically with all three of these disparate personalities. It was thanks to these associations that Copi was rewarded with stagings that reached the highest levels of professionalism in the French theatre, moving from the fairly marginal venues of his early theatrical sketches with Savary to the prestigious stages of the Théâtre National de la Colline with Lavelli and Arias.4 And yet, as should be clear from my previous analyses, Copi’s fame was due not only to these three directors but also to a much larger network of agents. Latour underscores how, in contrast to a sociology that describes society through a preordained set of beings, “what [ANT] records is the surprise felt by the researcher […] at the lengthening of the list of entities necessary to maintain any identity whatsoever.”5 And to account for this extended list, in one of his early works Latour drew attention to the multitude of agencies that enabled French microbiologist Louis Pasteur to arrive at his discoveries: “we are confounded if we confuse the force of a man with that attributed to him; if we confuse Pasteur with ‘Pasteur,’ whom from now on I will place between quotation marks so as not to confuse him with his homonym.”6 Thus, in ANT terms, one could visualize “Copi” as an actor-network that grew in importance by performing associations mainly with three Argentine directors, but also, for instance, 4  For ANT, “the activities of actors fit together despite their heterogeneity.” Michel Callon, “Techno-Economic Networks and Irreversibility,” in A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, ed. John Law (London: Routledge, 1991), 148. Pointing to the centrality of Copi as a network node connecting heterogeneous elements, René de Ceccatty found that the playwright could bring together Arias and Lavelli because of his unique assemblage of contrasting traits: “Copi was one of the pretexts that united Alfredo and Lavelli […]. Exhibitionistic and timid, infantile and intellectual, scatological and sentimental, aggressive and tender, excessive and refined, he combined seemingly opposite qualities that energized his creations […] rooted in a deeply Argentine insolence.” Mes Argentins de Paris (Paris: Séguier, 2014), 337. 5  Bruno Latour, “Avoir ou ne pas avoir de réseau: that’s the question,” in Débordements: Mélanges offerts à Michel Callon, ed. Madeleine Akrich et al. (Paris: Presses des Mines, 2010), 259. Over time, Latour used several terms to indicate basically the same concept: here an identity is an earlier term to indicate an actor-network, which is sustained by a multitude of others, here called “entities.” 6  Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France, trans. Alan Sheridan and John Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 15.

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with “Lavelli,” “Arias,” or “Savary” as representatives of larger networks of actors implicated by their roles at the helm of national-level theatres. Hence, in order to account for human and non-human actors, in this chapter I first concentrate on Lavelli as both stage director and artistic director of La Colline, a role that entailed institutional collaborations with Arias and the TSE group. A secondary but by no means less important focus is the vast network of professional not-for-profit venues created by the French process of “decentralization,” which provided concrete support for Copi’s plays. Thirdly, I underscore the action of non-human disease agents that, although invisible to the eye, nevertheless exerted a very tangible impact on the productions I analyze more in depth. Lavelli differed from other artists discussed so far in several ways. Compared to the convoluted peripeteias of Savary or the TSE group between the Americas and Europe, Lavelli’s trajectory was rather straightforward and not as directly dependent on the political climate. Ultimately, the director’s main drive was always a search for opportunities to pursue an art theatre free from commercial pressures, which often required an interest in connecting with institutional actors and their funding streams. As a consequence, he is the director who displayed more intense alignments with state-level actors, starting with the Argentine institutions of the conservative post-Perón period that granted him a scholarship to visit France and extending to the socialist French government apparatus that facilitated his nomination to La Colline. Speaking of institutional actors then entails becoming alert to the composite agencies of foundations, government cabinets, committees, juries, along with theatrical schools, festivals, establishments, and production organizations that aided the director and his associates. Although these actor-networks connect several human actors, they are also imbricated with physical spaces, money, and other resources as the expression of their power to elevate certain artists or exclude them from a particular project or even career trajectory. Thanks to his connection with these supportive entities, Lavelli did not need to invest as much energy in creating his own troupe: instead, he cultivated privileged relationships with certain performers such as Spanish actress Maria Casarès, whom he cast in several productions including one of Copi’s.7

7  I adopt here the French spelling associated with the performer’s work with Lavelli. In Spanish texts, it is María Casares.

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Given the richness of material that Lavelli provides in the area of institutional action, in this chapter I take a more intense interest in the public networks that bolstered theatrical activity, especially the state-backed process of decentralization that gave birth to non-profit theatre in post-WWII France. It was thanks to this larger network that Lavelli was able to present Copi’s metatheatrical La nuit de Madame Lucienne (The Night of Madame Lucienne, 1985), first at the Avignon Festival and then at Aubervilliers. The same network later provided the opportunity for Copi’s Une visite inopportune (Grand Finale, 1987) to become the playwright’s greatest posthumous success. Finally, it was only under the aegis of a national theatre that Lavelli and Arias could gather enough funding for Arias to finally stage Copi’s Cachafaz (1977) at La Colline in 1993. As seen in previous chapters, theatre productions themselves can be seen as actor-networks that depend on a surprisingly lengthy list of beings as they emerge from the rhizomatic network of associations. In fact, even beyond institutional actors, for these three productions the list continues with other much less visible but nonetheless formidable actors that wielded a great deal of power to hamper artists’ lives and their creative projects (or occasionally foster them). These non-human actors often operate in stealth mode and are more insidious because they may undermine the artists’ bodies and expressive tools. In The Pasteurization of France Latour stated that “we understand nothing of the solidity of a fact if we do not take into account the unskilled troops. […] Microbes play in my account a more personal role than in so-called scientific histories and a more central role than in the so-called social histories.”8 In this way, Latour emphasized the microbes’ agency and explicitly affirmed their relevance on par with other actors of any size. This was the case of the AIDS virus that became directly relevant to the shows presented at Aubervilliers and La Colline. By excluding an already ill Copi from starring in his own work, the virus operated as a casting director, partially determining who would play which role in The Night of Madame Lucienne. Then, it not only inspired the theme of Grand Finale but also contributed to the success of the production by engaging

8  Latour, Pasteurization, 147. Stanton B. Garner sheds light on the overlaps between the discourses of medicine and theatre with reference to Pasteur and theatre theorist Antonin Artaud in “Artaud, Germ Theory, and the Theatre of Contagion,” Theatre Journal 58, no. 1 (March 2006): 1–14.

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plenty of spectators—from scientists, to doctors, to patients—at a time of enormous relevance of that viral crisis. As in other cases, it is often impossible to evaluate these actors’ constructive or disruptive actions until after the fact. More subtle but equally active, Alzheimer’s disease, a still enigmatic form of dementia, led to the necessary replacement of Facundo Bo in Cachafaz and to a dramatic dispute among the co-producing partners. If it was Arias with his TSE group who had to bear the brunt of Alzheimer’s inexorable action on Bo, it was Lavelli’s responsibility to approach the uneasy assemblage of Grand Finale and provide Copi (and the virus) the opportunity for exposure and fame on a national stage. That production was the culmination of a long-lasting artistic relationship, and this chapter turns now to Lavelli’s line in order to better understand how it intersected with Copi’s. In similar fashion to other artists seen so far, I investigate Lavelli’s trajectory by tracking the chain of associations that led him to become a theatre director in Buenos Aires, move to France, decide to take up permanent residence in Paris after the critically acclaimed staging of Witold ́ Gombrowicz’s Slub (The Wedding), meet Copi for the sketch Sainte Geneviève dans sa bagnoire (Saint Genevieve in Her Bathtub), and then continue to renew his artistic relationship with the Argentine dramatist. Unlike Savary and Arias, whose beginnings were steeped in the visual arts, Lavelli started his career firmly rooted in the tradition of text-based theatre, and one of his main talents as a director has always consisted in the ability to dig deep into the scenic potential of a written script. If Savary and Copi worked well together on improvised sketches, it was Lavelli who first spurred his friend to produce full-length written plays for Parisian audiences. As in the previous chapters, it would be impractical to minutely describe every step of the artistic relationship between Copi and Lavelli. Rather, after tracing the converging lines that led to the two artists’ meeting and briefly touching on Copi’s beginnings as playwright, I focus on Copi’s The Night of Madame Lucienne, Grand Finale, and Cachafaz as case studies of later productions that were at the same time aided and profoundly impacted by a network of non-human actors at both the institutional and microscopic level. In other words, I show how a study of the society that contributed to these productions must include at the same time entities larger and smaller than the artists alone by highlighting levels of scale not

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yet fully represented in this study. Of course, before all these events and actions could take place, Lavelli needed to move from Buenos Aires to Paris.

Becoming an Argentine of Paris: Jorge Lavelli’s Line Born in Buenos Aires in 1934 to a family of Italian descent and modest means, Jorge Lavelli began working at 15 so he could afford to study Economic Science at the university.9 At around the same time, he formed a group that offered poetry recitals at the cultural center Ateneo de Estudiantes Secundarios Argentinos.10 Despite his familiarity with contemporary US playwrights such as Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, and Arthur Miller and the presence in Buenos Aires of numerous French touring companies, Lavelli’s fascination for the theatre as a profession was sparked by the Italian great actor Ruggero Ruggeri, who staged Luigi Pirandello’s Il piacere dell’onestà (The Pleasure of Honesty) and other works at the Teatro Grand Splendid.11 Lavelli reminisced that the combined effect of Pirandello’s play with Ruggeri’s gripping interpretation had exerted a decisive impact on his younger self: “I think something had changed in me. Theatre appeared as a possibility, as something I could practice in a more serious way than I had tried to.”12 Thus Lavelli began

9  Lavelli’s birth year is often indicated as 1931 or 1932, but in an early interview he clearly states: “I left Argentina in 1960, at twenty-six.” Lise Bloch-Morhange and David Alper, Artiste et métèque à Paris (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 1980), 203. Osvaldo Obregón specifies his birth date as November 11, adding that Lavelli’s paternal grandfather had emigrated from Piedmont, Italy. La diffusion et la réception du théâtre latino-américain en France de 1958 à 1986 (Besançon: Presses universitaires franc-comtoises, 2002), 331. For more details on Lavelli’s life and beginnings in Buenos Aires, see also Osvaldo Obregón, “Jorge Lavelli, a Cosmopolitan Director Twice Over,” European Stages 2, no. 2 (1990): 5–6; Ricardo Risetti, “Jorge Lavelli,” in Memorias del Teatro Independiente Argentino: 1930–1970 Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 2004), 206–09; Osvaldo Pellettieri, “Coloquio con Jorge Lavelli,” in El teatro y los días: estudios de teatro argentino e iberoamericano, ed. Osvaldo Pellettieri (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1995), 17–24. 10  Risetti, “Jorge Lavelli,” 206. 11  Towards the end of his career, in 1949, Ruggeri (1871–1953) embarked on his last Latin American tour and traveled to Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, and Chile before heading back to Europe. See Albarosa Camaldo, “Ruggero Ruggeri,” Archivio Multimediale Attori Italiani, ed. Siro Ferrone (Florence, Italy: Firenze University Press, 2012). http://memoria-attori. amati.fupress.net/S100?idattore=1057&idmenu=8, accessed February 3, 2023. 12  Risetti, “Jorge Lavelli,” 206.

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to read more European authors and to frequent the independent theatres that staged them, especially the Nuevo Teatro and Los Independientes groups.13 The Organización Latino Americana de Teatro and the Fondo Nacional de las Artes Not ready for the full-time commitment of the Conservatorio Nacional de Arte Escénico (National Conservatory of Theatre Arts),14 Lavelli took courses with the director and playwright Alberto Rodríguez Muñoz and spent a year learning acting through scene-study practice with Anton Chekhov’s play Chayka (The Seagull). Those exercises gradually led to a full production for the public in which Lavelli played Konstantin Treplev.15 Staged in the round with moveable set pieces, the production was successfully presented at several venues between 1953 and 1955. The cooperative that produced The Seagull had been founded by Muñoz in September 1950 as the Organización Latino Americana de Teatro (OLAT, Latin American Theatre Organization) and retained its name when it became

13  The Nuevo Teatro was founded in 1950 by performers, directors, and pedagogues Alejandra Boero and Pedro Asquini and soon moved from a smaller venue on Calle Maipú to a larger, 200-seat theatre at Calle Corrientes 2120 that allowed stagings in the round, a novelty for Buenos Aires. See Ernesto Schóó, “Nuevo teatro, pionero del circular,” La Nación, October 15, 2011, https://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/nuevo-teatro-­ pionero-del-circular-nid1414749, accessed February 3, 2023. This is where Lavelli went to see their performances. Los Independientes was established by performer and director Onofre Lovero in 1952 at Calle San Martín 766. Susana Freire, “Onofre Lovero: además de gran actor y director, fue uno de los artífices y defensores del teatro independiente,” La Nación, December 3, 2012, https://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/teatro/1925-­2012onofre-lovero-ademas-de-gran-actor-y-director-fue-uno-de-los-artifices-­y -defensorenid1532704, accessed February 3, 2023. 14  Lavelli explained his decision as follows: “I had never thought to study at the National Conservatory of Theatre Arts. Studying at the Conservatory created certain fears. It was much simpler and more practical to approach training outside a structure that could have been more stable or definitively oriented.” Risetti, “Jorge Lavelli,” 207. 15  Sylvia Rudni, De profesión periodista (Buenos Aires: Ediciones de la Flor, 1984), 44. A picture of Lavelli in this show is in Historia del teatro argentino en Buenos Aires. La segunda modernidad (1944–1976). Vol. 4, ed. Osvaldo Pellettieri (Buenos Aires: Galerna, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras [UBA], 2003), n.p., between 224 and 225.

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more autonomous from its founder.16 As member of this cooperative, Lavelli alternated as director with Salo Vasochi and occasionally with Yirair Mossian, while also working as performer and administrative secretary.17 The group installed itself in the downtown Círculo de la Prensa (Press Club), whose meeting hall they transformed into a theatrical space.18 In the meantime, as secretary for the Federación Argentina de Teatros Independientes (Argentine Federation of Independent Theatres) and advisor to the Dirección Nacional de Cultura (National Department of Culture), Lavelli spent a lot of his energies battling the closure of independent theatre venues by the City of Buenos Aires.19 Overall, Lavelli saw that period of involvement with the independent theatre as “very intense years, marked by a sort of ethical rigor [that became] the foundation of my theatrical trajectory.”20 Towards the end of the 1950s, however, the situation turned disheartening when the poorly paid actors began yielding to the lure of commercial theatre and were less available for OLAT projects.21 Amid a sense of frustration, Lavelli, who declined commercial jobs in keeping with the spirit of the independent theatre,22 chose instead to apply for a scholarship sponsored by the Fondo Nacional de las Artes (FNA, National Endowment for the Arts). In the context of the intense institutional renewal that followed the fall of Perón, the FNA was established in 1958 by President Aramburu as a

16  “Some of us left Rodríguez Muñoz and we continued under the name with which we had done ‘The Seagull.’” Risetti, “Jorge Lavelli,” 208. Information on the company history is very scarce: see a footnote in Osvaldo Pellettieri, “Continuidad del teatro independiente,” in Pellettieri, Historia, 108 and a few brief mentions of specific shows throughout the same volume. Lavelli’s memories are the most detailed account I could find of OLAT. The year of the founding by Muñoz appears in https://teleficcionesdeljilguero.blogspot.com/ 2017/02/1950-un-informe-global-sobre-el-ano-en.html, accessed February 3, 2023. 17  Risetti, “Jorge Lavelli,” 208. Lavelli recounts that all the organization’s members held other jobs, since none of them could afford to survive solely on producing theatre. Pellettieri, “Coloquio,” 19. 18  The club was located in downtown Buenos Aires at Calle Rodríguez Peña 80. 19  Rudni, De profesión periodista, 44. 20  Pellettieri, “Coloquio,” 17. 21  Bloch-Morhange and Alper, Artiste, 202. 22  Since “the spirit of the Independent Theatre had much to do with […] rescuing truth, with the defense of certain artistic, ethical, political values, etc. that were fundamental,” making commercial theatre would have felt “like committing a crime.” Risetti, “Jorge Lavelli,” 208–09.

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self-governing organism under the aegis of the Secretariat of Culture.23 The newborn institution’s novelty consisted of the financial tools that allowed it to act as a veritable “bank for the arts” and sponsor young artists through scholarships, grants, and loans.24 The FNA was governed by a president and fourteen commissioners, among whom were twelve recognized art professionals in addition to the director general of culture at the Culture and Education Ministry and a delegate of the Argentine Central Bank.25 The first FNA president (1958–1973) was economist and entrepreneur Juan Carlos Pinasco, and a permanent member during the same period was writer and intellectual Victoria Ocampo, director of the influential literary journal Sur and an enthusiast of French culture. More importantly, Ocampo was also a member of the Scholarships committee, together with theatre critic and director Edmundo Guibourg,26 painter and set designer Héctor Basaldúa, pianist Rafael Gonzalez, screenwriter Emilio Villalba Welsh, and folklore scholar Augusto Raúl Cortazar. It was 23  As seen in Chap. 2, Damonte Taborda and Copi himself had materially supported the ousting of Perón in 1955 and the revolution that led to Aramburu’s presidency (November 13, 1955 to May 1, 1958). Thus, in terms of actor-network dramaturgy, Copi’s family exerted a degree of agency in the creation of the new post-Peronist state institutions, including the FNA that would support Lavelli. 24  Juan Cruz Andrada, “Arte, dinero e instituciones públicas en Argentina. El Fondo Nacional de las Artes (1958–1968).” H-ART: Revista de historia, teoría y crítica de arte 4 (January–June 2019): 149. Andrada notes that the FNA was endowed with 200 million pesos or about 53,700,000 dollars of 2023 (about 5,228,758 dollars at the time, at the exchange rate of 1 dollar = 38.25 pesos in February 1958). It also drew funds for its daily operations from an extended network that collected copyright fees for works in the public domain, 5% of any radio or TV commercial fee and 10% for tickets to any venue that broadcast music through mechanical means or any other fee from artistic activities. These financial streams connected the FNA with all the people who enjoyed the arts in Argentina as a whole, who in turn became de facto contributors to the development of young artists like Lavelli. Not unexpectedly, the Onganía years from 1969 onwards saw a steep decline in funding once the revenue was limited to only the fees from public domain works, a situation that persists today. 25  For an account of the first years of the FNA, see Fondo Nacional de las Artes, Los 15 años del Fondo Nacional de las Artes (Buenos Aires: El Fondo, 1973). The bill establishing the FNA and its organizational structure is available at https://www.argentina.gob.ar/normativa/nacional/decreto_ley-1224-1958-37242/texto and the current FNA website is https://fnartes.gob.ar, both accessed February 3, 2023. 26  Guibourg was the president of FNA’s theatre committee. A former correspondent from Paris for Crítica, he had spent six years in Paris starting in 1927, at the time when the newspaper was directed by Natalio Botana, Copi’s grandfather. For the dates of his ­ Parisian appointment see https://www.todotango.com/historias/cronica/164/Edmundo-­ Guibourg-­y-sus-recuerdos-con-Gardel, accessed February 3, 2023.

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this group of institutional actors who, after evaluating Lavelli’s application, decided to grant him a scholarship for six months to visit any country he chose in view of his artistic development. Connecting with Paris: Theatre Schools and the University of the Théâtre des Nations When, years later, theatre journalist Dominique Darzacq asked Lavelli why he chose France over other European countries, the director’s explanation privileged theatre connections over language or national origin: despite the common language, going to Spain was unthinkable because of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship while Italy seemed to offer a less stimulating theatrical panorama outside Milan.27 France, instead, pointed to a large number of past and potential future associations. For one, Lavelli regarded stage director Jean Vilar as a lighthouse, because the ethics of his Théâtre National Populaire (TNP) closely mirrored those of the Buenos Aires independent theatre: it was an art theatre, both anti-­bourgeois and dialectical.28 But of course the porteño spectators had also seen two other famous French directors on tour: Jean-Louis Barrault and Louis Jouvet.29 Because of all those instances of French theatrical rayonnement (irradiation, i.e., influence), Lavelli also perceived the French repertoire as rather familiar and believed that France remained the most culturally prestigious country. But the strongest reason to choose Paris was perhaps the Théâtre des Nations, which created a unique synthesis of Europe’s and the world’s best performances. Thus, not only did the Théâtre des Nations assemble 27  Dominique Darzacq, Jorge Lavelli, la création au présent (Paris: CNC Images de la culture, 2004). https://entretiens.ina.fr/en-scenes/Lavelli/jorge-lavelli, accessed February 3, 2023. The detail about Milan is in Delgado, “An Argentine in Paris,” 223. 28  While Lavelli was still living in Buenos Aires, Vilar and the TNP presented their program between October 1 and 9, 1957. https://www.siv.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/siv/ rechercheconsultation/consultation/ir/pdfIR.action?irId=FRAN_IR_054000, accessed February 3, 2023. 29  Lavelli does not mention seeing these companies. The company Madeleine Renaud– Jean-Louis Barrault visited Buenos Aires three times in 1950, 1954, and 1961. See Ernesto Schóó, “Madeleine Renaud y Jean-Louis Barrault, visitas ilustres,” La Nación, September 16, 2006. https://www.lanacion.com.ar/espectaculos/teatro/madeleine-renaud-y-jeanlouis-­barrault-visitas-ilustres-nid840768, accessed February 3, 2023. As for Jouvet’s earlier tours in Latin America during WWII, see the chapter “Les liens culturels transatlantiques réimaginés par la presse et l’historiographie: la mémoire de la tournée de l’Athénée-Louis Jouvet 1941–1945,” in Rolland, L’Amérique latine, 343–69.

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theatre companies from the four corners of the planet for the French audience, but it also attracted eager spectators from outside of France just like Lavelli, who arrived in Paris on March 1, 1960.30 Although still unfamiliar with the French language, Lavelli did everything he could to create connections with the Parisian theatre scene.31 He began studying at the Dullin school, where he directed two short pieces, Pirandello’s one-act play La morsa (The Vise, 1910) and Ionesco’s Scène à quatre (Foursome, 1959).32 In the meantime, he lived frugally in order to stretch his budget and stay as long as possible beyond the expected six months.33 Since his scholarship allowed him to go to the theatre for free, he saw all the shows he could, including those of the Théâtre des Nations. For Lavelli, who privileged European productions, it was an opportunity to see Bertolt Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble, which struck him with its rigor, visual impact, and techniques to exceed realism.34 More crucially, as a condition of his scholarship Lavelli was required to send periodical reports on his experiences back to the Fondo Nacional de las Artes: this task transformed him into an attentive critic of French performers’ acting styles and the best productions seen at the Théâtre des Nations or the Avignon theatre festival.35 It was on his way back to Argentina, during a short stay in Madrid, that he was informed that his scholarship had exceptionally been renewed for another six months in consideration of the great profit he had derived from his stay.36 While continuing with Dullin, upon his return to Paris he enrolled in courses with physical theatre teacher Jacques Lecoq.37 30  Dominique Nores and Colette Godard, Lavelli (Paris: Christian Bourgois Éditeur, 1971), 56. 31  Rather than with Argentines, as Nores and Godard noted. Apparently, at the time the only person Lavelli knew in Paris was an Argentine painter, whose name remains unspecified. Ibid. 32  The school was founded by actor, director, and pedagogue Charles Dullin. https:// academiecharlesdullin.fr/notre-histoire, accessed February 3, 2023. 33  Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 56. 34  Obregón, La diffusion, 334. On Brecht, Lavelli opined: “This theatre, unique in Europe, […] opened […] a new path in my conception of theatre.” Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 70. 35  Obregón, La diffusion, 334. 36  Ibid. 37  The school had been founded in 1956. “Teaching began with the neutral mask and physical expression, commedia dell’arte, Greek tragedy and chorus, white pantomime, figurative mime, expressive masks, music, and a technical grounding in dramatic acrobatics and mimed actions. Very soon […] work on spoken improvisation and on writing [was added].” Jacques Lecoq, The Moving Body: Teaching Creative Theatre, trans. David Bradby (New York: Bloomsbury, 2000), 9.

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The extra six months, however, went by quickly and Lavelli had to obtain a loan from the Argentine government to prolong his stay for another year. In the meantime, he supplemented his meager finances with irregular gigs limited by his language barrier: occasional radio broadcasts in Spanish for Latin Americans and wrapping books and packages at a bookstore.38 If Savary and Arias had counted on the visual arts to sustain them during hard times, Lavelli survived his first two years in France thanks to a bundle of agencies that were comprised of the Argentine state with its funding streams, the French radio gigs addressed to Spain and Latin America, and even the books he wrapped for store customers. All the while, the Parisian theatre scene seemed to lack a place where Lavelli could express himself as director. With the commercial boulevard scene excluded a priori for ideological reasons and the state-subsidized theatre out of reach at that point in his career, there were only three Parisian private venues that somehow contemplated experimental theatre at the beginning of the 1960s: the Studio des Champs-Elysées, the Théâtre de Poche, and the Théâtre de Lutèce.39 Luckily for Lavelli the situation changed for the better when the University of the Théâtre des Nations opened in 1961: under the helm of stage director Albert Botbol, it was hosted at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, the headquarters of the festival then in its fifth season.40 Unlike a traditional academic institution, this informal university was “implemented as soon as the idea was formulated, with a passion that replaced long preparation and practically without a budget.”41 It admitted approximately one hundred students under thirty years of age from about thirty different countries, with varying levels of 38  Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 71–72. The radio gigs in Spanish were for a series on “L’Insolite dans le Théâtre” (“The Unusual in the Theatre”) commissioned by the Service des Emissions vers l’Étranger (Service for Broadcasts Abroad). 39  Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 72–73. Lavelli does not mention attempts to work with these theatres during his early years in Paris. However, the Théâtre de Poche would host his production of Arrabal’s La Communiante et la Princesse (The Communicant and the Princess, 1966) and the Théâtre de Lutèce his first staging of a play by Copi, La journée d’une rêveuse (The Day of a Dreamer, 1968). 40  After renovations, the theatre is currently the Théâtre de la Ville. Botbol had international experience, having previously worked as Director of the National Moroccan Theatre and General Secretary of the Moroccan Center for Theatre Research (Centre marocain de recherches théâtrales) between 1957 and 1958. https://data.bnf.fr/fr/17021840/albert_ botbol, accessed February 3, 2023. 41  Odette Aslan. Paris capitale mondial du théâtre: le Théâtre des Nations (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2009), 235.

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mastery of French and aspirations that ranged from professional theatre to psychiatry or ethnology. Lavelli was among the selected. During the first edition of the University, over the month of June the students participated in seventy lecture-debates with the Théâtre des Nations’s stage directors, attended the festival’s shows and rehearsals, and were given tours of other theatres’ technical equipment. But even more decisive for Lavelli was the University’s second edition (two months starting in June 1962) because it added practical workshops.42 Even without a budget, the young artists were encouraged to form groups and create performances for the end of the year competition.43 Though Latin Americans represented the largest group attending this edition,44 Lavelli teamed up with two French artists, Jean-Marie Patte and Jacques Robnard, to form the Groupe de recherche 62 (Research Group 62), with which he successfully directed Ionesco’s Le tableau (The Picture) for the conclusion of the course.45 Even if the group itself never developed outside the University,46 that production facilitated a friendship with Polish set and costume designer Krystyna Zachwatowicz,47 who helped Lavelli mount the play on a shoestring and would become a frequent collaborator on other stagings until 1965.48

 Ibid.  Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 74. 44  Colette Godard, Jérôme Savary, l’enfant de la fête (Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 1996), 27. 45  Obregón, La diffusion, 335, Bloch-Morhange and Alper, Artiste, 205. The name of the group appears in “Le ‘Groupe de Recherche 62,’” La Cité: Revue de la Cité Universitaire de Paris n. 19 (1st trimestre 1964): 78. This article defined their theatre “courageous […] not avant-garde but rather of research.” Ibid. It also listed their repertory, which selected works by contemporary playwrights such as Antonin Artaud, Eugène Ionesco, Alfred Jarry, René de Obaldia, Lars Forssell, and Werner Aspenstrôm but also classic plays by Pierre de Marivaux or Pedro Calderón de la Barca. 46  While Patte was attracted by pure research, Lavelli still thought in terms of “research spectacle”: “All these university études [were] very interesting, very useful, but I did not want to continue in that direction. I prefer risk,” avowed the director. Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 75. 47  Ibid., 23. Lavelli speaks in Spanish of his association with Zachwatowicz in the following video, captured at the Witold Gombrowicz Museum: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=J84cD1EFBoI, accessed February 3, 2023. 48  These were Eugene O’Neill’s Welded (Fr. Enchaînés, 1965) and Gombrowicz’s Yvonne, princesse de Bourgogne (Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy, 1965). Zachwatowicz later designed the set for the Georg Friedrich Händel’s opera Alcina in 1978. 42 43

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The Young Companies Competition and Gombrowicz’s The Wedding: Instant Fame and Financial Woes The positive reception of The Picture encouraged the director to venture beyond the University: he gathered some friends from the Dullin school and staged a selection of yet unpublished short plays by Jean Tardieu under the title Spectacle Jean Tardieu.49 Among the venues where the show was performed, the theatre of the Alliance Française became key because among the spectators was Pierre-Aimé Touchard, inspector general for spectacles and former administrator at the Comédie Française.50 Touchard disliked Tardieu as author but loved what Lavelli had done with the plays on stage.51 Thus, he encouraged him to stage something else by awarding a grant of a thousand francs, a sum Lavelli deemed insufficient for a new production and used to pay the performers instead.52 Once Touchard established that the director really wanted to stay in France, he advised him to participate in the Concours des Jeunes Compagnies (Young Companies Competition), provided he had an interesting project based

49  The title is in Rudni, De profesión periodista, 45, a contemporaneous Argentine source. Rudni described the show as “a delirious summation of surrealist humor that decided his staying in France.” Although I emphasize Lavelli’s subsequent production as central to the director’s remaining in Paris, every link in the chain of events and associations was naturally essential in the process. However, details on this show are scarce and I could find nothing certain either in the catalogue of the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) or the Archives du Spectacle, which overlooks the show altogether (https://www.lesarchivesduspectacle. net/?IDX_Personne=10109, accessed February 3, 2023). Lavelli describes the dramaturgy but without specifying the titles of the single works and states that it was “presented at the Cité Universitaire and other places.” Bloch-Morhange and Alper, Artiste, 205. 50  Touchard had an important role in supporting young companies. Main inspector of spectacles (inspecteur principal des spectacles) with the Department of Arts and Letters (Direction générale des Arts et des Lettres), between 1946–1947 he was in charge of theatrical decentralization and between 1953 and 1955 of young companies. He then became inspector general of spectacles (inspecteur général des spectacles) between 1956 and 1968. At the time of Lavelli’s show, the Alliance Française was directed by Georges Lerminier, who agreed to make the auditorium available for an afternoon. Obregón, La diffusion, 335. 51  Darzacq, “Jorge Lavelli.” 52  Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 73.

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on a different playwright.53 In other words, Touchard provoked a sharp deviation in Lavelli’s line: it was because of him that the director went looking for another play by a different author and reactivated his connection with Zachwatowicz. And it was then that the Polish designer ­suggested Witold Gombrowicz’s The Wedding, a play whose trajectory from page to stage had been quite troubled and independently intertwined with both Lavelli’s and Zachwatowicz’s earlier experiences. Gombrowicz, who lived in exile in Argentina between 1939 and 1963, had written the play during WWII and published it first in 1948 as El casamiento, a Spanish version penned in collaboration with his friends Alejandro and Sergio Rússovich.54 In theory, the translation ought to have 53  “but not Tardieu, I don’t like his theatre at all.” Bloch-Morhange and Alper, Artiste, 206. The competition was created to support amateur and professional companies in 1946 by initiative of Raymond Cogniat, organizer of the “Theatre d’essai” (experimental theatre) at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques that took place in Paris in 1937. See Marion Denizot, Jeanne Laurent: une fondatrice du service public pour la culture 1946–1952 (Paris: Comité d’histoire du ministère de la culture, 2005), 91. On the first four years of the competition, see Jacques Jaujard, Le concours des jeunes compagnies, les quatre premières années (Paris: Ministère de l’Éducation nationale, direction générale des Arts et Lettres, 1949). 54  The Polish version would be published only in 1953 by the Parisian Institut Litteraire, to be followed by a Polish edition in 1957. See https://witoldgombrowicz.com/fr/wgoeuvre/theatre/le-mariage/le-mariage-presentation, accessed February 3, 2023. This dream-­play moves between the seriousness of Shakespeare and Jarry’s iconoclastic and parodic spirit to show how Henry, the creator-protagonist, moves from immaturity in youth to a type of decadence and corruption in adulthood. In A Kind of Testament, Gombrowicz said that his main aim for the play was “to show humanity in its transition from the church of God to the church of man” (translation in Allen James Kuharski, “The Theatre of Witold Gombrowicz” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1991), 23. Thus, marriage is looked upon as a travesty and an artificial institution, religion as a hoax, and the parent-child relationship as based on false values and misapprehensions, devoid of love and affection. In the play, Henry, a Polish soldier during World War II, is fighting the Germans somewhere in France. He dreams of his native land and family, but instead of the charming people he had once known, sees everything in nightmarish tones. In his dream his home is transformed into a tavern, his father into a coarse tavern-keeper, his mother into an old and overly solicitous nag, and his fiancée Marguerite into a servant-girl prostitute. As the vision comes more sharply into focus, he sees his father pursued by a drunkard. To save himself, he shouts out “untouchable,” to which his pursuers answer “Like a king.” The father is then transformed into a king and Henry into a prince. Marguerite becomes the beautiful and pure girl he had always thought her to be, and preparations begin for the wedding ceremony, but doubt enters Henry’s mind. The drunkard, now transformed into an Ambassador, insinuates that Jeannot, Henry’s best friend, has had a relationship with Marguerite. He then prevails upon Henry to betray his land, his father, and his church, whereupon Henry dethrones his father and mother, proclaims himself king and decides to perform his own wedding ceremony. His dictator’s power, however, cannot take on true meaning unless sanctified by a sacrifice. Asked to become the victim, Jeannot kills himself, leaving Henry horrified by what he has asked. In the end, the wedding no longer takes place, substituted by a funeral.

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facilitated the play’s recognition in Argentina, but instead it interfered with its reception because of its stylistic unevenness. When Lavelli discovered the play in 1950 thanks to a fellow performer, he took it as a fascinating curiosity: “I found this piece bizarre, experimental, surreal. I read it in Spanish and I was struck by its style. […] This passion for exaltation, opulence, exaggeration, the extreme, and magic bewitched me because this was the theatre I wanted to stage.”55 Nevertheless, the translation sounded problematic, especially given the odd contrast between the idiomatic porteño Spanish and the sections in verse.56 As a result, Lavelli soon forgot about the play.57 In 1960 Gombrowicz authorized a student production, directed by Jerzy Jarocki and designed by Zachwatowicz at the remote Gliwice Silesian Polytechnical Institute (Studencki Teatr Gliwice, STG), which became both the Polish and world premiere.58 But no professional production had been mounted yet.59 In the meantime, the author attempted to reach out to the Parisian audience by preparing a French version from the Spanish with the help of two students, daughters of French journalist M. Debeney of Paris-Match. Shared with writers André Gide and Albert Camus, who appreciated how the play reflected the core of the author’s philosophical thought, it was pitched to director Jean Louis Barrault but evidently failed to convince: in Lavelli’s opinion, the too literal translation inadequately responded to the possibilities the stage offered. Fortunately for Gombrowicz, Zachwatowicz mediated a connection between Lavelli and another Pole, Koukou 55  Irene Sadowska-Guillon “‘Operetka’ w teatrze Lavellego: reżyserem rozmawia Irene Sadowska-Guillon,” Teatr 1, no. 1 (1990): [n.p.]. http://www.e-teatr.pl/pl/artykuly/ 222633,druk.html, accessed February 3, 2023. 56  Lavelli spoke of the translation and the production during an interview with critic Janusz Majcherek at the Gombrowicz Museum on May 16, 2013. (http://www.muzeumgombrowicza.pl/en/glowna). The whole interview in four parts is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk0HEcNencg, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4UCar%2D% 2DcnM, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J84cD1EFBoI, and https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=W7gCWOTTs24, all accessed February 3, 2023. 57  Darzacq, “Jorge Lavelli.” 58  This production was censored after just four performances. https://witoldgombrowicz. com/fr/wgoeuvre/theatre/le-mariage/le-mariage-mise-en-scenes, accessed February 3, 2023. 59  The planned professional Polish production by “distinguished director Tadeusz Byrski in Kielce was abruptly canceled during rehearsals at Gombrowicz’s request in 1957, the one year in which the Polish government censors lifted their ban on the staging of his plays.” Kuharski, “The Theatre of Witold Gombrowicz,” 96.

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Chanska,60 from whom he commissioned a new French translation in collaboration with poet, novelist, and literary critic Georges Sédir. It was their work that was submitted to the pre-selection of the Young Companies Competition. Lavelli was lucky, too, since the competition only took place every three or four years.61 With Touchard as one of the readers, the state official’s support was decisive in the play being awarded 5,000 francs so it could be staged at the Théâtre Récamier as part of the competition.62 A rarely mentioned element is that the Polish contribution to the show and Lavelli’s success were reinforced when Zachwatowicz literally lifted and transported the costumes, made from hessian sacks, from the previous Polish student production.63 When questioned by the French customs officers, she apparently claimed that they were her own clothes, camouflaged to allow their transport out of Poland.64 Although found in Paris, the set was also inspired by her earlier design: “the stage was populated with skeletons of scrap metal: corrugated sheets, car bodies, destroyed, fragments of material as from public waste, all giving the impression of a crushing chaos, of ugliness and destruction.”65 In the same spirit, white

60  Art name of Jadwiga Kukułczanka, translator of French literature into Polish and vice versa and also a poet, theatre critic, and author of screenplays and adaptations. See http:// sppwarszawa.pl/czlonkowie/jadwiga-kukulczanka, accessed February 3, 2023. 61  After four back-to-back editions in the years 1946–1949, the competition had taken place in 1953, 1957, and 1960. 62  Bloch-Morhange and Alper, Artiste, 206. I follow this account because it is the one where Lavelli adds more detail on conversations with Touchard, who would also be the most likely actor to encourage a budding director given his earlier job in support of young companies. However, other sources attribute the same actions, less convincingly, to Lerminier, e.g., Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 75 and R. Fudalewski, “Le Mariage de Witold Gombrowicz en trois dimensions. Trois mises en scène de Lavelli, Sjöberg, Schröder,” Revue d’Histoire du Théâtre 56, no. 4 (2004): 334. Some sources list the prizes in ancient francs, which I here convert for consistency to the new francs by dividing by 100. Perhaps because of the confusion between old and new currency, Obregón lists the pre-selection award as the final prize, which was instead ten times larger. See La diffusion, 336. 63  Fudalewski, “Le Mariage,” 336. 64  Joanna Siedlecka, Jasniepanicz ́ (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1987), 304. This would be another example of immutable mobiles. See Bruno Latour, “Drawing Things Together,” in Representation in Scientific Practice, ed. Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1990), 26. 65  Fudalewski, “Le Mariage,” 335.

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make-up covered most of the performers’ faces.66 Basically, the show drew from the aesthetics of the grotesque in order to reinforce the difference between the real and the psychic universe of the protagonist.67 Music by Diego Masson, integrated as a series of replies to the text, underscored Lavelli’s interpretation of the play as a great symphonic creation, with dialogue distributed between chorus and soloists. As such the show reminded spectators of a “baroque liturgy” in which Henry’s dream took the form of a “solemn Mass.”68 To Lavelli, the play meant the discovery of “a certain path, a certain style”69 that eschewed psychology in favor of affective gestures and movements under the sign of Antonin Artaud.70

66  The make-up can be seen in performance photos in Fudalewski, “Le mariage,” 336 and 339. The performers were Fernand Berset (the drunkard), Juliette Brac (the mother), André Cazalas (the treasonous dignitary, the bishop), Claude Confortès (drunkard, dignitary), Luc Delhumeau (the chancellor), Augy Hayter (dignitary, chief of police), Olivier Lebeaut (Henry), François Mirante (Jeannot), Alexis Nitzer (the father), Yvette Petit (the lady of the court), Claudine Raffalli (Margot), Jean-Marie Richier (drunkard, dignitary, henchman), and Jacques Robnard (henchman). See https://www.lesarchivesduspectacle.net/?IDX_ Spectacle=15876, accessed February 3, 2023. 67  Fudalewski, “Le Mariage,” 337. 68  Irène Sadowska-Guillon, “Le théâtre subversif de Witold Gombrowicz,” Jeu 53 (1989): 9. Nores and Godard describe how the director’s book, of about 70 A5-sized spiral bound pages, outlined the play’s structure not based on feelings but on the physical movement of characters in action: “Lavelli ignores the verb to be and always replaces it with the verb to do. […] While the performers struggled in the dark […], he organized ceremonies.” His otherwise succinct notes “indicated the organization of the processions, the position of each of the characters, the way in which each figure form[ed] geometrically and [was] undone.” Lavelli, 20–21. 69  “It was a unique experience in its genre. […] And this experience has marked me deeply. My conception of the theatre was […] contained in this work, as if the author had written especially this piece which, at this moment of my life, corresponded exactly to what I wanted to do. Through The Wedding, Gombrowicz allowed me to revise my views on the theatre and acting, ideas that I wasn’t able to fully express before. […] Gombrowicz allowed me to find a certain path, a certain style.” Rita Gombrowicz, Gombrowicz en Europe: témoignages et documents, 1963–1969 (Paris: Denoël, 1988), 143. 70  At that time, Lavelli stated: “I very much admired the rigor of the Berliner Ensemble, but this troupe is preoccupied with social and political problems that are foreign to me. I’m attracted by a theatre of violence and trances and by the search for new forms. A play must provide strong emotions to the audience, even if they leave the room disgusted: it is the proof that the show has just acted on them, that they haven’t remained indifferent.” Pierre Hahn, “Jorge Lavelli, lauréat du Concours: Je suis attiré par un théâtre de violences et de transes,” Paris-Théâtre (July 1963): 15.

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After physically intense rehearsals at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt,71 the production premiered at the Théâtre Récamier for the Young Companies Competition on June 14 and 15, 1963, and a jury composed of Parisian critics, theatre professionals, and members of the Ministry of Culture awarded it the Grand Prix.72 The prize consisted of 50,000 francs: after using half the sum to pay the actors, the other half allowed Lavelli to rent the Récamier for thirty days, as required by the competition’s stipulations, starting the following January 8, 1964.73 The show then obtained two prestigious prizes, the Prix de la Critique and the Prix de la Jeune Critique

71  Being an alumnus of the University of the Théâtre des Nations helped Lavelli because he was given a space to rehearse for free at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, although the space was not professionally set up and made concentration difficult. He then had four days to rehearse at the Récamier. See the already cited Lavelli’s interview with Majcherek, part 3: https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=J84cD1EFBoI, accessed February 3, 2023. 72  The members of this jury were relevant actors for Lavelli’s trajectory, at least at the level of the Scholarship Committee members of the Fondo Nacional de las Artes. However, I have not been able to locate many details on their identities or exact number, which are not even mentioned in the Competition’s program available at the BnF.  Lavelli estimated that the jurors were between fourteen and eighteen. Bloch-Morhange and Alper, Artiste, 206. At least, one of those jurors wrote an article: Jean de Beer, “Le prix des Jeunes Compagnies. Notes d’un juré,” Notre République, July 5, 1963. Obregón mentions that the results were announced by Gaëtan Picon, directeur général des Arts et des Lettres. La diffusion, 248. The other competing shows were Rule a Wife, and Have a Wife (Fr. École de dressage, 1624) by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, staged by Yves Gasc; La Jacquerie (The Uprising, 1828) by Prosper Mérimée, directed by Rafael Rodríguez; Don Juan, ou l’imposteur de Seville (Don Juan or the Trickster of Seville, Sp. El burlador de Sevilla, 1616) by Tirso De Molina, company Pierre Jolivet; and Oblomov, directed by Marcel Cuvelier after Ivan Aleksandrovich Goncharov’s novel (1859). Interestingly, only French and Latin American directors were selected for this edition. Rafael Rodríguez was Peruvian: see Osvaldo Obregón, “Apuntes sobre el teatro latinoamericano en Francia,” Cahiers du monde hispanique et lusobrésilien 40 (1983): 26. 73  Bloch-Morhange and Alper, Artiste, 206. Fudalewski, “Le Mariage,” 337. This article states that the show was presented on just two days, January 8 and February 28, 1964, but the data strongly conflicts with Lavelli’s more reliable account.

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among other recognitions.74 By creating The Wedding, Lavelli “imposed on the French scene at the same time the theatre of Gombrowicz and a new scenic language. Not without scandal. The show […] provoked a real outcry at its creation, attracting as many enthusiastic and unconditional defenders […], as well as savage enemies and fierce critics.”75 What really matters, however, is that through this revolutionary staging Lavelli gained near-instant visibility in the Parisian theatrical world.76 Furthermore, apart from the artistic side, a very concrete action of The Wedding consisted in keeping the director in France. He was, said Lavelli, “almost acquired […] but that was the kickoff, in a way.”77 Lavelli’s partly tentative tone in regard to the agency of The Wedding is perhaps due to the fact that the production had a series of materially relevant downsides. First, while aesthetically and critically satisfactory, it also inadvertently dug him into financial trouble because spectators were too

74  Bloch-Morhange and Alper, Artiste, 208. The company went on a short tour through France and Germany. Les Archives du Spectacle list a later date at the Théâtre-Maison de la Culture in Caen on December 12, 1964 (https://www.lesarchivesduspectacle.net/?IDX_ Spectacle=15876, accessed February 3, 2023) and Obregón mentions a performance at Rouen in the same month. La diffusion, 340. In January 1965 the show was staged in Berlin for the Modernes Theater auf kleinen Bühnen program (Modern Theatre on Small Stages) at the Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts), where it was filmed for the Berlin television. Fudalewski, “Le Mariage,” 337. Since there were three new performers and the filming was done from a side and therefore lacked depth, when Lavelli first saw the footage, he did not think it was The Wedding he had staged. Lavelli’s interview with Majcherek, part 3. 75  Sadowska-Guillon, “Le théâtre subversif,” 8–9. For reasons of space, I do not delve here into the debates provoked by the show, which have already been reported at length by others. See Fudalewski, “Le Mariage,” 337–40; Obregón, La diffusion, 245–54; Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 31–39. A critical selection is available at https://witoldgombrowicz.com/ fr/wgoeuvre/theatre/le-mariage/le-mariage-travaux-critiques/le-mariage-dort-le-mariage-­­ de-lavelli-1964, accessed February 3, 2023. 76  Nores and Godard observed that the production appeared at the precise moment of the end of the 1950s avant-garde, when new authors could no longer ignore the contributions of Beckett, Ionesco, Adamov, or Genet, but disciples of these masters often sounded like plagiarists. In their opinion, Le Mariage obtained the prize despite vehement opposition because “it did not only bring something better, but something else, that was born and had matured on another land.” Lavelli, 77. 77  Bloch-Morange and Alper, Artiste, 209.

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few to cover expenses. Unfamiliar with the system, Lavelli found out that, from the moment he was given the money, he had become a producer responsible for renting the theatre and paying the actors but not the director.78 It took Lavelli two years to pay off his own debts. The uncertainties of producing also meant that for the next twenty years the director would avoid engagements that hinged on similar financial responsibilities, at least until the unique experience of the Théâtre de la Colline. Instead of forming a company, his career became punctuated by ongoing personal associations with playwrights (such as Gombrowicz and Copi) and performers. Particularly important for ensuring Lavelli’s continued stay in Paris was the Spanish actress Maria Casarès, whom he met when she saw his first Gombrowicz production. Staying in Paris for Good: The Spanish and Polish Connections Following The Wedding Lavelli found himself in a limbo of sorts because, as Nores and Godard synthetized, “[p]roducers and [artistic] directors were afraid he would offer them a show that was too aggressive, and therefore unprofitable, but [still] expected him to be a bit aggressive.”79 The director read several manuscripts but could not find one convincing enough for a producer to finance him. In the meantime, Casarès had a complication of her own. After her previous year’s applauded appearance at Buenos Aires’s Teatro San Martín in a production of Lorca’s Yerma,80 she had been invited back for the following year and given carte blanche as to the play and the director. She chose Divinas palabras (Divine Words, 1919) by Spanish dramatist Ramón María del Valle-Inclán, but her first choice as director, famed Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, declined the offer. Seeing what Lavelli had done with The Wedding, Casarès was convinced that he would be perfect for Divine Words. And yet, the San Martín declined to hire Lavelli at the requested professional pay, which they  Ibid.  Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 82. 80  The production was directed by Spanish expatriate and longtime Lorca artistic collaborator Margarita Xirgu, Copi’s favorite actress in Uruguay, and presented in May 1963. See Manuel Aznar Soler, “María Casares, Margarita Xirgu y el estreno de ‘Yerma,’ de Federico García Lorca, en el Teatro Municipal General San Martín de Buenos Aires (1963),” Foro hispánico: revista hispánica de Flandes y Holanda 48 (2014): 165–79 and the 1963 radio interview by Ana María Riso at http://sedici.unlp.edu.ar/handle/10915/26687, accessed February 3, 2023. 78 79

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apparently would gladly have shelled out for any French director.81 Importantly, rather than looking for a different director, Casarès kept Lavelli, broke her contract with the San Martín and signed another with the Teatro Coliseo, since her presence still guaranteed ticket sales and a successful run.82 The combination between the lack of interest from the official Buenos Aires theatre and opportunities in Paris intensified Lavelli’s resolve to stay in France for good. That decision was cemented by the success of another Gombrowicz play, Yvonne, princesse de Bourgogne (Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy), which premiered at the Théâtre de Bourgogne in 1965 and subsequently landed Lavelli at the prestigious Odéon-Théâtre de France in Paris.83 Henceforth, it was clear that the initially tentative association with the Parisian theatre world had become more stable.84 Overall, a lengthy list of actors had intervened for Lavelli to embody the identity of an Argentine of Paris. The Argentine state significantly supported Lavelli’s travels and stays in France, while the Buenos Aires Teatro San Martín blocked a potential reintegration into the Federal Capital’s professional scene. Conversely, in France, theatre schools with an international student body afforded Lavelli opportunities to connect with performers, designers, translators, and state employees like Touchard, who in turn facilitated the director’s key success with The Wedding and the connection with Casarès. In this respect, along with Argentine and French components, it is thus essential to highlight the Polish and Spanish associations that allowed the intercultural assemblage to become at the same time more permanent and active. Finally, beyond human agency, a series of non-human actors contributed to this process, such as the costumes

 Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 84–85.  See Maria M. Delgado, ‘Other’ Spanish Theatres: Erasure and Inscription on the Twentieth-­ Century Spanish Stage (New York: Palgrave, 2003), 114. 83  Without immediate serious job offers, for a while the director would infrequently return to Buenos Aires, often discouraged by the difficult work conditions, administrative load, and his native country’s socioeconomic problems. See Andrea Feoli-Gudino, “De retour: Le post-exil comme mise à l’épreuve de l’origine dans les spectacles de Jorge Lavelli et Andrei Serban,” (PhD diss., Université du Québec à Montréal, 2010), 79. After leaving La Colline, Lavelli’s relationship with Buenos Aires improved and he is now a consecrated figure in Argentina as well. 84  Lavelli’s career in spoken theatre and opera until the end of the 1970s is summarized in David Whitton, Stage Directors in Modern France (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1987), 190–209. 81 82

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transported by Zachwatowicz from her previous Polish production. It was thanks to his more stable and recognizable Parisian status that Lavelli moved along the network lines towards his first contact with Copi.

Lavelli and Copi Converge: Saint Genevieve in Her Bathtub and Other Plays The first encounter between Lavelli and Copi occurred at the American Center in Paris, which had expanded its membership to all nationalities starting in the early 1960s.85 In the words of Jean-Jacques Lebel, the organizer of the Festival of Free Expression in 1964 and 1965, the Center had gradually “become the experimental free space that was missing in Paris.”86 Working there were Argentine dancer-choreographer Graciela Martínez and French dancer-actress Martine Barrat, who decided to produce Martínez’s show based on Copi’s comic strips.87 Copi was contributing his Seated Woman comic vignettes to the newly founded Nouvel Observateur when Barrat called him at the newspaper: she already had a dress for the main character and a chicken costume for one of the regular animals portrayed by the artist.88 Copi, however, offered to write a new, original sketch. It was through these connections that the director and budding dramatist crossed paths. Here is how Copi recounted their first meeting: Martine telephoned Lavelli, who would direct, and Arrabal, who would perform. We didn’t know each other. They came. We looked at each other:—

85  “Situated at 261 Boulevard Raspail in the 14th arrondissement, it has the appearance of a small liberal arts college, looming brightly beyond its walled garden next to Montparnasse.” Jason Weiss, “The American Center Breathes New Life,” Passion (Paris), December 10–23, 1981. https://www.itinerariesofahummingbird.com/american-center-paris.html, accessed February 3, 2023. 86  Ibid. For a history of how the American Center discovered its avant-garde vocation, see Nelcya Delanoë, “Le Raspail vert: les avant-gardes à l’American Center, 1932–1987,” Revue française d’études américaines 59 (February 1994): 65–74. 87  Rudni, De profesión periodista, 215. Barrat was one of Copi’s friends mentioned in Chap. 2 and Martínez was the founder of the group Danza Actual in Buenos Aires mentioned in Chap. 3. 88  Established in 1950 as L’Observateur politique, économique et littéraire, the newspaper was renamed Le Nouvel Observateur in 1964 under the new direction of journalist Jean Daniel and owner-manager Claude Perdriel. The newspaper played a large role in Copi’s financial independence and artistic fame.

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Who are these fools? We found out we were Argentines. I hadn’t seen an Argentine in four years. Arrabal was too afraid to perform in the bathtub, Graciela Martínez’s only set piece […]. I had to replace him. It was my first role. I was terrified. Around ’65, I discovered the avant-garde theatre and I grabbed on [to it]. It was a coincidence. I didn’t come from there. A month later, I was working with Jérôme Savary.89

If Copi’s words emphasize the serendipity of the encounter with Lavelli, their trajectories in fact converged because of a large constellation of actors: apart from Martínez and Barrat themselves, one should include at least the Nouvel Observateur actor-network and the Young Companies competition that had furnished Copi and Lavelli respectively with widespread public recognition, the French consulate’s grant that had funded Martínez’s avant-garde experience in Paris in 1963,90 the scenic objects that had endowed the dancer with a personal artistic brand, and Lebel’s festival that had made the American Center a creative home for the Panic group of Arrabal and company. The above quote also situates Copi precisely at the crossroads of his two theatrical paths: one tied to more improvised sketches with Savary, and the dramatic textual other that would be influenced by Lavelli. At the same time, even if Lavelli was more interested in play texts, in this case the association with Copi inspired him to explore a looser form, another fitting example of how actors reciprocally influence each other when engaged in transformative networked associations.

89  Copi, “Le Théâtre exaltant,” in Le frigo: suivi d’un entretien avec Michel Cressole (Paris: Persona, 1983), 54–55. The bathtub appeared in early comic strips in the magazine Bizarre 36 (1964). It showed the Woman speaking to a goldfish while the animal pleasured her in her bathtub, an “inappropriate” action interrupted by her daughter, who scolded her and removed the pet to a fishbowl. Isabelle Barberis. “Copi: Le texte et la scène: Mimesis parodique, mise en scène de soi, et subversion identitaire dans les années parisiennes (1962–1987),” PhD diss., Université de Paris X—Nanterre, 2007, CD-ROM supplement. Of course, Arrabal was Spanish, not Argentine as Copi implied. 90  Martínez was described as “the first pop dancer” because of her focus on the stage potential of simple scenic objects: “With plastic wrap, plaster, papier-mâché, metal elements, and some ‘thing’ (a chair, a pair of crutches), Graciela is able to create an unusual, chilling world with projections of eroticism, which has often made her spectators pull back.” Rudni, De profesión periodista, 214. At the time, Martínez was also married to cartoonist, painter, engraver, and sculptor Antonio Seguí, which may have influenced her interest in Copi’s graphic work. More of Martínez’s trajectory can be found at https://www.lanacion.com.ar/ espectaculos/la-leyenda-oculta-de-la-vanguardia-nid1783628, accessed February 3, 2023.

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There were two performances of Saint Genevieve in Her Bathtub, the first at the Bilboquet performance space and the second at the American Center.91 Publisher Christian Bourgois remembered Copi “all powdered up […]; a Copi from before Copi, engulfed in his Keatonian stiffness.”92 Sitting in a flower-decorated bathtub, completely naked but for a top hat, the Argentine performer declaimed his text into a microphone: “What are you doing in my bathtub?” may have been Copi’s very first words uttered on stage on June 19, 1966.93 Lavelli recalled Copi “engaged in irresistible exchanges with his partner (Martine Barrat), both of them elegantly nude.”94 In the meantime “a transvestite walking a mechanical dog, a mime enclosed in a large paper bag, and an artist making patterns by hammering nails into a plank, orchestrated a sequence of actions to the

 Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 144.  Christian Bourgois in Quirot, “Copi Conforme,” Le Nouvel Observateur, december 31, 1998–January 6, 1999, 52. A picture of Copi with the top hat is in Barberis, Copi, I: 59; two group rehearsal photos in color at the Bilboquet are in Obregón, La diffusion, [n.p., between 453–54]; two black-and-white photos likely from this show (including one of Copi in a bathtub, but apparently misleadingly tagged “Copi. Theater Director. In 1962”) are at https://www.gettyimages.com, nos. 121513391 and 121513388, accessed February 3, 2023. 93  See Gérard Lefort, Mathieu Lindon, and René Solis, “Figure: Copi non conforme” https://www.liberation.fr/arts/2014/02/21/copi-non-conforme_982043, accessed February 3, 2023. It is unclear if these were the actual words, in French, given the lack of corroborating sources. Barberis, for instance, states that Copi spoke in Spanish. Le mondes, 55. The date of the premiere at the Bilboquet is in Obregón, La diffusion, 354. At the time, Copi lived in Rue de la montagne Sainte-Geneviève, so Barberis suggests a degree of self-­ parody. Copi, I:60. Scholar Matthew Edwards submits that the incongruence between the title referring to Paris’s patron Saint Genevieve and the actual image of Copi’s male and naked body forced the spectators to reject rigid symbolic relationships and find their own meaning. “How to Read Copi: A Historiography of the Margins,” Hispanic Review 81, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 71. 94  Copi’s Une visite inopportune performance program. https://www.colline.fr/sites/ default/files/une-visite-inopportune-programme-de-salle.pdf, accessed February 3, 2023. 91 92

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accompaniment of a few phrases endlessly repeated by Copi.”95 The whole performance lasted less than ten minutes and preceded a short “melodrama in one act” by Arrabal, Cérémonie pour une chèvre sur un nuage (Ceremony for a Goat on a Cloud), also directed by Lavelli.96 According to Nores and Godard, even though the performance of Saint Genevieve in Her Bathtub resembled a happening, for instance because of its reliance on chance, Lavelli was not particularly keen on orchestrating a performance that interacted with the real world and revolutionized it, but was rather 95  Whitton, Stage Directors, 194–95. The performance was described in greater detail by Nores and Godard: “The show presented at the Bilboquet was constructed from sentences written and said by Copi that were repeated indefinitely. Around these phrases, a small orchestra, a transvestite walking a mechanical dog, a mime imprisoned in a paper bag, [and] a painter who, nailing a plank, composed a picture. […] It was he who triggered the sequence of actions. By tapping, he transmitted an order to the guitar, relayed by the bass, then by the drums. Among the instruments a dialogue was established that alternated with Copi’s replies. The mime imprisoned in his bag and the transvestite acted autonomously. Each evening, the painter could modify the shapes of his picture and the rhythm with which he tapped on the nails, and thereby change how the orchestra played. The mime wrestled until he destroyed his paper prison; during his walk, the transvestite had established a sort of code with the guitarist in order to be prepared for any eventuality: if the painter stopped tapping, the dog would bark and give a signal to the orchestra, to avoid an embarrassed silence. The simultaneous actions, starting from a text written in a loop, could continue to infinity. At one point, however, the bag was completely destroyed [and] the orchestra had exhausted all the possibilities offered by the rhythm of the picture being created, so the painter had to decide the completion of his work […]. The elements (orchestra, mime, painter, transvestite…) represented a series of coordinated musical themes, linked together in variations around fragmentary sentences, as simple as a comic strip text, whose monotonous repetition created a dull fascination.” Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 146–49. Some details about this show remain difficult to confirm, for instance because no source to my knowledge clearly identifies the other performers and their roles. I assume that Martínez played the mime, given her dance training. Rudni, who was writing on Martínez, recounted: “It’s the delirium: Fernando Arrabal, [poet and painter] Maurice Henry, Topor, the sculptor [Jean-Robert] Ipousteguy surround the sorceress, applaud her, pamper her.” De profesión periodista, 215. 96  Fernando Arrabal, Cérémonie pour une chèvre sur un nuage, mélodrame en un acte. The original edition is at http://www.dailybul.be/archibul/items/show/370#?c=0&m=0&s=0 &cv=0&xywh=-375%2C-108%2C2226%2C2133, accessed February 3, 2023. An intertextual coincidence between the two pieces is that this play also featured a trapped character, in this case within a bubble. According to Obregón, the whole assembled show was called Saint Benoît dans la baignoire. La diffusión, 354. However, this is the only place where I found this title, the same source that refers to Copi’s portion of the show imprecisely as Sainte Jeanne dans sa bagnoire in the photo captions. I take the approximate duration of the piece from Isabelle Barberis, Les mondes de Copi (Paris: Orizons, 2014), 54. Copi avers that it was five minutes in José Tcherkaski, Habla Copi: Homosexualidad y creación (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1998), 77.

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interested in “understanding how, without text, starting from an idea, a theatrical moment could be created.”97 In other words, while Lavelli did explore a type of theatre outside his main line as a director, he still seemed to frame it into a self-contained universe, a “baroque rite” that the spectators perceived as external voyeurs.98 Saint Genevieve in Her Bathtub was a network hub dense with associations for all artists involved, who then devised other productions stemming from that shared experience.99 For Copi and Lavelli, it marked the threshold of a collaboration that developed into a series of full-length plays staged by the director. Lavelli found Copi’s materials previously written in Argentina dated, but encouraged him to write a new play.100 Looking very briefly at Copi’s early texts, the playwright first developed another sketch into the full-length absurdist La journée d’une rêveuse (The Day of a Dreamer, 1968), praised more because of Lavelli’s direction and its star

 Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 146.  “Within this closed organization, participants had a margin of freedom, but in no case could they leave the framework. […] And one went through this baroque rite with a vague uneasiness. The extravagance of the acts provoked sudden laughter, but the rigor with which they were performed gave the impression of witnessing the unpredictable consequences of simple gestures, that, implacably, upset the natural and logical order.” Nores and Godard, Lavelli, 148. 99  Arrabal and Copi in association with Yvan Knott created Geneviève et Le Toboggan (Genevieve and The Toboggan), produced by Barrat for the TNP’s small theatre and then the fifth Paris Biennale (1967), two sketches marked by Panic influences, presented in combination with Arrabal’s Le blanc ballet des boucs (The Goats’ White Ballet). Barberis, Copi, I: 60 and Le mondes, 55. Continuing her exploration of the bathtub as scenic object, Martínez proposed the solo piece Jugamos a la bañadera? at the Di Tella (July 15, 1966), which she performed, choreographed, and designed. The audiovisual intermezzi included slides by visual artists Leone Sonino, Humberto Rivas, Roberto Alvarado, and a comic strip by Copi, in addition to Néstor Astarita’s drums musical performance. María Fernanda Pinta, “Pop! La puesta en escena de nuestro ‘folklore urbano,’” Caiana. Revista de Historia del Arte y Cultura Visual del Centro Argentino de Investigadores de Arte (CAIA) 4 (2014): 4. For a more detailed description of that show, see María Fernanda Pinta, Teatro expandido en el Di Tella: la escena experimental argentina en los años 60 (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2013), 186–88. 100  Copi, “Le théâtre exaltant,” 56. 97 98

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performer, Emmanuelle Riva, than for the playwriting.101 Then, between Eva Perón’s scandal of 1970 and Good Bye Mister Freud’s improvisational extravaganza in 1974, there followed L’homosexuel ou la difficulté de s’exprimer (The Homosexual or the Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself, 1971102) and Les quatre jumelles (The Four Twins, 1973103), two productions that both revealed a more idiosyncratic playwriting style and cemented the two artists’ collaboration. More intensely than with Savary or Arias, the cultural and aesthetic attunement between author and director had its roots in Copi’s and Lavelli’s similar experience of the Buenos Aires independent theatre.104 In practice, the dramatist appreciated that Lavelli respected his texts to a T and yet was flexible enough to accept new scenes or characters until the last minute,105 while Lavelli enjoyed the freedom afforded by Copi’s plays for his own scenic writing, especially in relation to a specific 101  See Barberis, Copi, I: 69–78. The play, in two parts, portrays Jeanne’s repetitive daily routine as a metaphor of life: in the morning she experiences her youth, the discovery of love, and maternity thanks to the True Mailman, and in the evening she seems to speak with God in the guise of a melon merchant. All along she is occupied by several recurring tasks (drinking tea, eating her yogurt, filling a suitcase with melons) and distracted by a number of Fake Mailmen, so that she is constantly pressed for time and has the impression that the day was too short to get everything done. The production premiered on January 11, 1968, at the Théâtre de Lutèce. When Copi substituted performer Gilles Segal, it was his first role on a regular stage. Copi, “Le Théâtre exaltant,” 56. 102  Set in Siberia, the play sees Madame Simpson and Irina, two deported transsexuals, visited by Madame Garbo, a trans male piano teacher, who is married to officer Garbenko but in love with Irina. He wants to take her to China after impregnating her. But the romantic melodrama grows into mental and physical torture for Irina who, after having an abortion, cuts her own tongue as the sole remedy to her persecution. The play premiered on November 29, 1971 at La Resserre, Théâtre de la Cité internationale and then at La Cardère, Festival d’Avignon Off, on July 11, 1972 with Copi as Madame Garbo and costumes by Stoppani. An English translation is in Copi, Four Plays, trans. Anni Lee Taylor (Richmond, UK: Oneworld Classics, 2012), 35–65. 103  “[T]he most abstract, combinatory, and ‘mathematical’” of Copi’s works for the theatre (Barberis, Copi, I:104), the play pits two couples of female twins against each other as they fight tooth and nail for gold, dollars, drugs, and survival in Alaska. The Four Twins ran October 31–November 30, 1973, inaugurating the smaller space at Le Palace. An English translation is in Copi, Four Plays, 67–91. 104  Tcherkaski, Habla Copi, 80–81. 105  “During the rehearsals I came up with one more scene—one that required a new character […] and an actor. You imagine that with another director that would have been impossible. […] [W]hen we worked together we really succeeded in creating a separation between author and director […]. Lavelli never changed one of my commas or an exclamation mark. He always had absolute respect for me as an author.” Ibid., 79–80.

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space.106 The inclusion of both productions in the program of the Festival d’Automne represented a sign of Copi’s achievement of clear recognition in the French theatrical panorama, a fact that—as mentioned in Chap. 2—facilitated the acceptance of Good Bye Mister Freud into the following year’s program. A curiosity of the 1973 Festival d’Automne’s schedule is that The Four Twins was staged in the underground space of Le Palace, a former 1920s dance hall named La Posada, at a time that partially overlapped with TSE’s presence on the street-level main stage for their show Luxe.107 In this way the two groups, working in close spatial proximity, were part of the festival’s and the building’s assemblages: even if the performances took place in sequence at different times of the evening, one can assume that a certain number of backstage crew or employees of the theatre somehow provided links between the two productions, in addition to the author, directors, or performers occasionally crossing paths at Le Palace. But an actual collaboration between Lavelli and Arias/TSE would materialize only later on, on the wave of French theatrical decentralization invigorated by a more liberal political climate. A play by Copi that took full advantage of the non-­ profit theatre network created by decentralization was The Night of Madame Lucienne. The production, however, was also the first materially impacted by the meeting of the author with the AIDS virus, which prevented him from acting in his own play.

The Decentralization Network The significant presence of Argentine artists at the highest levels of the French public theatre hierarchy during the 1980s and early 90s had its roots in the process of decentralization officially initiated by public servant

106  “a play by Copi interests me because there is in it an almost complete freedom to write [on stage],” Pellettieri, “Coloquio,” 23. The director’s approach in turn inspired the type of texts Copi provided for his stagings: “He always looks for a space, initially; thus, if I write works for him, I try not to give any precise indication in terms of place.” Tcherkaski, Habla Copi, 82. As for the actual rehearsal process, according to Copi, Lavelli proceeded in a very traditional way, starting with a table reading, looking for intonations first and then movements, without much improvisation. Ibid., 83. 107  Luxe ran October 4–November 30, 1973, every evening except Sunday at 8:15 pm, whereas The Four Twins was at 10:30 pm.

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Jeanne Laurent between 1945 and 1952.108 In her role as assistant director of music and spectacles at the Department of Arts and Letters in the Ministry of Education, Laurent laid the foundations of a publicly subsidized theatre that could simultaneously prioritize artistic rather than commercial aspects but also reach out beyond the cultural elites of the capital.109 It was Laurent who instituted the first five Centres Dramatiques Nationaux (CDN, National Dramatic Centers) in the provinces, and it was in this period that the Grant for the First Play and the Young Companies Competition were established, the latter so crucial for Lavelli’s career.110 The process of decentralization received a further impulse starting in 1961 with André Malraux, minister of cultural affairs under President de Gaulle: the creation of the Maisons de la Culture (Houses of Culture), open to all kinds of cultural expression, provided well-equipped performance spaces that soon became a staple for touring theatre companies.111 Even so, amid power struggles between cultural establishments and theatre venues, all vying for the scarce funding allocated by conservative governments, the process of decentralization really took off only in 1981, when Mitterrand nominated Jack Lang minister of culture and nearly doubled the ministry’s budget.112 Lang in turn asked theatre critic and scholar Robert

108  The history of decentralization has been amply treated in David Bradby, Modern French Drama, 1940–1990, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), especially chapters 5–7. See also David Bradby and Annie Sparks, Mise en Scène: French Theatre Now (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), 141–49. 109  Earlier non-commercial theatre enterprises in France had remained rather marginal. The theatre proposed by Jacques Copeau at the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier (1913–1924) and then by the Cartel directors (Charles Dullin, Louis Jouvet, Gaston Baty, and Georges Pitoëff, 1927–1939) had innovated the repertoire along with acting and directing and promoted a social role for theatre beyond mere entertainment but remained confined to relatively few specialized spectators. See Michel Vinaver, “Decentralization as Chiaroscuro,” New Theatre Quarterly 7 (1991): 64. 110  Denizot, Jeanne Laurent, 91. 111  Vinaver, “Decentralization,” 68. 112  The budget for Culture passed from 271 million francs in 1981 to 503 million in 1982, with a leap of an 80% for Theatre and Spectacles. The general guidelines proposed by Lang consisted of prioritizing the artists and establishing a special committee to organize decentralization, bring attention to minority expressions, stimulate the cultural economy, and favor interdisciplinarity. Robert Abirached, Le théâtre et le prince I: 1981–1991 (Paris: Plon, 1992), 13–16 and 95.

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Abirached to become director of the Theatre and Spectacles Department.113 It was Abirached who suggested the nomination of Arias to Aubervilliers and Lavelli to La Colline and thus represented the most direct link between these stage directors and the French public theatre apparatus.114 Institutionally, one can now distinguish three main tiers of decentralized theatre across France. The top tier includes the five state-owned National Theatres—the Comédie Française, the Odéon, Chaillot, La Colline, and the Théâtre National de Strasbourg (the only one not in Paris). Of these, the Comédie Française alone maintains a permanent troupe, whereas the others cast shows through ad hoc auditions. The middle tier is comprised of the CDNs like Aubervilliers,115 while the bottom tier is made up of the independent theatre companies. Finally, one should count among the decentralized theatre activities the numerous theatre festivals, among which the largest are the Festival d’Avignon (the first, established in 1947) and the Festival d’Automne that takes place in Paris.116 Essentially, decentralized theatre “is understood […] as a public service, drawing most of its resources from the budget of the nation, while also maintaining its independence and freedom from intervention by the 113  There was an existing association between the two men: in 1966 Abirached, then drama critic for Le Nouvel Observateur, had been fascinated by Lang’s passion and helped him through difficult times with the organization of the Nancy festival. Ibid., 9–10. Leaving his Chair of Theatrical Aesthetics at the University of Caen, Abirached became a strong stabilizing element for public theatre during Mitterrand’s first presidential term, first under minister Lang (1981–1986) and then under François Léotard (1986–1988). Raymonde Temkine, Le théâtre en l’état (Paris: Éditions théâtrales, 1992), 64. 114  Abirached offers a detailed description of this state apparatus starting at the level of the Ministry of Culture, located in Rue de Valois, and continuing with an organizational chart of the Department of Theatre and Spectacles in Rue Sainte Dominique, which in the 1980s employed about sixty civil servants working in six main offices as well as an architect-advisor for building projects. In addition, the Director could count on nine general inspectors to maintain tight relationships with professionals as well as theatrical cultural institutions. Le théâtre, 76–79. 115  Referring to year 1989, French writer and dramatist Michel Vinaver spoke of twenty-­ five CDN and five dedicated to youth theatre. “Decentralization,” 67. There are now thirty-­ eight overall. https://www.culture.gouv.fr/Sites-thematiques/Theatre-spectacles/ Dossiers/Historique-du-Theatre-en-France/Les-institutions-theatrales, accessed February 3, 2023. 116  The name “decentralization” is somewhat misleading, since it only partially applies to the centrality of Paris versus the off-center provinces. Evidently, as Vinaver pointed out, “the boundaries of Decentralization are somewhat hazy,” because Paris still figures prominently as a location for subsidized theatre. “Decentralization,” 66.

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authorities with respect to the artistic choices of the people involved.”117An effect of this hands-off approach by the state has been a strengthening of directors as figures of simultaneous artistic and economic power, “the privileged interlocutors of the State, both artists and senior executives,”118 with little supervision after their nomination and the ability to mold the assigned theatres to their unique vision. As a consequence, the need of each director to differentiate his or her own brand has led to skyrocketing budgets for more daring spectacles, sets, and star performers, in addition to a privilege accorded to the classics as ideal grounds to show off the director’s skills and uniqueness.

Copi’s The Night of Madame Lucienne, Starring Casarès: A Co-Production with Crombecque’s Avignon Festival and the TSE Group In contrast with this general penchant for proven repertory, Lavelli decidedly highlighted new dramaturgies including Copi’s. But before the playwright’s consecration at La Colline with Grand Finale, the most significant production in terms of the Argentine network supported by decentralization was The Night of Madame Lucienne, because it became the concrete meeting point for Lavelli, Copi, and the TSE group represented by Facundo Bo and Arias. Structured in three fictional layers like those of an

117  Ibid., 65. The state-side budgetary decisions clearly involve plenty of actors and produce their own “dramatic” moments. It all starts each year before the summer with the minister of culture proposing a general budget in time for Parliament to vote on. Only after the budget’s approval does it become possible to entertain concrete projects that must, however, stay within the constraints of the ratified sums. Even so, the Department of Theatre and Spectacles remains at the mercy of potential cuts: as Abirached lamented, the funds were ultimately controlled by the Ministry of Finances, which viewed artistic activities at the same level of general state administration, with little understanding of their specificity and the need to respect long-term contracts. Abirached, Le théâtre, 72–82. 118  Ibid., 99. Thus, directors stand on the most crucial threshold for theatrical cultural production. French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu calls it “the most disputed frontier of all [i.e.,] the one which separates the field of cultural production and the field of power.” The Field of Cultural Production (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 43.

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onion,119 The Night of Madame Lucienne for the first time put Copi in dialogue with a classic dramatic genre—the metatheatrical play or comédie de comédiens—that had an illustrious tradition in France and internationally.120 Copi declared that, unlike The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur, the play felt colder and mathematical as if he had attached no sentimental importance 119  “My play resembles an onion that one peels off” stated Copi. Michel Barlier, “En répétant la répétition.” L’Avant-Scène théâtre 773 (1985): 11. In this play within a play within a play, the first two fictional layers show an Actress, an Author, and a Stagehand rehearse a rather kitsch devised play in a theatre during the wee morning hours. A TV anchor (performed by the Actress) broadcasts announcements on the galaxy from the Moon and introduces two guests: God (played by the Author) and the Rat (a hand puppet), whom God intends to marry despite protests on Earth. The rehearsal is interrupted by a phone call: Vicky Fantômas, a disfigured former striptease artist, hounds the Author for unknown reasons. All along, the Actress keeps questioning the Author’s plans for the script at just one week from the premiere: she loathes improvising and especially the Rat puppet, found in the trash. The play turns into a detective story after the disappearance of Madame Lucienne, the cleaning lady. Vicky, suspected of her murder, suddenly enters from the auditorium, claims to have built the puppet herself, and blames it for inspiring the Actress, whom she accuses of killing Madame Lucienne. She reveals that the cleaning lady was her mother and the Actress is her twin sister. But the Actress already knew and actually loved her mother without disclosing her relation to her: it was in fact the Author who murdered her, disgusted by their connection. At this admission, the Actress shoots the Author. The Stagehand, who is none other than Vicky’s slave, kills the Actress. Then Vicky kills her henchman and lets the Rat strangle her: everyone is dead. Unveiling the third fictional layer, everyone gets up to comment on the rehearsal that just took place. The Author found the actors sublime, but Vicky condemns the implausible argument of the play and the actors’ affectation. The rehearsal is over: the Actress, the Stagehand, and Vicky Fantômas leave, while the Author remains alone in the theatre to reflect on his work. In the end, the actual Madame Lucienne enters, accuses him of exploiting her personal story, and shoots him as she triumphantly proclaims the end of theatre itself. Copi, La nuit de Madame Lucienne, in Théâtre, vol. 2 (Paris: Christian Bourgois Éditeur, 1986), 233–94. 120  For a literary and semiotic analysis of the play in the context of the metatheatrical genre, with particular attention to the different fictional layers, see Stefanie Schmitz, Metatheater im zeitgenössischen französischen Drama (Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 2015), 131–35. In France alone, starting with the two plays similarly titled La comédie des comédiens by Le Sieur de Gougenot and Georges de Scudery (likely in 1633), the genre had been practiced among others by Molière with L’impromptu de Versailles (The Impromptu of Versailles, 1663) and counted recent antecedents, from Copeau’s L’impromptu du Vieux Colombier (The Impromptu of the Vieux Colombier, 1917) to Jean Giraudoux’s L’impromptu de Paris (The Impromptu of Paris, 1937) and Ionesco’s L’impromptu de l’Alma (The Impromptu of the Alma, 1955). See Mary Ann Frese Witt, Metatheater and Modernity: Baroque and Neobaroque (Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). Speaking of how the season 1985–1986 was sprinkled with a plethora of metatheatrical plays, theatre semiotician Tadeusz Kowzan observed that the phenomenon strongly marked the second half of the nineteenth century. “Théâtre dans le théâtre: signe des temps?” Cahiers de l’Association internationale des études françaises 46 (1994): 156.

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to it.121 At the same time, this “kaleidoscope of situations” incorporated numerous leitmotivs of Copi’s entire oeuvre,122 either quickly referenced as inside jokes or spotlighted, as in the case of the omnipresent Rat, all “immersed in the suspenseful atmosphere of a bad soap opera.”123 For Lavelli, the play was at the same time “a logical continuation of my frequent visits to Copi’s theatre universe,” indeed a “synthesis of Copi’s dramaturgy,”124 and a more mature development of the playwright’s writing because his characters were “more nourished with a past.”125 But what matters most from the perspective of networks is that The Night of Madame Lucienne emerged like a unique hub for a large number of long-­established associations. To begin with, the production offered Copi an opportunity to renew his friendship with Alain Crombecque, who had just become artistic director of the Avignon Festival and co-produced the show as representative of a host of funding sources.126 In this way the dramatist was listed in the official program of the most prestigious French theatre festival among

121  Michel Barlier, “En répétant,” 11. Marcos Rosenzvaig also dedicates a chapter to the play (“El teatro y la identidad”) in Copi: sexo y teatralidad (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2003), 89–96. 122   Irène Sadowska-Guillon, “Le théâtre de la fidelité,” L’Avant-Scène théâtre 773 (1985): 8. 123  Copi in Barlier, “En répétant,” 11. In the play, Copi repeatedly poked fun at his own tropes, such as long monologues, his perverse taste for domestic disputes, or his obsession with rats. He also directly referenced his previous works: Loretta Strong was the model for the initial monologue and The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur were mentioned by name. He also launched several arrows against improvisation and collective creation, methods his earlier self had practiced with Savary. 124  Sadowska-Guillon, “Le théâtre de la fidélité,” 8. 125  Dominique Nores, “Madame Lucienne: le retour de Lavelli,” Acteurs 26–27 (June–July 1985): 50. 126  A picture of Crombecque and Copi at Avignon in 1985 is in Christine Crombecque, Alain Crombecque: au fil des rencontres (Arles: Actes sud, 2010), 30. The play was staged at the Théâtre Municipal (Opéra-Théâtre), July 25–31, 1985 at 9:30 pm for seven overall performances (a larger number of nights as compared to three and five of the other two productions in the same space). Local and national actors that supported the Festival financially were the City of Avignon, the General Council of Vaucluse, the Regional Council Provence-Alpes-­ Côte d’Azur, the Ministry of Culture, the French Association of Artistic Action (Association française d’action artistique), and the Ministry of Youth and Sports, in conjunction with the Festival of India, France Culture, INA (National Institute of the Audiovisual), the Tourist Office of Avignon, and corporate sponsorships. Festival d’Avignon, Statistiques 85, BnF Archive.

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other giants of the national and international theatre scene.127 Even more crucially for the network of Argentines of Paris, the play allowed Lavelli’s and TSE’s trajectories to converge and integrate into a single production for the first time when Facundo Bo became part of the cast and Arias co-­ produced and hosted the show at Aubervilliers for the theatre’s first season under his direction.128 The idea of converging lines for this production was also underscored by theatre critic Irène Sadowska-Guillon, who spoke of a theatre of “loyalty, complicity, friendship”129: Lavelli’s loyalty to Copi because of their previous collaborations but also to Maria Casarès, with whom the director had developed a profound friendship over twenty years and seven shows.130 In fact, both Lavelli and Casarès had their own histories with the Avignon Festival: she had frequently participated since 1954, when she had been directed by Vilar in Macbeth, and he had started in 1967 with Goethe’s Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit (The Triumph of 127  Copi was well aware of this newly found centrality: “Of course I’m happy [of going to Avignon], it’s the most important theatre festival.” Barlier, “En répétant,” 12. Gustavo Tambascio spoke of “officialized Copi.” “Una herencia inoportuna: El teatro de Copi, a diez años de su muerte,” Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos 563 (1997): 112. David Wetsel saw the production as the apogee of critical success for Copi during his lifetime. “Copi (Pseud. of Raúl Damonte; Argentina; 1941–1987),” in Latin American Writers on Gay and Lesbian Themes: A Bio-critical Sourcebook, ed. David William Foster and Emmanuel Sampath Nelson (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 118. Among the most prestigious other productions were Peter Brook and Jean-Claude Carrière’s Mahabharata, Antoine Vitez’s Lucrèce Borgia by Victor Hugo, Tadeusz Kantor/Théâtre Cricot II’s Qu’ils crevent les artistes! (Let the Artists Die!), and Merce Cunningham dance company’s Roaratorio: An Irish Circus on Finnegans Wake. The full festival program is at https://festival-avignon.com/en/edition­1985/programme/by-category?cat=1001, accessed February 3, 2023. 128  The Aubervilliers performances ran March 25–April 16, 1986, after a reprise of The Seated Woman (March 11–23). The later tour included the open-air Teatre Grec in Barcelona, Spain (August 6–10, 1985) and the Théâtre municipal Sebastopol in Lille (November 17, 1985 for the 14th Lille Festival). Dominque Nores also mentions the Festival of Navarre at Pampelune, without a specific date. “Madame Lucienne” 50. The play was the first theatre work by Copi translated for the Argentine public as La noche de la rata (Grupo Espejos, directed by Maricarmen Arnó at the Teatro Payró in 1991). For other Argentine productions until 2005, see Jean Graham-Jones, Evita, Inevitably: Performing Argentina’s Female Icons Before and After Eva Perón (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2014), 225. 129  Sadowska-Guillon, “Le théâtre de la fidélité,” 8. 130  Apart from Divine Words, at that point Casarès had worked with Lavelli in Eugene O’Neill’s Welded (1965), Seneca’s Medea (1967), Carlos Fuentes’s Le borgne est roi (The One-Eyed Man is King, 1970), Serge Rezvani’s La mante polaire (The Polar Mantis, 1977), Igor Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex (1979), and William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (Fr. Le conte d’hiver, 1980).

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Sensibility, Fr. Le triomphe de la sensibilité) and Seneca’s Medea, starring Casarès herself.131 Lavelli and His Human and Non-Human Performers The collaboration with Casarès also speaks to a larger attitude adopted by Lavelli, who never really had his own company but rather cultivated a series of privileged relationships with certain performers and artists. In an interview with Tcherkaski, the director tried to shed light on his personalized approach to directing: My job consists […] in encouraging the creation of an extreme expressive situation, trying to extract the maximum of expressive possibilities from each one of the performers, [which] is conditioned by the personal history of each of them, by their past, sensitivity, culture, and imagination. Thus, there can be no method of collective directing, but rather a method of attention to each case in particular, in which each [performer] must find a situation of disequilibrium in order to then return to the harmonious balance in relation to oneself and the general idea of the staging.132

While Lavelli acknowledged the necessity of creating “a family” for each production, including both performers and technical crew,133 his emphasis was thus not on the group as a whole but on a series of director-performer collaborative pairs. Lavelli cast Casarès because he thought that, given her fundamental cheerfulness combined with her experience with tragic heroines, she could effectively capture Copi’s particular humor, which worked by exploding a tragic substratum from inside.134 Thus she could be the most appropriate 131  See Sadowska-Guillon, “Maria Casarès à Avignon,” Acteurs 26 (June 1985): 52–53. For Casarès’s career, see Florence Marguier, Maria Casarès, une actrice de rupture (Arles: Actes sud, 2013). Lavelli returned to the official Avignon program in 1969 with Orden—an opera by Girolamo Arrigo, in 1970 with The One-Eyed Man is King, in 1976 with Ionesco’s Le roi se meurt (Exit the King), in 1979 with Arrabal’s La Tour de Babel (The Tower of Babel), in 1980 with Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, and in 1982 with Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño (Life is a Dream, Fr. La vie est un songe, set designed by Platé). 132  José Tcherkaski, El teatro de Jorge Lavelli: el discurso del gesto (Buenos Aires: Editorial de Belgrano, 1983), 44. 133  Ibid., 45. 134  “that’s the difficulty of Copi’s theatre, […] it takes pain, it takes a degree of tragic at first, it must be broken from the inside to be able to find the humor.” Darzacq, Jorge Lavelli.

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performer for the melodramatic role of Vicky Fantômas, eventually revealed as just a character of the play within the play.135 After such prolonged collaboration with the performer, Lavelli also felt that he could communicate with her intuitively: “It worked through signs, directly.”136 With Casarès as the star attraction, the cast gathered four other human performers whose first names would be used in the dialogue for the “real” characters of the play—Facundo Bo (Author), Françoise Brion (Actress), Miloud Khetib (Stagehand), Liliane Rovère (Cleaning Lady)—and the hand puppet of the Rat created by visual artist Rodolfo Natale, an Argentine who lived in Paris thanks to Lavelli.137 Lastly, the director was assisted by his French wife, Dominique Poulange.138 Asked what he thought of the performance, Copi declared that he was very happy with the way the play had turned out: “Even more than in other stagings of my texts by Lavelli. The play is truly all there.”139 What he meant, of course, was the assemblage between his succinct play text and the inventive performance score devised by Lavelli around it, which  Sadowska-Guillon, “Le théâtre de la fidélité,” 9.  Darzacq, Jorge Lavelli. Casarès confirmed that the two of them had several points in common: “we [both] don’t like starting with either the explanation, the rational, or the psychological. In the work with Lavelli there’s something voluptuous, Lavelli […] always has a […] very particular vision of the piece he stages. It’s all about entering this vision. For me it’s easy because it’s familiar to me, fraternal.” Sadowska-Guillon, “Maria Casarès,” 53. An interview with Casarès on the play is at https://m.ina.fr/video/I00004531/maria-casares-­ a-propos-du-festival-d-avignon-video.html, accessed February 3, 2023. 137  Natale had designed sets in Buenos Aires between 1976 and 1978. He met Lavelli there, told him of the risks he ran living in Argentina due to the political situation and of his intentions to move to France. Lavelli helped him find a position as prop master at the international opera festival in Aix en Provence. Natale then attended the School of Fine Arts in Paris and set up a workshop for the production of props and sets. After commissioning him forty animal masks for Handel’s opera Alcina (Palermo, Italy; Teatro Massimo), Lavelli asked him to build the Rat puppet. E-mail interview with the author, August 8, 2019. After The Night of Madame Lucienne, the visual artist would collaborate with Lavelli mostly as set designer. See http://rodolfonatale.com/?page_id=92, accessed February 3, 2023. 138  Poulange started her association with Lavelli as an intern for Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro, Fr. Le noces de Figaro, 1979) and would figure with increasingly important roles in Lavelli’s artistic work, from “assistant director” beginning with 1980’s The Winter’s Tale and in this production to “associate director” starting with Lars Norén’s La Veillée (The Vigil, 1988). From July 1987 on she would be “adjunct” to Lavelli’s artistic direction of the Théâtre National de La Colline. In contrast to Lavelli, who has given a large number of interviews, information on Poulange or her role in this network is scarce: my request for an interview with her and/or Lavelli through Facebook received no reply. 139  Barlier, “En répétant,” 12. 135 136

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solidified the notion of a Copi-Lavelli style.140 The core of Lavelli’s directing work, much as that of other traditional directors, resided in co-creating with the performers situations and stage movements at times implied but also not explicitly indicated by the existing text.141 Lavelli saw in this text “the opportunity for exciting work. It’s not a play that demands great means nor great effects. It’s a play based on the performer’s work, but it poses innumerable problems for the performers themselves.”142 Although Copi denied that Lavelli used improvisatory work, it is hard not to assume that the performers and director experimented with potential options on stage before reaching a performance score. Casarès, for instance, was enthusiastic about the constant challenge of invention.143 The richness of Lavelli’s scenic writing through the performers’ actions on stage was noted by Le Monde’s Olivier Schmitt: “Jorge Lavelli […] has chosen for everyone the rhythm of the gunboat. Doesn’t Miloud say that ‘one learns theatre in circuses, but he’s learnt a lot in the navy too?’ [The performers] move a lot on the stage, they run, bump into each other.”144 Two examples among many of Lavelli’s scenic writing could be construed as assemblages, the first involving only human performers and the

140  Obregón spoke of “[t]he latest evidence of the unquestionable complementarity of the two Argentines.” La diffusion, 371; Barberis of “a new example of the Copi-Lavelli style: cold, uncluttered, ceremonial.” Le mondes, 109. 141  The director characterized his own work as follows: “I make the most of the elements of theatricality.” Sadowska-Guillon, “Le théâtre de la fidélité,” 9. 142  Nores, “Madame Lucienne,” 50. 143  “this play […] opens on a multitude of paths, ways out, totally unexpected possibilities. What is very difficult, very delicate and at the same time amusing for the performer is this constant invention she must constantly find herself involved in while confronting this text.” Sadowska-Guillon, “Maria Casarès,” 53. 144  Olivier Schmitt. “Copi à la cannonière. ‘La Nuit de Madame Lucienne’ à Aubervilliers,” Le Monde, April 5, 1986.

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second adding a non-human one.145 At the beginning of the play Copi’s text reads: “Actress. Where are my props? Author. Miloud will hand them to you in order. Actress. Shall we start, Miloud? Stagehand. Let’s start.”146 Having showed everyone pacing nervously on stage in p ­ reparation for rehearsal, right after the Author’s line Lavelli introduced an unscripted situation. While the Stagehand prepared the space, the Actress firmly grabbed his crotch; the Stagehand stopped to think for a moment, decided he liked that, and then hurled himself over her; she appreciated the countermove, heaving heavily, and clutched him back. With the performers’ bodies thus entangled, it really looked like they could have sex on the spot, but the Actress finally pronounced her line: “Shall we start, Miloud?,” whereupon the play continued to the Tele-Moon broadcast.147 The second example involved the Rat puppet, manipulated first by the Author, then the Actress, and finally by Vicky, who first petted it like a child but also clearly aroused it, then played with it, and finally showed herself ready to be killed by it, until it ultimately climbed around her head and

145  The primary way to appreciate Lavelli’s directing skills remains the long-shot video of the show that can be watched at the INAthèque, as well as several shorter clips such as “Maria Casarès et Françoise Brion dans La Nuit de Mme Lucienne,” Antenne 2 Midi, July 26, 1985 (https://www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/video/i04356397/maria-casares-et-­ francoise-brion-dans-la-nuit-de-mme-lucienne, accessed February 3, 2023); “Bilan Avignon,” TF1, July 29, 1985 (Casarès interview); “Maria Casarès au festival d’Avignon,” Le journal France 3 Alpes Provence Méditérranée, July 25, 1985, France 3 Provence Alpes; “Théâtre Sebastopol: La nuit de Madame Lucienne de Copi,” France 3 Pas de Calais, November 16, 1985 (shows rehearsals, practice with the Rat puppet, and Copi in attendance); “Midi 2” TV News, Antenne 2, March 20, 1986 (about the show at Aubervilliers); “Mort de Copi,” Antenne 2, December 14, 1987. A large set of photos by Daniel Cande is available at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9002562r, where n. 38 is the only one with Casarès (accessed February 3, 2023). Other photos are available for consultation at the BnF. 146  “Comédienne. Où sont mes accessoires? Auteur. Miloud va te les passer dans l’ordre. Comédienne. On y va, Miloud? Machiniste. On y va.” Copi, La nuit de Madame Lucienne, Théâtre 2, 237. 147  The physical attraction, however, did not cease but was reprised and developed at subsequent moments of the performance.

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murdered her.148 All this occurred between Vicky’s line “You must kill me. It’s the finale” and the stage direction “Vicky Fantômas strangles herself with the Rat.”149 Pace, the set and costume designer for the play, was an old acquaintance with whom Lavelli had collaborated since 1969,150 but even more intriguing in terms of ANT is that some set pieces came from other productions, just like for The Wedding but totally unrelated to the play this time.151 For instance, Lavelli recalled that he did not want a backdrop for the set and had found at the Avignon Opera “a very beautiful forest, in poor state, so that one could pass through it. I loved that anonymous canvas: it proclaimed the theatre and at the same time created a space by presenting itself in all its indignity.”152 Overall, the bare stage was populated with set pieces (a table, an armchair, a sofa, fake doors, curtains, pasteboard scenery, a theatrical starry sky, and a half moon), some of which brought with them a much longer history of the craftsmen who had built them for previous, now fully blackboxed shows.153 Taking pieces from 148  This movement of course was possible because Casarès’s hand moved the puppet. In a philosophical essay, Kenneth Gross maintains, “The simple glove puppet, the hand puppet, shows the hand’s power here most immediately. Slipped into a figure of cloth and wood, the hand, a small but essential part of the body, becomes a separate whole; it lends its life to a distinct and individual creature. The hand, the extension and tool of our will, becomes the moving force—physical and spiritual—of a thing with a will and life of its own, a will that yet remains tied into the bodily, psychic motion of the manipulator. It becomes both object and source of animation.” Puppet: An Essay on Uncanny Life (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011), 51. 149  “Tu dois me tuer. C’est le final. (Vicky Fantômas s’étrangle avec le Rat […].)” Copi, La nuit de Madame Lucienne, Théâtre 2, 284. 150  Agostino Pace had collaborated with Lavelli on four other productions of opera and spoken plays: Orden (1969), The One-Eyed Man is King (1970), Ionesco’s Jeux de massacre (Killing Game, 1970), and Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus, 1983). 151  A reviewer remarked: “the set designed by Pace, of odds and ends on purpose, is made of accessories that were lying in the reserves of the Municipal Theatre (a real capharnaum).” Mathilde La Bardonnie, “‘La nuit de Madame Lucienne’ et ‘Groom’ à Avignon: La femme de ménage et le porteur de valises,” Le Monde, July 31, 1985. Another reviewer was not as enthusiastic, seeing “dreadful, explicitly hideous cardboard set pieces.” Stéphane Jousni, “‘Lucrèce Borgia’ ou le somptueux dépouillement. En Avignon, Antoine Vitez ‘nettoie’ superbement l’impossible tragédie de Victor Hugo. Loin de là, Maria Casarès ne réussit pas à sauver du tragique l’impossible comédie de Copi.” La Libre Belgique, July 31, 1985. 152  Bruno Villien, “Jorge Lavelli, la peinture et son double,” Beaux arts magazine 114 (July-August 1983): 107. 153  Copi, who appreciated the pieces, said that half of them came from other shows. Barlier, “En répétant,” 12.

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other shows recycled and transformed them for the new production. Lavelli saw that operation as “the uninterrupted theatre that invents itself, that regenerates itself at its own source,”154 which is another way of describing the continuous lines of becoming of those objects. What is more, the set was then transferred to Aubervilliers, thus establishing a process of material translation between two theatre centers of the decentralized network. The Largest Audience and a Stealthy Casting Director As usual, critics were divided regarding the success of the operation: to Olivier Schmitt’s appreciative review in Le Monde (“A theatre to scare simple souls, served very hot by actors at all times good, appropriate”155) responded Libération’s critic Gilles Costaz, who viewed Copi’s “tango of unreason” as a machine vertiginously spinning on itself, constantly on the verge of collapsing: “Copi […], not always at the best of his form, doesn’t quite succeed in transforming his fake detective comedy into a devastating and revolutionary spinning top. It’s rather good high-brow boulevard theatre.”156 As in the case of Savary and Copi’s Good Bye Mister Freud, the assemblage between the provocateur artist and a more traditional theatre venue came with a certain risk of displeasing those critics more in tune with earlier works. But despite these critiques, audience reception was rather positive if one looks at the 4561 spectators for its seven performances at Avignon that made the play the apogee of Copi’s critical success during his lifetime.157 Nevertheless, the overall personal situation of the artist was already drastically changing due to another, stealthy actor. Rehearsals for The Night of Madame Lucienne had been quite different for Copi compared to his active presence for Savary’s and Arias’s shows seen in the previous chapters. Asked if he participated, Copi answered, “From time to time, but I don’t intervene. Except of course if I dine with  Sadowska-Guillon, “Le théâtre de la fidélité,” 9.  Olivier Schmitt. “Copi à la cannonière.” 156  Gilles Costaz, “XXXIXe Festival d’Avignon. Un tango de la déraison pour clore le bal: Copi et Jorge Lavelli concluent la programmation théâtrale du Festival avec une pièce-­ canular contestée: ‘la Nuit de Mme Lucienne.’ Du boulevard intello,” Libération, July 29, 1985, 23. 157  David Wetsel, “Copi,” 118. At Avignon there were a total of 4561 spectators, with an average of 652 spectators (72% of the theatre’s capacity) per performance. I could not find comparable attendance data at the Théâtre de la Commune’s archive at Aubervilliers. 154 155

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Lavelli. […] If there are assistants, the performers forget them easily, but not the author. Very often they have anxieties, and the presence of the author may block everything.”158 When he did show up it might look as business as usual: “His presence was always warm. He never attended rehearsals without bringing beer, joints, etc.,” reminisced Lavelli.159 Facundo Bo recalled how the author observed from the back of the auditorium: “Nothing escaped him. He adored rats and was very worried about the construction of the one that was going to play a primary role in his play.”160 But something else was going through Copi’s mind: “At the beginning of rehearsals I was jealous. I was looking at ‘the author’ and I thought: but why didn’t I take the role! For once I resisted Lavelli.”161 In reality, this time Copi appeared tired: “On the train that took us from Lille to Paris,”—reminisced Bo—“he told me: ‘I have AIDS. I catch all the fashions.’”162 Copi realized he had unwittingly associated with a deadly non-human actor towards the end of 1984, when he showed his doctor a red spot on his body: “Well, this is it. I won the jackpot,” declared the author with his customary irony.163 Tracing the global genealogy of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), health policy professor Jonathan Engel portrayed its first step towards humans as follows: Sometime [in the 1920s], a small bit of ribonucleic acid (RNA), one of two types of genetic material found in the world, spontaneously mutated. [It] was the carrier of all genetic information for an insignificant virus [that] had lived in the bodies of various types of African monkeys and apes for several  Barlier, “En répétant,” 12.  Michel Barlier, “La mort, c’est du théâtre!,” Gai Pied Hebdo 307, February 5, 1988. 160  Facundo Bo, “Angel,” Cachafaz program. [n.p.]. Natale described his process as follows: “Following [Lavelli’s] instructions, it had to be a fairly large 50 cm [about 20”] rat, including a knife inside that had to suddenly appear at a given time of the play. The knife was plastic, an imitation of a metal one; its blade entered the handle, inside which there was a spring held by a button. Maria Casarès operated the button and the knife appeared suddenly from the rat’s mouth. To be inspired by reality, I had models of rats provided by a scientific laboratory, the model was first created mainly in clay, then I made a plaster cast in several parts, applied the latex with a brush in several layers, inserting loops to finally assemble the whole including the knife. Luckily everything happened as planned and there were no problems in rehearsal.” Rodolfo Natale, e-mail interview with the author, August 8, 2019. 161  Barlier, “En répétant,” 12. 162  Facundo Bo, “Angel.” 163  Gilbert Haas in Odile Quirot, “Son pied de nez à la mort,” Le Nouvel Observateur, January 1, 1999, 64. 158 159

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hundred thousand years. […] This particular mutation […] would prove to be extraordinarily consequential for the world, as it allowed the virus […] to live in human beings.164

The virus’s attempts to create associations with human actors were initially undermined by the weakness of its protein coat, which rendered it unable to penetrate unlacerated skin or mucosal linings and made its survival in air impossible. Another issue was the lack of easy communications with the infected areas in Africa, which did not impede its ability to occasionally travel by car, boat, or plane in a human host.165 But on the virus’s side was “the sublime trick of slow pathogenesis”: instead of quickly killing its hosts, it took about a decade to fully disable their immune system while continuing to spread to countless unsuspecting new victims.166 Unsurprisingly, the virus’s dissemination across the global network followed a “hierarchical-nodal pattern, moving from major urban areas in Africa to other major urban areas such as Paris, New York and Los Angeles.”167 In particular, because of an influx of Central African immigrants, France was “one of the western nations where the infection was probably most widespread prior to 1980,”168 with the greatest concentrations of cases in the Parisian area (Île de France, 52%) and the Marseille area

164  Jonathan Engel, The Epidemic: A Global History of AIDS (Harper-Collins E-Books, 2006), 1. Engel speaks of the 1930s, but later viral phylogenetic studies have indicated 1920s Kinshasa in the current Democratic Republic of Congo as the most probable origin of the epidemic due to the city’s status as a railway hub, its thriving sex trade, rapid population growth, and unsterilized needles used in health clinics. The jump from ape to human dates back to a much earlier period in southwestern Cameroon. Nuno R. Faria et al., “The Early Spread and Epidemic Ignition of HIV-1 in Human Populations,” Science 6205 (October 3, 2014): 56–61. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1256739, accessed February 3, 2023. 165  Engel speaks of at least nineteen recorded times between 1950 and 1972. The Epidemic, 2. 166  Ibid., 2–3. Speaking of microbes Latour remarked: “No actant is so weak that it cannot enlist another. Then the two join together and become one for a third actant, which they can therefore move more easily. An eddy is formed, and it grows by becoming many others.” Pasteurization, 159. 167  Gary W. Shannon and Gerald F. Pyle, “The Origin and Diffusion of AIDS: A View from Medical Geography,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 79, no. 1 (March 1989): 13. 168  Ibid., 11.

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(Provence-­Alpes-­Côte d’Azur, 14%).169 Furthermore, since AIDS appeared in France soon after the homosexual liberation movement, “[i]n many respects, the homosexual ‘theater’ of the early 1980s was a boon for a new virus. The way AIDS was spread, via networks and relays fed by the high level of sexual promiscuity and the intermingling of partners, set off a chain reaction that grew exponentially.”170 Indeed, it was a French research team at the Pasteur Institute that discovered the virus in early 1983,171 an achievement that stemmed from their close relationship with doctors caring for the first AIDS patients. By contrast, institutional involvement was slow because implementation of major policy lines addressing the epidemic was fettered by the so-called cohabitation period at the political level.172 Since the 1986 elections created a difficult situation of divided government between Mitterrand, the socialist president, and Jacques Chirac, the prime minister from the conservative Rassemblement pour la Republique (Rally for the Republic),173 public policies had to wait until Mitterrand’s reelection in 1988 before they became a national priority.174 In sum, the period when Copi met the HIV virus was characterized by a fundamental ignorance about its transmission and by institutional inertia that made the situation even more dramatic and difficult to tackle. At some level, the virus had decided that Facundo Bo would be cast in the Author’s role in The Night of Madame Lucienne instead of Copi himself. When Copi later wrote Grand Finale at the hospital where he was 169  Monika Steffen, “AIDS Policies in France,” in AIDS and Contemporary History, ed. Virginia Berridge and Philip Strong (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 241. 170  Frédéric Martel, The Pink and the Black: Homosexuals in France Since 1968 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 192. The author, who frequently mentions Copi, offers a portrayal of the magnitude of the phenomenon and competing political, social, and medical actors in part III, “The End of the Carefree Life.” Ibid., 186–281. 171  Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2008 for the discovery of HIV-1, the virus strain mostly responsible for infections in humans. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2008/summary, accessed February 3, 2023. 172  Steffen, “AIDS Policies,” 245. 173  For more details on political cohabitation in France and behind-the-scenes political strategies in those years, see the chapter “The Florentine,” in Philip Short, Mitterrand: A Study in Ambiguity (London: The Bodley Head, 2013), 430–64. 174  The impasse mainly arose from the fact that “[t]he conservative parties in government had to clarify their position against the extreme right-wing National Front, a potential political ally, which was demanding compulsory screening of the population and isolation of the seropositive and ill persons in ‘sidatoriums.’” Steffen, “AIDS Policies,” 253.

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being treated, the virus inspired a story of burning relevance in 1987. The fact that the author was among the first victims of the illness and yet addressed the topic candidly and humorously would produce a unique mix that induced an overwhelmingly sympathetic response in the audience of spectators and critics. But the play’s resonance was also vastly amplified because the virus appeared for the very first time on a French national stage, at the Théâtre de la Colline directed by Lavelli. It was a theatre whose line Lavelli intersected because of a chain of surprisingly fortunate coincidences.

The Théâtre de la Colline: Argentine Power at the Top of Decentralization To be a director of a theatre is to imagine a great staging, it is to speak of writing, of language, on a larger level, to create a certain world, to draw with others a certain idea of the theatre. […] I accepted this responsibility because the Théâtre de la Colline is a Parisian theatre and a new theatre. A new theatre is an event, a happy event.—Jorge Lavelli175

In 1987 Lavelli was not only nominated director of a French national theatre, he also had the opportunity to name the newly built theatre, a truly unique event for the Parisian scene. And yet, in a handbook example of translation with transformation, his appointment at the Théâtre de la Colline directly picked up a line initiated by a different director, a different company, and a different building. French director Guy Retoré (1924–2018) founded the troupe La Guilde in 1955 with the purpose of providing “the cultural desert of the East of Paris” with a space for theatrical creation, a “theatre for all” in the spirit of Vilar’s TNP.176 In 1962 Retoré convinced Malraux, then minister of cultural affairs, to purchase the Zenith, a 1300-seat cinema auditorium at 15 Rue Malte-Brun that became the performance space for the Théâtre de l’Est Parisien (TEP).

 Olivier Schmitt, “Jorge Lavelli dans ses murs neufs,” Le Monde, June 19, 1987.  Guy Retoré, “Guy Retoré et le Théâtre de l’Est Parisien,” Théâtre populaire 52 (4th trimester 1963): 14. 175 176

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The TEP was quickly promoted to National Dramatic Center in 1966 and National Theatre in 1972.177 A project dating to 1978 to gut the decaying and cramped old cinema to build a new theatre from scratch remained an empty promise until the arrival of Jack Lang at the Ministry of Culture, whereupon he announced a public contest reserved for French architects.178 The winning team selected by Lang in July 1983 was headed by Valentin Fabre and Jean Perrottet.179 Speaking of the finished building, French theatre scholar Rosette Lamont wrote: The only neon-glowing glass box on an otherwise dark alley […] it rises […] upon an elevated section of the 20ème arrondissement, a few steps away from the famous cemetery of Le Père Lachaise, the burial site of numerous writers and artists. However, La Colline […] is eons removed from the quiet presence of the dead. With its Corbusier-inspired glass facade, revealing the multi-levelled foyers, hallways, and the stairs linking the ground-level main theatre (757 seats) to the experimental space on the third floor (200 seats), it must be listed […] as one of the major architectural monuments of the present Socialist government.180

177  The theatre opened on October 4, 1963 and the company stayed until 1983. Jean Chollet and Marcel Freydefont, Fabre et Perrottet: Architectes de théâtre (Paris: Norma Éditions, 2005), 147. For a concise history of the TEP, see Temkine, Le théâtre, 60–61. 178  Out of eight competing teams, the twelve-person jury (four architects, four representatives of the Ministry of Culture including Abirached and Retoré, two set designers, a stage director, and a person representing the public requested by Retoré) chose three projects that were submitted to the Minister. Chollet and Freydefont, Fabre et Perrottet, 147. 179  Both born in Paris in the 1920s, Perrottet and Fabre met at the end of the 1950s and created a stable working partnership after the 1960s. The whole team included assistant architect Alberto Cattani, set designer and director Michel Raffaelli, advisor in theatrical technique Noël Napo, and acoustician Albert Giry. Fabre and Perrottet had coincidentally also redesigned the Théâtre d’Aubervilliers in 1976. 180  Rosette C. Lamont, “Jorge Lavelli’s Théâtre National de la Colline,” Western European Stages 2, no. 2 (1990): 9. According to the architects’ project, the renovation including stage equipment was budgeted at 96 million francs. Archives nationales, La Colline, First season folder.

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While construction was ongoing, the TNP had moved temporarily to their nearby rehearsal space on Rue Gambetta.181 But, by the time the new theatre was ready in 1987, another set of actors intervened. Since law n. 84-834 of September 13, 1984 set the age limit for state officials in the public sector to 65,182 if nominated director to the national theatre, Retoré would need to leave his post and the TEP itself at the expiration of his first three-year term. Instead, he decided to stick with his troupe at the other space. It was this decision, by an actor who had initiated the push for a more modern theatre but eventually gave it up to the state, that opened the door for the nomination of Lavelli and for a new name.183 Interestingly, after pondering other less attractive proposals, Lavelli had an epiphany while descending from Rue Gambetta to the Department of Spectacles. The new name would be inspired by that “geographical accident” that was the Ménilmontant hill over which the theatre was built, “a real place that doesn’t have the pretention of a mountain and at the same time demands that one make the effort to access it.”184 Proposed by Abirached, Lavelli was nominated artistic director of the Théâtre de la Colline in the spring of 1987 by then Minister of Culture François Léotard, eliciting in Lavelli “an incredible emotion.”185 The ­theatre’s mission of programming exclusively twentieth-century plays and living authors, French and foreign, was quite unique among the national theatres. Lavelli’s artistic choice was in line with Argentina’s emphasis on contemporary playwriting but still appeared radical in the French context, where “the [classic] repertory is large, it is broad, it is the safest, and its

 The space was soon transformed into a functional theatre by architect Claude Perset.  https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000320891 &categorieLien=cid, accessed February 11, 2023. 183  Although Lavelli maintained that he did not necessarily desire the direction of a theatre but rather a “creative cell,” he was indeed a candidate for a theatre in Paris and had asked for the Théâtre de la Ville. Colette Godard, “Il ne faut pas que la représentation: Entretien avec Jorge Lavelli,” Le Monde, special supplement dedicated to the Théâtre national de la Colline, Paris, January 1988. Another significant reason why the director waited for a long time was that he had declined the same position in regional National Dramatic Centers, feeling too much of a stranger to those provincial areas. “I’m a man of the city: I live in Paris because I’ve chosen to live there.” Jorge Lavelli and Evelyne Ertel, “Un lieu pour la découverte et le plaisir, le Théâtre national de la Colline,” Théâtre/Public 79 (January–February 1988): 73. 184  Alain Satgé, Jorge Lavelli. Des années soixante aux années Colline: un parcours en liberté (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996), 79. 185  Jorge Lavelli, “Préface” in Chollet and Freydefont, Fabre et Perrottet, [n.p.]. 181

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opposite means risk.” 186 Even if Lavelli’s contract started on July 1, 1987, he was already on site three months earlier, contributing his ideas to certain aspects of the building and its equipment (the bar, the dressing rooms, and the technical materials) and already engaging with the people who would constitute its organizational structure.187 Inaugurating the theatre on January 7, 1988, Léotard proclaimed: “Ménilmontant, from now on, responds to Chaillot, from east to west, and Paris completes its decentralization.”188 For the first season Lavelli planned five premieres aiming to retain the audience by engaging spectators in “an adult relationship, without censorship.”189 A substantial aspect of directing La Colline consisted in managing the limited state funds while still producing quality performances. Of the five national theatres, the new theatre was the least funded, with 24.2 million

186  Pepe Eliaschev, “Jorge Lavelli: Sin ganas de dar respuestas,” in Esto que queda: voces e ideas de fin de siglo (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1996), 35. See also Satgé, Jorge Lavelli, 75. 187  Annabelle Poincheval, “La création dramatique contemporaine à travers le Théâtre national de la Colline dans les années Lavelli” (PhD Diss., University of Marseille, 1998), 395. The volume also includes a full personnel list on pages 46–47. To Olivier Schmitt, Lavelli declared: “I want my audience to have some comfort, some luxury. Here everything is pink, synonymous with warmth. People won’t be in the dark, this punishment that creates an atmosphere that doesn’t create pleasure. The choice of a medium space, where the spectator won’t be more than 19 meters [about 21 yards] from the stage, is also an artistic choice.” “Jorge Lavelli dans ses murs neufs,” Le Monde, June 19, 1987. 188  Léotard’s inaugural notes, Archives nationales, La Colline first season folder. A news clip with interviews of Lavelli and Fabre on the inauguration is at https://fresques.ina.fr/ en-scenes/fiche-media/Scenes00164/ouverture-du-theatre-national-de-la-colline-dirige-­ par-jorge-lavelli.html, accessed February 11, 2023. 189  J.-M. Ulmann, “La mort, quelle blague!,” Impact du Médecin, November 12, 1988. These were the shows in program, all held in the Grand théâtre except when noted [* = subscription]: Federico García Lorca, El público* (The Public, Fr. Le public, January 7– February 25, 1988, dir. Lavelli with Poulange); Copi, Une visite inopportune* (Grand Finale, Petit théâtre, February 16–March 16, 9 pm, dir. Lavelli with Poulange); Fernando Arrabal, La traversée de l’empire* (Crossing the Empire, March 11–April 14, 1988, dir. Arrabal); Eugène Ionesco, Les chaises (The Chairs, Petit théâtre, April 15–June 22, 1988), dir. Jean-Luc Boutté; Gildas Bourdet, L’inconvenant* (The Unseemly, April 22–May 26 1988); Gert Hofmann, Le cheval de Balzac (Balzac’s Horse, May 9–June 11). From the second year, the Carte Colline (Colline Card) would offer a subscription model with privileged prices and reservations. Other ways to spark the spectators’ interest included hiring innovative graphic artists for publicity, intensified relationship with universities, special attention for press dossiers, and an open doors policy that entailed a series of meetings with the audience.

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francs in 1988, despite giving the largest number of performances.190 Lavelli remarked that with 14 million spent on the management of the theatre alone, only about 10 million remained of the 28–30 million needed to guarantee true artistic freedom.191 For example, publicity expenses were a major cost for survival in the competitive Parisian environment of about 130 performance spaces and an average of 150 shows per day. Fortunately, for its first three seasons La Colline was offered free advertising services, worth 1.5 million per year, by the Sari-Seeri real estate group looking to strengthen its ties with the city’s eastern neighborhoods.192 But the main way to ensure sufficient funds for a whole season remained to fully produce only two shows per year and otherwise buy pre-packaged shows, co-produce others, and reprise successful productions for the following seasons.193 Lavelli regretted that collaborations with other national theatres were rare and La Colline mostly co-produced with National Dramatic Centers and private sponsors as would happen for Cachafaz.194 For Grand Finale, however, it was the director himself who became a private sponsor of his own publicly funded theatre.

190  Poincheval, “La création,” 37 and 398. By comparison, in the same year the Comédie Française received more than 105.45 million and the National Dramatic Center of Aubervilliers directed by Arias only 7.31 million. Olivier Schmitt, “Le prix de la création,” [likely Le Monde, 1988], Archives nationales, La Colline, First season folder. 191  Lavelli, Le Nouvel Observateur, January 1–7, 1988, qtd. in Poincheval, “La création,” 37. 192  See “La Sari-Seeri s’intéresse aux planches,” La Lettre du Sponsoring & du Mécénat, January 1988; Camille Téhel, “Théâtre national, promotion privée,” Le Quotidien du Maire, January 7, 1988; Frédérique Sprang, “La Seeri-Sari, mecène du Théâtre de la Colline,” Le Figaro La Défense, January 19, 1988. A mediator between private contributions and the public institution was the Association “Colline Création”: in exchange for services, the theatre provided the sponsor with evenings reserved for its members, reduced tickets, and the publication of its name on the shows’ programs. Another way to offset costs was the sophisticated house-printed journal Le Public, that afforded exchanges with other publications including newspapers, e.g., a page in Le Public would earn space on a page in Le Nouvel Obs. 193  For a more detailed budget breakdown and production costs, see Poincheval, “La création,” 37–40. 194  In general, the Colline situation was in contrast with what Vinaver reported, namely that theatres tended to co-produce only within the same tier. “Decentralization,” 73. Yet, Lavelli frequently cast actors from the Comédie Française as in the case of Grand Finale. Temkine, Le théâtre, 124.

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Copi’s Grand Finale: A Playwright, a Virus, a Director, and an Aircraft It’s time to take stock. Because of his comics, people saw his texts as bubbles. Now that his theatre has been published, by Bourgois, one can see what degree of sharpness and rigor he achieved.—Jorge Lavelli195

For The Night of Madame Lucienne the AIDS virus had remained backstage, as it were, by weakening the author’s body. However, in the case of Grand Finale not only did the virus inspire the story, it also represented a much more consequential non-human actor that determined both the director and the theatre for the play’s production and attracted certain segments of the audience directly touched by the epidemic. Indeed, because of Lavelli’s commitment to the work, for the first time “the name of AIDS could be heard on a publicly subsidized stage.”196 Copi had initially proposed his last play to Arias, but the other director simultaneously found himself in an untenable situation: Jacques Jolivet, the administrator who had helped him build the company and convinced him to accept the post at Aubervilliers, fell ill of the same disease at the very beginning of Arias’s mandate. Grappling with the very real difficulties of dealing with that health emergency on a daily basis, Arias felt that “it was simply impossible for me to stage the play in that context.”197 In truth, when Copi read his work to Lavelli in the summer of 1986, he elicited a very similar reaction, filtered through the awareness that the author was already quite sick despite his inner strength and optimism. Lavelli recalled: “Whether we had projects in common or not, he came to lunch almost every Saturday at my home. We read his pieces aloud. This time he read alone. He found his own Grand Finale very funny. I found it in very bad taste. I told him

 Le Monde, special supplement dedicated to La Colline, Paris, January 1988.  Monique Le Roux, “Dedans/Dehors,” La quinzaine littéraire, March 1, 1988. 197  Alfredo Arias, L’Écriture retrouvée: Entretiens avec Hervé Pons (Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 2008), 163. 195 196

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that I wasn’t convinced.”198 Though ordinarily phlegmatic, this time Lavelli was a bit shocked.199 In fact, it took a few more actors for Lavelli to dissociate his personal reaction from his artistic response and find a key to actually directing the play. After his first encounter with the text, Lavelli left for Argentina, where he was going to direct an opera.200 There, he met an enthusiastic friend of Copi’s who found the play irresistibly hilarious and suggested that Lavelli reread it.201 The director did so while flying back to France: “What happened is that, since I […] reread the play at 12,000 kilometers of altitude, […] I saw it differently.”202 From that new perspective Lavelli realized that Copi’s own reading had been painful and had therefore clouded a real understanding of the play’s theatrical potential for him as a director.203 In other words, the author’s assemblage with the virus had hindered a staging that was instead propelled by one of Copi’s friends in conjunction with an aircraft, an immutable mobile whose action lifted the director physically and mentally to a higher plane.204 It was thanks to this combination of human and non-human actors that Lavelli discovered, beyond his affective relation with Copi, “a tragic, courageous, funny vaudeville, with the elements of theatricality that were already present in The Night of Madame Lucienne, but here make us feel that it’s an

198  Quirot, “Son pied de nez.” On Copi’s optimism, Lavelli recalled: “His strength, his fundamental optimism were astonishing. Even if he felt ill, very ill, he transformed everything, positively, and said: I stay at home, I work… It was his modesty.” Lavelli in Armelle Heliot, “Copi: toujours souffrir, toujours mourir, et toujours rire!,” Le Quotidien de Paris, February 18, 1988. 199  “I, whom nothing shocks, was a bit shocked.” Bruno Vill, “Jorge Lavelli met le Sida en scène,” Le Généraliste, February 26, 1988. 200  L’Affaire Makropoulos by Leoš Janáček at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. 201  Vill, “Jorge Lavelli.” As in this article, Lavelli repeatedly omits this person’s name. In 1988, he described him as someone who wanted to edit Copi’s theatre in Argentina (Michel Barlier, “La mort, c’est du théâtre!,” Gai Pied Hebdo 307, February 5, 1988); in 2004 as someone with an important position at Air France. Darzacq, Jorge Lavelli. 202  Ibid. 203  Quirot, “Son pied de nez.” 204  Of course, one might argue that Lavelli’s account sounds a bit contrived, and that the airplane itself was a rather weak contributor to the assemblage. And yet, in ANT terms, if someone argues that an actor of any kind made them do something, it remains an index of agency, of the transformation of an intermediary into a mediator at least for that person (and not, as in this example, for the other passengers of the same airplane).

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interpretation of reality we’re seeing, without the least trace of sentimentality.”205 Back in Paris, Lavelli called Copi and told him he was going to stage his play after all.206 205  Vill, “Jorge Lavelli.” The plot in brief: on the second anniversary of an AIDS diagnosis, famed Parisian performer Cyril receives visitors in his hospital room and offers high-end refreshments, earning the nickname of “Sarah Bernhardt of Public Assistance.” He would rather smoke his opium pipe to celebrate, but the clever nurse insists on injecting him with medicines. Cyril’s first guest is his wealthy longtime admirer Hubert, who assures him that the Parisian gay world has turned boring. He has acquired a mausoleum for Cyril in the prestigious Père Lachaise cemetery, a gift the performer declines, refusing to give his body to a necrophile old man. When a handsome young journalist asks to interview Cyril, he seems attracted to him but even more preoccupied that his own mother might learn of his otherwise public homosexuality. The third guest is opera singer Regina Morti, who seeks fame by planning to marry Cyril as he nears his life’s grand finale. Her wish denied, she theatrically threatens to commit suicide, but ends up in the emergency room when she chokes on a drumstick. Professor Vertudeau also stops by: unable to predict if Cyril will ever be released, he suggests he perform at the hospital like De Sade. Unfazed by his patient’s recent two cardiac arrests and a coma, he argues that the patient has shown an excess of health by surviving beyond expectations. Then, seeking an inexplicably lost patient, he carries off the unconscious Regina for a lobotomy, his Sunday hobby. In the meantime, the nurse brings in ice cream from a famous Parisian shop. Cyril’s plan to escape the hospital in Hubert’s clothes fails once discovered by the nurse, now light-headed for smoking opium. While Cyril tries to figure out if the journalist entices him at all, Hubert, who was taking a nap in the bathroom, cries for help because of several bees attracted to the ice cream. While the nurse removes the ice cream, the doctor wheels back in Regina now with a silicone brain implant that requires she constantly sing to keep functioning. There follows a jealousy scene between the nurse and the doctor, former lovers who end up rushing for make-up sex in the operating room. When Regina seeks to immediately have sex with Cyril, Hubert tries to divert her advances by suggesting a trip to Pigalle to buy sexy underwear, but she nearly suffocates him as a result of her excessive enthusiasm for the idea. Once the journalist hits her with a bedside lamp and leaves her unconscious, Cyril recalls how many adoring female admirers have caused him to suffer. The doctor returns dressed in a safari suit, keen on leaving to fight AIDS in Africa rather than being entangled in the love triangle with his wife and the nurse. When Cyril suggests that the doctor should take Regina to Africa too, the jealous nurse bursts in with a revolver and threatens the doctor but ends up killing Regina. Hubert and Cyril talk about Cyril’s role as Hamlet and the amenities of the mausoleum, where Regina will also be buried after all. In a long scene, Cyril says his good-byes and ostensibly dies by ingesting an Aztec poison, in fact regular nose drops. The young man confesses he is in fact Cyril’s son, conceived with Hubert’s sister, and exits. Cyril revives from his performance and tells Hubert that he already knew because of the resemblance. Then, he takes Regina’s coat to play a role in drag and dies for real. The nurse enters with another gift but reminds herself that he is now dead. 206  Darzacq, Jorge Lavelli; Barlier, “La mort.” Drawing a parallel with the play’s characters to underscore the artists’ friendship, Michel Cressole noted: “Jorge Lavelli […] put himself at the service of the play in the manner of Hubert, the old homosexual friend of Cyril, devoted, rather rigid, and imperturbable.” “Beau geste: Deux Copi opportunes,” Libération, February 22, 1988, 40.

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At that point, Lavelli started to gather funding through his production company Méchant Théâtre. When he took that money with him as he moved into La Colline,207 this was a rather unique case of an artistic director of a National Theatre co-producing with himself, i.e., Lavelli as artistic director of La Colline and of his own Méchant Théâtre. Since his previous stagings of Copi’s plays had been realized with fewer means and in smaller structures, this time he was eager to mount a production of higher profile and “really give [Copi] his chance” for the first time.208 That June, Lavelli’s planned schedule was briefly put into question by Copi’s deteriorating health. However, attempting to stage the play before the Christmas holidays so the author could see it at least once proved impossible,209 conceivably because of a myriad of overlapping commitments by the theatre, Lavelli, and the performers themselves.210 In the meantime, and to the very end, Copi was involved in artistic collaborations. On November 28, the invitation to a guided visit of the new theatre contained one of Copi’s drawings: a horse popped his head out of an open stage curtain, inviting the spectators: “I’ll see you at La Colline on the 28th for sure.”211 Apart from contributing to Lavelli’s work, apparently between September and December Copi met a few times with Michel Duchaussoy, who was to play the protagonist and the author’s fictional alter-ego.212 Rather than talking about how to act the part, Copi showed Duchaussoy photos of himself on

 Lavelli and Ertel, “Un lieu,” 74–75.  Barlier, “La mort.” 209  Ibid. 210  Lavelli alone was engaged as director in three separate projects preceding Grand Finale: Pierre Corneille’s Polyeucte for the Comédie Française premiering in September 1987, Claude Rich’s Une chambre sur la Dordogne (A Room on the Dordogne) for the Théâtre Hebertot (October 1987), and Lorca’s The Public (January 1988). 211  “Journée Portes Ouvertes” invitation, Archives nationales, La Colline, Inauguration du Théâtre National de la Colline folder, January 1988. The horse character was likely inspired by the Four White Horses in Lorca’s The Public. 212  Brigitte Salino, “Michel Duchaussoy: ‘Oui, on peut mourir de rire!,’” L’Événement du jeudi, March 3–9, 1988, 98. This interview contradicts a later one, where the performer claimed he had only met Copi once, in Italy, at a friends’ place. Bernard Soubrier, “Duchaussoy: Copi conforme,” Le Parisien, October 18, 1988. One can only speculate as to the reasons of such divergent recollections. Duchaussoy was another performer with whom Lavelli had a previous working relationship (for Ionesco’s Exit the King and Calderón’s Life is a Dream). He primarily accepted the part sight unseen because of his trust in the director and their shared ability to understand each other without too many words, as in the case of Casarès. Salino, “Michel Duchaussoy.” 207 208

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stage, something the performer later found helpful for his character.213 The author died on December 14, a few days after receiving the prestigious Grand Prix de Littérature Dramatique de Paris.214 On the three full pages to him dedicated by Libération the following day, Lavelli, Arias, Savary, and others expressed their sentiments. Particularly moving were Lavelli’s words: Copi is for me one of the leaders of a new theatre. Today that the curtain has fallen on a life lived at full speed, lived in a marginality both flamboyant and dreamy, I know that his work will survive us: it is exciting, it is unique. Copi, my brother, my old friend, is gone: a huge void opens before me. Impossible to fill.215

Post-Mortem Humor Rehearsals started at about that time.216 Jean-Claude Jay, who played the protagonist’s admirer, needed some time to adjust: “it took me a little while, knowing the circumstances of Copi’s death, to let me take in the huge laughter of this piece.”217 But despite the emotional weight of the recent events, rehearsal sessions seemed to proceed normally, also relying on pre-existing artistic associations between each of the three performers and the director.218 Like Duchaussoy and Catherine Hiegel,219 Jay had previously worked with Lavelli, in The Winter’s Tale, and appreciated his way of “privileging the play above everything”: “Lavelli wants that at each event […] there be a total rupture. It’s uncomfortable… one cannot make very beautiful transitions, use a state to shift to another. One must play Copi like a classic: forget the anecdote and stick to what the words

213  A reviewer would later notice the resemblance: “At times, one would think of seeing Copi relive. Shaven head, same look of a large night-bird, same gait. Duchaussoy is really a ‘certified Copi.’” Soubrier, “Duchaussoy.” 214  Awarded every other year, the prize recognized a French or French-speaking author for the whole of his/her oeuvre. Copi received it on December 11, 1987. 215  “Réactions: ‘il a parlé de la mort toute sa vie,’” Libération, December 15, 1987, 37. 216  Brigitte Salino, “Michel Duchaussoy.” 217  Odile Quirot, “Rencontre à la Colline: L’école buissonière de Jean-Claude Jay,” Le Monde, February 10, 1988. 218  Qg-Tri Tran Diep, “Dernière visite à Copi,” Lyon Libération, January 10, 1989. 219  Hiégel had worked with Lavelli in Ionesco’s Exit the King (1976) and Arrabal’s La tour de Babel (The Babel Tower, 1978).

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say…”220 In general, however, the director seemed to continue with his ad hoc approach to each single performer, giving them “the freedom to each have their own version of the play,”221 each “abandoned to their own genius.”222 The play inaugurated the smaller performance space of La Colline on February 15 with an evening reserved for the Sari-Seeri agency and the next day for the general public.223 One of the most impressive choices for the staging was Louis Bercut’s set that sealed the stage with a glass enclosure. Lavelli explained his choice in terms of a theatrical heterotopia squared, three spaces together enclosed in a glass box: “at the center, a modern hospital room that contrasts with the world of theatre and memory, the costumes, the mirror, the make-up; on the sides, the treatment space and the bathroom. These three places are enclosed in a large glass cage that can give the idea of protection against

 Quirot, “Rencontre.”  Anne Masson, “Les visiteurs du Huitième,” Lyon Figaro, January 6, 1989. For instance, Duchaussoy mentioned that he had chosen his own costume (a black kimono and a white scarf) and haircut. Tran Diep, “Dernière visite.” 222  Philippe Tesson, “Une visite inopportune de Copi,” L’Express Paris, March 4–10, 1988. The full production team included the collaboration to the staging of Dominique Poulange, set and costumes by Louis Bercut, Duchaussoy (Cyril), Hiégel (Nurse), Jay (Hubert), Philippe Joiris (Journalist), Judith Magre (Regina Morti), Jean-Luc Moreau (Professeur Vertudeau), technical director Francis Charles, stage manager Malika Pascale Ouadah, lighting designers Daniel Touloumet and François Kozierow, sound designers Jean-Marie Bourdat and Nathalie Wellers. The set was built in the workshop of La Colline under the supervision of Michel Rousval. 223  The first, reserved performance entailed a total of 124 complimentary tickets for Sari-­ Seeri and 18 journalists, in addition to 80 paying spectators. The official run was February 16–March 16, 1988, Monday to Saturday at 9 pm and a Saturday matinee at 3:30 pm for a total of 30 performances. The performance lasted about 90 minutes. See “Quatre-vingt-dix minutes pour mourir, en public, du sida!” in Brigitte Salino, “Sidaventures: Du symptôme clinique aux effets culturels,” L’Événement du jeudi, March 3–9, 1988. A multi-camera video of the full production is available at the INAthèque among the Théâtre de la Colline’s holdings. For performers’ close-ups, see also the broadcasts “L’oeil en coulisses,” Antenne 2, February 14, 1988 and “Du côté de chez Fred,” Antenne 2, October 25, 1988 (both at the INAthèque). The show’s program and two photos are available at https://www.colline.fr/ spectacles/une-visite-inopportune; two batches of photos by Daniel Cande are visible at https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90597212 and https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/ 12148/btv1b90022790, all accessed February 11, 2023. 220 221

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contagion, but also allows staging the ‘voyeurism’ of the spectators.”224 Veronique Blin, critic for the medical journal Panorama du Médecin, spotlighted the plethora of props that filled the space: On the right, the kitchen-bathroom corner, where roast beef, foie gras, and fine wines sit next to aquatic salts and twenty-two different bottles of cologne. At the center, a theatre box, its large mirror surrounded by small red ampoules […] and makeup boxes. On the left […], the bed, metallic and cold, its pulleys, bottles, and pipes that hang to join the arm of Cyrille, lacerated by the incessant injections.225

These objects maintained the protagonist’s ties with the pleasures and materiality of existence, but the play constantly oscillated between the real and its defamiliarization. In an interview with another medical journal, Lavelli characterized the largest stage entrance as “an ambiguous, more theatrical place”226 that allowed the characters’ transformation into something quite different, such as the doctor’s transmutation into an African explorer.227 The actual performance started almost imperceptibly with Duchaussoy entering the stage space “emaciated under his black pajamas […], with the concentration of a samurai ready to deliver his last fight” and occupying himself with his daily routine, brushing his teeth or looking at himself in the mirror at length.228 In the meantime, an animated cartoon played in

224  Alain Satgé, “Entretien avec Jorge Lavelli: le grotesque et le tragique,” Une Visite inopportune evening program, Archives nationales, La Colline holdings. Armelle Heliot spoke of a “Chimerical place. Between torture and grace.” “Théâtre. Une visite inopportune: une santé d’infer,” Le Quotidien de Paris, February 22, 1988. The glass enclosure was singled out by several reviewers: “a cage of isolating Plexiglas,” Michel Cressole, “Beau geste: Deux Copi opportunes,” Libération, February 22, 1988, 40; “a clear-glass jar,” Veronique Blin, “Opium: ‘Une visite inopportune’ de Copi,” Panorama du Médecin, March 10, 1988; or an “aquarium” (Patrick Beaumont, “Chronique d’une mort annoncée,” La Gazette [région Nord], May 18–19, 1988) that forces the audience to make silence and listen. Simonne Vidal, “Une visite inopportune ou la tendre insolence de Copi,” L’ami du XXème, April 1988. 225  Blin, “Opium.” 226  Vill, “Jorge Lavelli.” 227  The double nature of the “realistic” characters was reflected in their costumes: as Satgé noted, “if the fictional characters appeared disguised (the singer seemed escaped from a Verdi opera […]), the characters of reality carried all the attributes of their function, but the nurse’s uniform or the surgeon’s gown revealed other signs that betrayed their secret personality.” “Entretien avec Jorge Lavelli.” 228  André Lafargue, “‘Une visite inopportune’ (Copi-right),” Le Parisien, November 7, 1988.

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the background for five minutes on a TV until the patient turned it off.229 At some point, a total silence clutched the spectators, who may have anticipated an AIDS play in the more dramatic and affective mold proposed by American playwrights.230 However, defying expectations, the performance quickly picked up speed: in alignment with Copi’s refusal of sentimentality, Lavelli imparted a rapid, fluid rhythm to the whole piece,231 leading a reviewer to reference Feydeau rather than Ionesco and another to mention the Marx Brothers.232 While Le Figaro’s Pierre Marcabru regretted that Lavelli’s choice to reduce the characters to simple traits led to “a curious depersonalization, even dehumanization similar to that of Mack Sennett’s burlesques,”233 Évelyne Lattenzio framed what the production was doing more positively through Bergson’s definition of the comic, requiring a momentary anesthesia of the heart to address itself to pure intelligence.234 Several reviews then either praised the performers’ adherence to the 229  The only reviewer who reported this detail saw the choice as courageous because “rare are the plays more exciting than a good Tex Avery. Copi (the author) and Lavelli (the director), at least, don’t fear competition.” Didier Speco, “Copi: la mort n’est qu’une apparence théâtrale,” Nord Matin, May 14, 1988. 230  But, as Cressole remarked, the play “is never about AIDS as drama. The authors of American plays on the subject have looked for emotion as they appealed, outside the theatre, to the good sentiments of the larger human family, beyond gay brotherhood. With Copi— the true Copi—AIDS is contagious like laughter, and it’s the invocations to the pure theatrical tradition that will make one cry.” “Beau geste.” For similar observations, see also Michel Cournot, “‘Une visite inopportune,’ de Copi: Java-requiem,” Le Monde, February 22, 1988. 231  Télérama announced: “The whole cast, briskly directed, is exceptional. The rare show!” “Une visite inopportune,” November 9, 1988; Beaumont saw Lavelli’s direction as “fluid and limpid, deliberately light.” “Chronique”; Didier Mereuze praised Lavelli’s frank direction, “at the same time a whirlwind and tight, of an extreme and baroque rigor, leading a crazy band of performers in a state of grace.” “Testament: Copi mise en scène par Lavelli et Söderberg par Boëglin,” Témoignage Chrétien, March 7, 1988. 232  “Copi is closer to Feydeau than Ionesco: life is not absence of meaning, it is a misunderstanding from which convulsive destinies are born. From the first cry to the last breath.” J.-M. Bretonnier, “‘Une visite inopportune’ de Copi: Journal d’un homme de chambre,” La Voix du Nord, May 15–16, 1988; “With a sense of the gag worthy of the Marx Brothers Copi has succeeded at a tragicomedy where psychology is married to craziness, the morbid to absolute vitality.” F.P. [Fabienne Pascaud], “Invitation: Une visite inopportune,” Télérama, October 15, 1988. 233  Pierre Marcabru, “Une farce funèbre,” Le Figaro, February 22, 1988. Similarly perplexed at the lack of psychological depth was another anonymous critic who opined: “One has to love Copi’s black humor, and accept his craziness. Or, otherwise, abstain.” “Une visite inopportune de Copi,” Le Point, February 29, 1988. 234  Évelyne Lattenzio, “L’impertinente comédie de la mort,” TDC: Textes et Documents pour la Classe, November 16, 1988.

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overall production concept,235 or expressed some perplexities regarding their performances.236 But the element that elicited a veritable chorus of praise was the novel performative oxymoron, i.e., the combination of farcical humor with its inevitably serious topic, “the tragic of Copi’s own destiny, claimed and denied by the theatrical play that transforms death into fiction.”237 Speaking of this assemblage of heterogeneous elements pulled off by Copi and faithfully executed by Lavelli, Armelle Heliot, for example, prepared the spectators for a mix of tears of laughter and cramps.238 Thus critics spoke of “black humor,”239 “comic cruelty,”240 “all-­ devastating joyous ferocity,”241 or a “tragicomic delirium”242 that masterfully “thumbed its nose at death.”243 Such recipe may have created unease 235  “With constant restraint, Michel Duchaussoy expresses all that he hides, all that he disguises, the extravagance of Cyril. And [all the other performers] play to perfection this Java-requiem.” Cournot, “‘Une visite inopportune.’” Similarly appreciative on the acting were: Michel Cressole, “Beau geste”; Heliot, who praised how each performer held his/her role firmly and freely at the same time in “Théâtre. Une visite inopportune”; and Lafargue, who found that the performers “perfectly served [that] infernal round admirably ordered by Jorge Lavelli.” “Une visite.” 236  Pierre Marcabru argued that “in Copi’s play, where all is surface, tragic clownery, Michel Duchaussoy doesn’t always use his gifts. […] He misses the shimmering psychology of the great authors and their solitary temerity. In short, what made him happy at the Comédie-Française.” “Duchaussoy: la menace des eaux dormantes,” Le Point, March 7, 1988. For a different reason, Jean-Pierre Léonardini  found “Michel Duchaussoy, a performer so worthy of interest, […] not in his place—too vigorous—in that Public Assistance bed,” whereas in his opinion, it was Jean-Claude Jay, “cultivating an irresistible detachment, who show[ed] the way.” [no title], L’Humanité, February 23, 1988. Similarly appreciative of Jay, the only performer who she thought suggested the gravity of the situation with rare subtlety, Le Roux thought that “within the risky balance” of the show, “too often the performers—in particular Catherine Hiégel (the nurse) et Jean-Luc Moreau (the doctor)—do nothing but change the easy effects of certain replies.” “Dedans/Dehors.” 237  Lavelli in Satgé, Jorge Lavelli, 84. 238  Heliot, “Théâtre. Une visite inopportune.” 239  “Black humor? If you will, but also gravity and sensitivity.” Armando Llamas, “Copi,” Une visite inopportune evening program. 240  Guy Hocquenghem, “Copi soit-il,” Une visite inopportune evening program. For Copi’s friend, “[t]o laugh at everything, even at announced death, the modern plague, AIDS […] is not to despise the sick but to be victorious against suffering and fear, hatred and egoism.” 241  Mereuze, “Testament.” 242  Marion Thebaud, “Le délire tragicomique de Copi,” Le Figaro, February 11, 1988. Michel Cournot also emphasized the tragicomic assemblage of genres: “opera, grand-­ guignol, circus, tragedy” “Deux aperçus du dernier jour,” Le Monde, October 29, 1988. 243  Quirot, “Son pied de nez.” See also Heliot, “Copi: toujours souffrir.”

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for some audience members,244 but the play overall connected with a large number of spectators. After the “immense echo”245 of the packed performances during its first run at La Colline, on June 7, 1988 the show received the Drama Critics Prize for the best French production (Prix de la meilleure création française, décerné par le Syndicat de la Critique) and then went on to a lengthy tour.246 244  Cressole observed how the first laughs among the audience were nervous. “Beau geste”; Léonardini wrote: “The mechanism of laughter […] is jammed, because we know the author’s fate. How can one escape?” [no title], L’Humanité, February 23, 1988. Similarly Tesson, who remarks: “It’s for that reason that this macabre farce touches us deeply.” “Une visite inopportune.” By contrast Pierre Marcabru was sympathetic, and yet could not connect with the production, which left him rather “on the outside, indifferent, albeit attentive.” “Une farce funèbre,” Le Figaro, February 22, 1988. 245  “The echo of this production was immense. Doctors, nurses, and the sick hurried to La Colline,” finding encouragement in the play. Quirot, “Son pied de nez.” The small theatre had officially 202 numbered seats, but its capacity was expanded to 258 by adding 24 chairs on the sides and even 32 cushions on the steps. With 31 performances overall, the show had 7599 total spectators (6886 paying, 713 complimentary tickets or ca. 9.4% of tickets) for an average of 253 spectators per performance (and a peak of 302 on March 5), for a total gross income of 584,880 francs. The show was reprised between October 19 and November 26, 1988 with two cast changes, Pierre Vernier (Hubert) and Gérard Lartigau (Vertudeau). 246  The tour included 18 performances at La Salamandre, Théâtre National de la Région Nord–Pas-de-Calais (Lille, May 11–June 3, 1988), 4 performances at the Festival dei Due Mondi (Spoleto, Italy, June 30–July 2, 1988), and more dates at the Nouveau Théâtre d’Angers, December 2–4, 1988; the Comédie de St Etienne, December 9–13, 1988; Le Maillon, Strasbourg, December 16–20, 1988; and the Théâtre du Huitième, Lyon, January 5–12, 1989. A Catalan version was directed by Lavelli for the Flotats company (Teatre Poliorama, Barcelona, from December 30, 1989). A co-production contract signed on February 7, 1990 between the Théâtre de la Colline and the Teatro San Martín in Buenos Aires for a production of the play in Argentina in the translation by Copi’s mother, Georgina Botana, did not result in an actual staging. Instead, the same translation was presented at the San Martín in 1992, directed by Maricarmen Arnó. A version in English by Michel Feingold was staged by Ubu Repertory Theatre. See Wilborn Hampton, “Wry Comedy By Moribund Playwright,” New York Times, April 21, 1991. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/04/21/ theater/review-theater-wry-comedy-by-moribund-playwright.html, accessed February 11, 2023. The English text can be found in Gay Plays: An International Anthology (New York: Ubu Repertory Theater Publications, 1989), 195–248. For specific scholarly studies on Grand Finale, see Germán Garrido, “‘Una comedia de la muerte’: Copi y sus profanaciones del sida,” Escena: Revista de las artes 78, no. 2 (January–June 2019): 71–91; Rosenzvaig, Copi, 107–10; Frédéric Martel, “Guibert, Koltès, Copi: littérature et sida,” Esprit, 206, no. 11 (November 1994), 165–73; and Barberis, Les mondes 111–14, which underscores the play’s “vertiginous intertextuality” with the whole of the theatrical tradition including his own earlier plays (e.g., Cyril asks if there will be a bathtub in his mausoleum, a reference to Saint Genevieve).

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Perhaps referring to a passage in The Night of Madame Lucienne, Brigitte Salino commented: “His last play, he wanted it crazy, truculent, contagious, covered with a thousand magnolias on ruins of tenderness. It’s the kind of show that receives a standing ovation, without the audience realizing that the main performer has just died.”247 But even as Copi’s physical presence ceased to exist, Lavelli’s and Arias’s friendship with the author induced them to continue their association with his work afterwards. In particular, Cachafaz became the opportunity for several Parisian critics to repeatedly point out the existence of an Argentine theatre network in Paris.

The Argentine School in Paris: Copi’s Cachafaz by TSE at La Colline There is in Paris a whole team of Argentine exiles tied to the theatre, actors or directors in the baroque style, of outrageous humor and hot blood. Such are the characters of “Cachafaz,” an Argentine saga because the play was written by Copi, staged by Alfredo Arias—the new gallant for the ladies of the Folies Bergère, whose latest show he signed—and this happens at Jorge Lavelli’s Théâtre de la Colline with a troupe of exclusively Argentine performers.—Laurence Liban248

Even if Lavelli and Arias had already officially joined forces at Aubervilliers for The Night of Madame Lucienne, the 1993 production of Cachafaz was the first to prompt a great number of acknowledgments of their networked collaboration and convergence in the name of Copi: an “homage to our friend Copi”—read the evening program—and some

247  Brigitte Salino, “Copi sans faute: un roman et une pièce posthumes,” L’Événement du jeudi, March 3–9, 1988. In The Night of Madame Lucienne, the Stagehand tells the following personal anecdote in the same vein, mixing comic and tragic: “My grandfather the clown committed suicide during a show. He hanged himself from the trapeze, everyone believed in a comic number! He had fifteen minutes of applause before people realized he was dead!” Copi, Théâtre, vol. 2, 257. 248  Laurence Liban, “Un conte argentin,” Le Parisien, November 20–21, 1993. In truth, the story is set in Uruguay and one of the performers was Brazilian, as I show later in the chapter.

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critics could again speak of an Argentine school or tribe.249 In fact, the ­opportunity to present a text written in 1977 materialized only at a particularly successful moment for both directors. Lavelli had proved himself capable of a robust vision in terms of artistic programming and Arias had just concluded his engagement with the glamorous Folies Bergère.250 Both of them had received the 1993 Molière Awards, for directing and best musical respectively.251 Copi originally wrote Cachafaz for Lavelli based on their common experience of Argentine theatre,252 and Facundo Bo recalled when he, Copi, and Lavelli together had performed a reading of the text: “The day you’ll feel La Raulito”—Copi had told Bo between the childish and the mischievous—“you’ll do the role. I hope that, for myself, I will want to embody Cachafaz. […] We’ll make do.”253 In the end, however, it was Arias who directed the play. 249  “Hommage à notre ami Copi,” Lavelli in Cachafaz’s evening program (Archives nationales, La Colline/Cachafaz folder). Perhaps the earliest reference to the Argentine network had been an article by Lucien Attoun, who suggested that “the Argentine School of Paris” was at the time “the most dynamical and already most copied engine” of the Parisian scene, “a musical, ceremonial, liturgical—and possibly therapeutic theatre!” “L’École Argentine de Paris et Le Concile d’Amour d’Oscar Panizza,” Europe: Revue littéraire mensuelle 480–81 (April–May 1969): 379. A more recent article spoke of “[Copi’s] last posthumous play, Cachafaz, staged by the leader of the Argentine school in France, Alfredo Arias, welcomed in friendship by their compatriot Jorge Lavelli, in his Théâtre de La Colline.” Roger Maria, “Cachafaz,” L’Hebdo Vogue, December 17, 1993. Yet another article concluded: “Decidedly, the Argentine tribe of Paris is doing well.” François Ménager, “Cachafaz de Copi,” Les petites affiches 145 (December 3, 1993), 27. For similar remarks, see also “Copi conforme à la Colline,” Parcours, November 1993 or Camille Douzelet, “Cachafaz,” Espaces Latino-­Americains, December 1993. 250  The show Fous des Folies premiered just two months earlier than Cachafaz, on September 1, 1993, with a set designed by Platé. The precise year for the writing of Cachafaz was provided by Facundo Bo in the show’s program. 251  The Molière Awards are the French national theatre prizes, supported by the Ministry of Culture, that recognize French live performances. Awarded on April 5, 1993, they referred to productions of the previous year. Lavelli won for directing Ionesco’s Macbett and Arias for creating the autobiographical Argentine revue Mortadela, with a set designed by Larry Hager. 252  “Argentine theatre exists, and we have followed it very closely while we lived there. Even I have written a very Argentine verse play; and I know Jorge would very much like to do it.” Tcherkaski, Habla Copi, 81. 253  Facundo Bo in Cachafaz program. Copi was obviously laughing at the fact that both of them had played roles in drag and Copi did not have the physique du rôle for the macho Cachafaz. In the River Plate lunfardo dialect, cachafaz meant “chill and bold,” Juan Carlos Fontana, “Copi frente a una sociedad que se devora a sí misma.” Picadero 8 (January– February 2003): 10. But El Cachafaz was also the art name of a famed tango dancer of the early twentieth century, Ovidio José Bianquet. See http://www.todotango.com/english/ artists/biography/175/El-Cachafaz, accessed February 11, 2023. Wetsel translates the title as The Rogue. “Copi,” 116.

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There were a few reasons why a production of this work had to wait for sixteen years. First, Cachafaz is one of only three plays Copi wrote in Spanish and its verse form presented an additional challenge that required a capable French translator.254 Second, the topic itself may have seemed unpalatable: according to Arias, “[t]he difficulty is that it’s a pretty extremist play. It speaks of an anthropophagous character, of misery, a transvestite, the end of the world, death, [and] sex, in a very violent way.”255 Third, the play by no means fell into a single genre, adding 254  The other plays in Spanish were Un ángel para la señora Lisca (An Angel for Madame Lisca) and La sombra de Wenceslao (Wenceslao’s Shadow). 255  Vincent Philippe, “Pour Alfredo Arias, le théâtre naît d’une necessité tribale,” 24 heures, November 10, 1993. Rosenzvaig spoke of the play’s violent themes as portraying a neoliberal market for the dismembering of bodies in which citizens are reduced to sad animals. Copi, 79. The action of the play is as follows: in a poor dwelling of a conventillo, a slum on the outskirts of Montevideo, the dark-skinned Cachafaz has his transvestite lover Raulito work for him so he can drink, gamble, and think of tango lyrics. Despite the cold and hunger, they have energy to alternate reciprocal insults, tango dancing, and passionate sex. When a police officer comes to arrest Cachafaz for stealing a sausage from a shop, Raulito defends him: “he’s the flower of my soul / the stallion [colt] of my pampa.” (“Es la flor del alma mía / es el potro de mi pampa” (24–25). By mentioning her police commissioner uncle, Raulito manages to send the policeman away, but he threatens to jail Cachafaz on the Island of Rats upon his next infraction. When Raulito asks a neighbor for flour to fry the stolen sausage, she sparks a chorus of insults from fellow neighbors who despise the couple for not being respectable. Once the policeman returns with a judge’s order, Cachafaz is ready to die as a man of honor but manages to stab the policeman to death. To a chorus of female neighbors fearing retaliation by the police, responds another of males who see Cachafaz’s courage as an example for their children. Rather than burying the policeman’s body, Raulito suggests making it into sausages that will last the whole winter. Despite the women’s objections to cannibalism as a sin, given their miserable condition, Cachafaz convinces everyone. The enthusiastic male chorus appreciates: “An emptied out and well grilled policeman is delicious” (“Milico bien destripado y / bien asado es exquisito” 58–59) and the women finally concur. The second act opens with human hams hanging from hooks while Raulito extracts bullets from Cachafaz after a new killing. They have been feeding the neighbors for a whole month and earned their respect, but they soon realize that Cachafaz has just killed Raulito’s uncle and protector. When their victims’ souls ask them to at least bury their bones, they refuse, unafraid because their current situation is already worse than hell itself. The situation grows more supernaturally eerie until the dead’s curse makes any meat they touch burn their hands. A potential truce that would punish Cachafaz alone is declined because the souls refuse to accept a “woman with moustache” among them. Since Cachafaz will not leave Raulito, all neighbors are ready to follow them to hell. Then, the police arrive, ready to kill everyone. With Cachafaz fatally shot, Raulito asks the moribund to kill her with his knife, while the moon rises and the rats are seen invading the city. Page numbers refer to Copi, Cachafaz, tragédie barbare en deux actes et en vers. Édition bilingue, trans. René de Ceccatty (Paris: Actes Sud, 1993).

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unpredictability to the projected result: “This barbarous tragedy, in verse, is at the same time a melodrama, a comedy, a farce, a tango, streams of blood, choruses, apparitions from the afterlife, but also dances, love duets, [and] political tirades.”256 Such heterogeneous assemblage evoked several intertextual references: the director referred to the Argentine gauchesco genre,257 while French reviewers brought up Genet and Brecht, filtered through the lens of Argentine playwright Armando Discépolo.258 Clearly, Copi loved mixing genres, remarked critic Camille Douzelet, who argued that it was the split chorus, lyrical for the male neighbor and grotesque for the female one, that created connections among the play’s disparate genres.259 All these peculiarities may have limited the number of interested co-producers even if Lavelli had wanted to stage the play early on.260 Ultimately, a staging of Cachafaz had to wait for the unique convergence of three funding streams, flowing from La Colline with its robust technical and advertising apparatus, the TSE group as the main producer and copyright owner, and the Théâtre de l’Atelier, whose producer Frédéric Franck hoped for returns from a potential French tour. In broad terms, according to the contract signed by the three partners, TSE invested a maximum of 300,000 francs for all artistic and technical personnel, 256  “L’Argentine d’Alfredo Arias,” Figaro Madame, December 11, 1993. Mixed generic definitions abounded: “derisory and pitiful epic,” M.  H., “Cachafaz **,” Boum Boum, December 20, 1993; “burlesque comedy of blood and sperm gone crazy.” Maria, “Cachafaz.”; “burlesque tragedy in verse.” “Copi toujours,” Les Échos, November 17, 1993; “a farce macabre and comical at the same time […], naughty and yet playful.” A. H. “Le pétit théâtre de Monsieur Copi,” Le Quotidien de Paris, November 24, 1993. 257  Caroline Jurgenson, “Le tango de la mort: Alfredo Arias met en scène ‘Cachafaz’ de Copi, un melodrame populaire en alexandrins.” L’Aurore and Le Figaro, November 9, 1993. In this respect, José Amícola sees the play as a subversive camping of one of the most male chauvinist genres of the River Plate literature with its parodic/burlesque tone. Camp y posvanguardia: Manifestaciones culturales de un siglo fenecido (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 2000), 75 and 77. Another Argentine critic sees Cachafaz’s “marginal and quarrelsome universe” as belonging to the neogrotesco, influenced by El matadero (The Slaughterhouse) by Esteban Echeverría or the poem La resbalosa [The Resbalosa, a popular dance] by Hilario Ascasubi. Fontana, “Copi frente a una sociedad,” 10. 258  A reviewer saw Copi as “the whimsical, derisory, heartbreaking shadow of Genet.” J.-L. J. “‘Cacharaz’ [sic] au théâtre de la Colline: À la va-vite!,” Figaroscope, December 1, 1993. Ménager argued: “Brecht for the social, Genet for the curse, there’s nothing really new except the tone, the tango, the Latin American sense of transvestism and of the tragic festival, the surrealism à la Discépolo.” “Cachafaz de Copi.” 259  Douzelet, “Cachafaz.” 260  Jurgenson, “Le tango de la mort.”

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including expenses for their potential touring and accommodations. La Colline pledged the same sum for the realization of the set, stage management, special effects, and the cleaning of costumes during the performance period261; the theatre would also provide administrative support, ticketing, and advertising. Finally, the Théâtre de l’Atelier invested 320,000 francs for performer salaries and potential costs for touring the show, its sole responsibility.262 With 51% of ticket sales going to La Colline, the rest would be split into 34% for TSE and 15% for L’Atelier, but with a guaranteed minimum of 235,000 francs for the latter. Importantly, among the initially all-Argentine cast, Facundo Bo and Rodolfo de Souza were mentioned prominently on the first page of the contract along with Copi and Arias.263 It is under these more favorable economic conditions that concrete preparations took place. For this show, the set by Roberto Platé emphasized the poverty of the Montevideo conventillo by turning it into a “sordid bidonville,”264 without furniture but just a clay floor to sleep on,265 where the walls and doors were made of empty corrugated cardboard boxes showing the writings  Costumes, accessories, and make-up would remain TSE’s responsibility.  Signed on June 1, 1993 by Arias, Franck, and Laurence Herszberg (administrator of la Colline), the co-production contract specified that the three partners were not creating a new society but were limited to the responsibilities agreed upon in writing. It also set rehearsal and performance dates: rehearsals would take place May 1–June 30, then September 15–October 26, 1993 in the rehearsal room at Plaine Saint Denis, then from October 27 in the small auditorium; a dress rehearsal on November 4 would be followed by 55 Performances between November 5 and December 31, 1993, Tuesday to Saturday at 9 pm, Sunday at 4 pm, and Wednesday matinees at 12:30 pm. Planned paratheatrical events were Jorge Damonte’s exhibit of photos of Copi, “Les jeux de Copi” on the occasion of the publication of his book Copi and Colette Godard’s interview of Arias and the cast on November 29. 263  Rodolfo de Souza (Cachafaz) had previously worked with Arias in Kado Kostzer’s Famille d’artistes (Family of Artists) and is Marini’s husband. The other performers were Roberto Navarro (Police Agent), Federico Guerín (Neighbor), and Susana Lastreto (Neighbor). Set by Roberto Platé, costumes by Françoise Tournafond, lighting design by Jacques Rouveyrollis, props by Daniel Cendron, and make-up and wigs by Annie Marandin. 264  See “the dilapidated set of a sordid bidonville.” Valérie Librati, “Une Argentine au bord de la crise de nerfs: Cachafaz,” La Terrasse, December 1993; “a bidonville set.” [n.a.], “Copi toujours,” Les Échos, November 17, 1993. The place had a real referent in the Conventillo del Medio Mundo, a tenement that actually existed until 1978 at 1080 Cuareim Street in the Barrio Sur neighborhood of Montevideo, Uruguay. The tenements were also considered the hub of Afro-Uruguayan culture. See Joanne Pol, “Queering Latin American Theater: A Panoramic Study and Its Performative Implications,” PhD Diss. (University of Miami— Coral Gables, FL, 2010), 123–24. 265  “Cachafaz de Copi au Théâtre de la Colline,” Avant-Scène Théâtre, January 1, 1994. 261 262

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“fragile, top, or bottom.”266 “[I]t’s no gingerbread house, it’s a junk house, the not-so-cozy nest of an Uruguayan slum nowadays,”267 observed a reviewer. The effort to downgrade the feel of an official theatre was targeted by another reviewer: “Perhaps it wouldn’t have been necessary to play Cachafaz in a theatre. The text would be better suited to a room in the suburbs, shabby, slightly gloomy.”268 Conceptually, however, it made sense to create an open, essential space for a play that needed to convey a certain tragic dimension that grew increasingly relevant towards the end. In particular, one of the critics described the most spectacular moment of the evening, the uncanny emergence of three enormous rat heads from the back wall at the end of the show.269 A Shifting Assemblage Since the original reading, Facundo Bo was always tightly involved in the project: he designed the show’s poster, a gaucho with a knife for the body,270 and intensely collaborated on the translation with Tunisia-born French writer René de Ceccatty, who had already worked with Arias on dialogues for Mortadela and songs for Fous des Folies.271 Ceccatty, who knew neither Spanish nor the Uruguayan dialect used by Copi, chronicled a series of stages for the collaborative translation. First, he met several times with Bo, who orally translated the text and explained the precise meaning of terms and idiomatic expressions. Then, the performer attentively followed the original, while Ceccatty read his verse translation in French, modeled on Copi’s own The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur. Finally, Bo read his own role for La Raulito and the translator all the other dialogue. 266  Michel Cournot, “Les tangos de l’enfer perdu,” Le Monde, November 16, 1993. Perhaps because of the poverty of the situation portrayed, costumes were not generally mentioned. However, critic A. H. delighted in Raulito’s clothing: “stiletto heels, silk bathrobe worthy of Madame Butterfly (Ah, the Tournafond spirit for costumes, what oxygen!). “Le pétit théâtre.” 267  Ibid. 268  B. S. “Cachafaz de Copi,” L’Événement du jeudi, December 2, 1993. 269  “Until this apocalyptic ending with the death of the passionate lovers, […] but chiefly with the invasion of the rats, fetish animals of Copi’s bestiary.” Douzelet, “Cachafaz.” 270  The poster is available at https://www.colline.fr/sites/default/files/cachafaz-affiche. pdf, accessed February 11, 2023. 271  For an interview in English on Ceccatty’s artistic trajectory, see Marek Bartelik, “Marek Bartelik with René de Ceccatty,” The Brooklyn Rail (October 2010), https://brooklynrail. org/2010/10/poetry/mark-bartelik-with, accessed February 11, 2023.

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At times, laughter made it impossible to continue. At the beginning of rehearsals, Arias, Bo, de Souza, Annick Peauger, Larry Hager, and Ceccatty reread the text once again seeking to find “an at times more literal and rigorous version.”272 Rehearsals proved highly problematic, though. As Ceccatty chronicled, “Facundo had difficulties following Alfredo’s rhythm and movement directions. At first, Alfredo thought it was a lack of psychological flexibility or a sign of bad will on Facundo’s part. But he grew more and more worried. And he started to conjecture that there was another reason, more physiological. Was Facundo sick?” Once Facundo confirmed that he thought he had a beginning of Alzheimer’s, “Alfredo tried to imagine another staging where Raulito would be more immobile, as a kind of icon or deity, and wouldn’t need to utilize his body with all the liveliness required by his character. [However,] Alfredo knew the audience [was] unforgiving.”273 As a consequence of the revelation of Bo’s condition, Arias found himself forced to cast Brazilian performer Kallé Silva, whom he had recently cast in Fous des Folies.274 The substitution of “the ‘institution’ of the Argentines’ gang”275 was conveyed to the troupe in a laconic letter dated October 21, about two weeks before the premiere, and announced to the general public as an artistic divergence.276 Clearly, the production overall found out that a number of other actors were in play,

272  René de Ceccatty, “Traduire du Copi en Copi,” in Copi, Cachafaz, 7. Ceccatty regarded the end result as “a rhymed and rhythmic equivalent of Copi’s strange language, which was both spoken and slanged […] and refined, on the model of baroque tragedies, but also of tango lyrics or older and more peasant Argentine songs.” Mes Argentines, 233. Jurgenson described the French language used as “baroque, excessive, raw” (“Le tango de la mort”), while Ménager opined: “it’s certainly not great literature, the words have little music and the words are basically flat.” “Cachafaz de Copi.” 273  Ceccatty, Mes Argentins, 233–34. 274  Silva studied dance in São Paulo and left Brazil for Paris in 1979. Arias thought that “he was incredible because being in drag was absolutely natural for him.” Écriture, 149. 275  Ménager, “Cachafaz de Copi.” 276  “Cachafaz,” La Tribune Desfossés, November 23, 1993; “It appears that an ‘artistic divergence’ between the two old colleagues of the TSE group is at the origin of this last-­ minute change.” “Colline.” Libération, November 5, 1993. Ceccatty recalled that, although Facundo remained supportive of the troupe through the mediation of de Souza, the relationship with Arias took a hit that was mended only years later. Mes Argentins, 234.

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at least including all the concurrent factors causing Bo’s Alzheimer’s over a long period of time.277 As for the actual performance, like in The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur, Arias opted for a more poetical approach to the over-the-top plot,278 trying not to duplicate with actions the already violent text.279 The results were lauded by a large number of reviewers. Le Quotidien de Paris commented: “Arias, childishly mischievous, the only way to bring back Copi’s innocence […], endows this ‘barbarous tragedy’ with lively movement.”280 Similarly, for Le Parisien Arias followed “in Copi’s footsteps with a biting cheerfulness that joined the childish pleasure of throwing mud in the very midst of a Communion banquet. The adults, secretly delighted, pretend[ed] to be shocked.”281 And L’Express chimed in: “the humor and rage of a unique recently disappeared author” were “marvelously divined by his fellow countryman and director.”282 La centrale des artistes even declared Arias’s staging “a pure marvel”283 and Télérama described it as the fruit of a “cannibal sophistication” that created “a moment of theatre of extravagant freedom and folly.”284 Several appreciative voices also praised the performers, especially Silva and de Souza, which confirmed

277  Alzheimer’s type of dementia has been attributed to a combination of still not-fully elucidated (f)actors. A recent volume on the subject explains: “Although we can clearly see what the consequences of the disease are, the actual cause of the disease is still unknown. […] ultimately, damage to cells (neurons and glial cells) in the brain results in dementia. Some theories for what causes the cellular damage include misfolding of certain proteins, dysfunctional clearance of damaged proteins from the brain, or even dysfunctional levels of neurotransmitters […] in the brain.” Ronald Sahyouni, Aradhana Verma, and Jefferson Chen, Alzheimer’s Disease Decoded: The History, Present, and Future of Alzheimer’s Disease and Dementia (New Jersey: World Scientific, 2017), 64. On top of it all, after the exhaustion of directing Fous des Folies just before this show, Arias himself did not feel at the top of his form. Interview with the author, Buenos Aires, August 5, 2017. 278  “I opted for a more poetical than violent version. The characters remain endearing.” Philippe, “Pour Alfredo Arias.” 279  “I didn’t want an exhibitionist delirium. I treated the play as a simple folk melodrama. The text is violent enough that we don’t illustrate the subject. No need to overdo.” Jurgenson, “Le tango de la mort.” The evening program and photos of the cast are at https://www.colline.fr/spectacles/cachafaz, accessed February 11, 2023. 280  A. H. “Le pétit théâtre.” Likewise appreciative of rhythm was Douzelet, “Cachafaz.” 281  Liban, “Un conte argentin.” 282  “Cachafaz de Copi,” L’Express, December 25, 1993. 283  La centrale des artistes, “Raulito et son Cachafaz,” December 1993. 284  Fabienne Pascaud, “Cachafaz,” Télérama, December 1, 1993.

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that Arias’s choice for the last-minute casting change had been successful to some extent.285 And yet, with so little rehearsal time, the overall results necessarily fell short of Arias’s earlier achievements.286 La Tribune Desfossés summarized the show’s shortcomings by remarking that the protagonists spoke always in the same tone, the play was not of Copi’s best, the comic effect seemed diluted into too lengthy discussions, and Arias had not “again found the poetic folly that so well inhabited The Steps of the Sacré-Coeur.”287 Another reviewer, who found Platé’s set shabby, suggested that the director make more inventive use of lights, music, and possibly cuts (for example, to the interminable agony of the lovers), and concluded that “the work seem[ed] to have suffered from precipitation.”288 Finally, Figaroscope valued the choice of “a difficult and particularly complacent work” that was indeed an apt illustration of Copi’s universe, but counseled that it needed to be handled with caution. Instead the critic saw “a hurried staging, bad performers, little or badly directed, a cheap oneirism” and warned that the scandalous situation did not necessarily equal artistic quality.289 Lastly, Avant-Scène Théâtre viewed the play as too raw to allow it to credibly evoke the supernatural.290 Obviously, none of these critics could be fully aware of the totality of actors involved in the final result: presumably, no one knew about Bo’s real reason for departing the production nor of the director’s dilemma at two weeks from the premiere. 285  “Raulito is played by Kallé Silva, who dances like a swallow, dressed in dreamy silks and a divine bathrobe of cherry red dahlias. Cachafaz, alas! isn’t black, but interpreted perfectly by Rodolfo de Souza in too tight Tergal pants.” Cournot, “Les tangos.” See also: “Rodolfo de Souza, more real than nature in the title role and especially Kalle Silva […] who gives a nervous and pathetic interpretation to the desire of la Raulito.” Ménager, “Cachafaz de Copi.”; “The characters with [their] incongruous physiques (I dare say Felliniesque) sketch some tango steps. Kallé Silva is a naughty, endearing Raulito, madly in love with her Cachafaz, played by a very macho Rodolfo De Souza.” F. Db., “Théâtre: Cachafaz,” Elle, November 29, 1993; and “amazing performers.” Liban, “Un conte.” 286  At least judging from the single-camera video available at the INAthèque, La Colline holdings. 287  “Cachafaz,” La Tribune Desfossés, November 23, 1993. For L’Événement du jeudi, the situations and characters seemed to drift over the text, leaving the spectator lost and a stranger to the tranche de vie. B. S., “Cachafaz de Copi,” L’Événement du jeudi, December 2, 1993. 288  Ménager, “Cachafaz de Copi.” See also “the little inventive staging of […] Alfredo Arias.” M. H., “Cachafaz **,” Boum Boum, December 20, 1993. 289  J.-L. J. “‘Cacharaz’” [sic]. 290  “Cachafaz de Copi au Théâtre de la Colline,” Avant-Scène Théâtre, January 1, 1994.

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Actor-Network Frictions: TSE vs. L’Atelier Actual ticket sales for the show were not exceptional: using the same space as Grand Finale, Cachafaz had an average of 192 spectators per performance versus 253 for the earlier show. With a potential of 214 seats for 55 performances (11,770 seats overall), there were only 8559 paying spectators and as many as 1,979 complimentary tickets (about 18.8% of tickets, a percentage double that for Grand Finale). As a result, of the 650,000 francs income, La Colline received 253,000 and TSE only 144,000, given these two partners’ responsibility to reimburse L’Atelier and match the guaranteed minimum of 235,000.291 The TSE group, then an independent entity no longer associated with Aubervilliers, was the most heavily impacted by the difficulties incurred due to Bo’s illness. Therefore, Arias must have been naturally eager for the show to tour in order to recover costs. Franck, however, preferred to take a smaller loss and exercise his right to suspend the tour. Paradoxically, it is only due to these disappointing circumstances that it is possible to peek behind the scenes of this production beneath the unemotional letter of the contracts.292 Along with the general contract signed by the three co-producers, separate agreements were drawn between L’Atelier and TSE.  At the outset, the tour was planned for October–November 1994 with a minimum of 20 performances and expenses mainly shouldered by L’Atelier, including rehearsals, technical and administrative personnel, and costs to remount the show.293 A contract clause, however, reserved the right for L’Atelier to suspend the tour for any reason. As a matter of fact, on Christmas day of 1993 Franck wrote to TSE’s administrator Antoine Coutrot that, alas, he could not proceed with the scheduled tour. The letter itself came after previous discussions: Franck had suggested that the show’s too-short duration limited its marketability in the provinces and now insisted that the idea of adding a “first part” seemed too artificial. Then, he doubled down on two more substantial reasons regarding the cast and the director:

291  All figures are approximate. The final accounting of January 31, 1994 reported 762,765 francs total gross income, 747,076.40 after tax, and 649,281.83 after payment of rights. The Théâtre de l’Atelier received 97,392.28 as the contractual 15%, but also an integration of 137,607.72 to reach the 235,000 francs guaranteed minimum (or 5,000 per performance). Of the remaining 414,281.83, La Colline received 253,789.06 and TSE 143,669.34. 292  Unfortunately, these documents only chronicle L’Atelier’s point of view of the events. 293  The exception were costs exceeding 18,000 francs for artistic personnel.

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It must also be admitted that the removal of Facundo BO around which the project had been partially built and presented has been an additional handicap. Let’s finally agree that “CACHAFAZ” will not be counted among the best shows of Alfredo ARIAS, whose talent, as you know, I admire so much. And I think that in the end the major problem is there—only the “best” of the work of an artist is worth touring—we cannot afford to consider the provincial audiences as a way to amortize our productions.294

He concluded by suggesting that Coutrot and his society Cineas either take charge of the tour themselves or entrust it to another organizer. Such definitive decision, however, could not sit well with the TSE group: since the contract guaranteed La Colline and L’Atelier much more than TSE, this group’s deficit of 156,000 francs was almost double that of L’Atelier and more than half of their initial investment. Predictably, no resolution came from a meeting on December 28 between a reluctant Franck and four TSE members, brokered by La Colline administrator Martine Levy. In a letter to general administrator Laurence Herszberg, Franck vented his frustration about the “scandalous lynching” he had been subjected to, proclaimed his absolute freedom to decide on the feasibility of the tour (a right he had purchased by co-­ producing the show at a loss), and bemoaned that la Colline had taken TSE’s side. He concluded with a bomb: while “Alfredo ARIAS and his politburo […] reckon that ‘CACHAFAZ’ is too ‘scandalous’ for the bourgeois programming of the Théâtre de l’Atelier on tour—it may be an explanation that suits them—it turns out that the opposite is true: ‘CACHAFAZ’ is not at all scandalous, but ‘CACHAFAZ’ thinks itself scandalous!”295 Franck may have been right on the artistic limitations of the production, but what stands out in his letters are his personal, otherwise undisclosed political alignments. Extremely frustrated that Arias and Lavelli had painted him in an uncomfortable public relations corner, he accompanied every TSE mention with a “KKK” descriptor (for the lynching he felt 294  Frédéric Franck, letter to Antoine Coutrot, December 25, 1993 (Archives nationales, as all the following letters). 295  Letter to Laurence Herszberg, December 29, 1993. He also endeavored to maintain a good relationship with Herszberg by underscoring his responsible behavior in accepting the meeting and thus preventing TSE’s threatened boycott of la Colline’s New Year’s party. To TSE’s point that his decision amounted to commercial nonsense, Franck countered that he did not despise provincial audiences to the point of using them to pay off costs.

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subjected to), while repeatedly mocking their political leanings as appropriate to oppressive Soviet Russia. Thus, Franck framed in terms of ideology a problem that was indeed quite material, a fact that he chose to ignore. In an even more emotional letter to Levy, Franck complained that TSE had never consulted him on any artistic choices, but only made contact when money was due, mentioning distribution, conception of the show’s poster, presentation of the set model, list of guests for the first performances, or replacement of Facundo Bo. But, of course, artistic choices were not listed as his responsibility in the contracts he so ardently defended. Franck’s logic is difficult to follow without seeing the whole letter as an attempt to maintain a working relationship at all costs, without fear of contradiction: “I understand for having shared for a long time your admiration for the DUCE. But we must always remember that to flatter the artists, to follow them even in their derailments or errors, we posit their person as more important than their art and so we kill them.” He concluded by asking for moral support at the upcoming New Year’s party and attached a document on the Sicilian mafia and the practice of pizzo.296 Beyond the rather disconcerting, one-sided barrage of mixed stereotypes employed by Franck against TSE, his letters provide an opportunity to witness the dynamics of actor-networks engaged in a theatrical co-­ production, while at the same time illuminating their heterogeneity. By insisting on the political framing, these letters revealed how a right-wing producer, and admirer of the “Duce” Benito Mussolini, collaborated with another producer, whom he viewed as decidedly left-leaning.297 Then, the fact that Franck balked at the Argentine “mafia” indicated a major disparity among the partners: the Argentines united in the name of their common friend had a very different relationship among themselves than with their external co-producer. Irked by the solidarity shown by Lavelli towards his fellow Argentines, Franck then tried to turn other actors of La Colline’s institutional assemblage in his favor so he could save face. But of course, underlying all this unexpected drama was the fact that the originally planned assemblage with the star Facundo Bo had significantly changed. The covert actors that had caused his Alzheimer’s had heavily impacted the co-producers’ plans.  Letter to Martine Levy, December 30, 1993.  Even if Arias’s approach was never overtly political, perhaps Franck referred to the socialist policies that had offered the director a position within the decentralized French theatre network. 296 297

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Conclusions: An Always Provisional List of Actors While in Chap. 3 I underscored the investigative gains that derived from the breakdown of objects and established mechanisms, as in the event of the attack on Eva Perón, which then revealed a larger set of agencies contributing to the show’s success, in this chapter I relayed the same ANT paradox in relation to the human body. Even if disease negatively impacted the show’s appeal to the audience or the show’s distributor at the time, it is only thanks to the troubles experienced by Facundo Bo and Arias that it is now possible to observe the otherwise blackboxed interactions of the three producing partners. This is, therefore, a unique opportunity to witness the collaboration, alliances, or frictions of heterogeneous components functioning together at this level of producer actor-networks. In fact, these behind-the-scenes events also show how critical were the administrators and state employees for the management of the theatre directed by Lavelli. For one, in the case of Cachafaz they helped him deal with the difficulties arising within the assemblage of La Colline by intervening to broker a diplomatic meeting between the conflicting parts of TSE and L’Atelier. Then, a number of archivists duly preserved an extensive number of documents relating to the production, now made available at the Archives nationales in Paris because the theatre is directly connected with the French state and therefore its materials are public.298 Like his fellow Argentines of Paris, Lavelli only gradually came to the realization that he could live in the French capital permanently. The steps needed required at least a scholarship and its renewal by the Fondo Nacional de las Artes, his own efforts as critic of Parisian performances, attendance at theatre schools including the University of the Théâtre des Nations, a loan from the Argentine government, intense collaboration with other Polish artists around Gombrowicz, institutional actors like Touchard and the Young Companies Competition, and a passionate Spanish actress in exile like Casarès. Only by taking into account this lengthy (and always provisional) list of actors can one place Lavelli on a trajectory that at some point intersected with Copi’s. Of course, the budding playwright had to thank his own comic strip in Le Nouvel Observateur for his fame and the Argentine artists at the American Center in Paris for the connection with the stage director. The meeting and subsequent Saint 298  This is not always the case, as some materials that are seen as containing private information are subject to embargoes of varying durations.

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Genevieve in Her Bathtub gave Lavelli a taste of what a looser type of performance could achieve, but also spurred Copi to write fully scripted longer texts that would eventually attain a unique, accomplished style. This chapter has also shown the imbrication of Lavelli and Arias/TSE on two occasions that evidenced with particular clarity the existence of an Argentine theatre network in Paris. First, for The Night of Madame Lucienne Lavelli was hosted at Aubervilliers and cast one of the historic TSE members. The second collaboration on Cachafaz returned the hospitality, with Arias directing a troupe initially meant to feature only Argentine performers at Lavelli’s artistic home. Both these opportunities were backed by the decentralized French theatre network that—especially through the intervention of Abirached, Director of the Theatre and Spectacles Department—facilitated these Argentine directors’ progression to prominent positions of cultural and economic power at a time when Mitterand deliberately invited multicultural openings at the state level. It is owing to these Argentine directors’ focus on contemporary playwriting that Copi was able to shift from more marginal venues to the Théâtre de la Colline, a national theatre. Throughout his Parisian years Copi was keen on regularly spending time with his network of director friends and it is in large part to them that the author initially owed the persistence of Copi’s actor-network beyond his Grand Finale. As seen throughout this study, in terms of ANT, speaking of a playwright, a director, or a theatre production implies a broader perception of the surprising sets of agencies that participated in their continued artistic existence and expression. In particular, in this chapter, I investigated the third significant strand that contributed to Copi’s success through the relationship with Lavelli and his directorial career, while underscoring the role of complex institutional bodies whose economic and artistic support proved indispensable for these artists’ careers. I also often referred to material entities and their contribution to the journey leading to certain productions, including money itself but also the objects that carried the agency of their makers from one show to another or the aircraft that gave Lavelli the chance to view things from a higher perspective. Finally, in counterpoint to more visible actors, I showed how mostly invisible non-­ human ones stealthily intervened to assault the performers’ bodies and forced the directors to make difficult choices. By this point it should be clear that the cast interpellated through the lens of an actor-network dramaturgy that fully embraces both human and non-human components should always remain open to supplemental

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agencies: it is through the discovery of more and more actors at work across the network of associations that it becomes possible to perceive the multiple vibrant connections of theatre with history, politics, other arts, material objects, and life itself.

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2000. In The Paris Jigsaw: Internationalism and the City’s Stages, edited by David Bradby and Maria M.  Delgado, 218–31. New  York: Manchester University Press, 2002. ———. ‘Other’ Spanish Theatres: Erasure and Inscription on the Twentieth Century Spanish Stage. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. Denizot, Marion. Jeanne Laurent: une fondatrice du service public pour la culture 1946–1952. Paris: Comité d’histoire du ministère de la culture, 2005. Edwards, Matthew. “How to Read Copi: A Historiography of the Margins.” Hispanic Review 81, no. 1 (Winter 2013): 63–82. Eliaschev, Pepe. “Jorge Lavelli: Sin ganas de dar respuestas.” In Esto que queda: voces e ideas de fin de siglo by Pepe Eliaschiev, 33–40. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1996. Engel, Jonathan. The Epidemic: A Global History of AIDS. Harper-Collins E-Books, 2006. Faria, Nuno R., Andrew Rambaut, Marc A. Suchard, Guy Baele, Trevor Bedford, Melissa J.  Ward, Andrew J.  Tatem, João D.  Sousa, Nimalan Arinaminpathy, Jacques Pépin, David Posada, Martine Peeters, Oliver G. Pybus, and Philippe Lemey, “The Early Spread and Epidemic Ignition of HIV-1  in Human Populations.” Science 6205 (October 3, 2014): 56–61. https://doi. org/10.1126/science.1256739, accessed February 3, 2023. Feoli-Gudino, Andrea. “De retour: Le post-exil comme mise à l’épreuve de l’origine dans les spectacles de Jorge Lavelli et Andrei Serban.” PhD diss., Montréal: Université du Québec à Montréal, 2010. Fondo Nacional de las Artes. Los 15 años del Fondo Nacional de las Artes. Buenos Aires: [El Fondo], 1973. Fontana, Juan Carlos. “Copi frente a una sociedad que se devora a sí misma.” Picadero 8 (January–February 2003): 10–11. Frese Witt, Mary Ann. Metatheater and Modernity: Baroque and Neobaroque. Madison, NJ: Farleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013. Fudalewski, R. “Le Mariage de Witold Gombrowicz en trois dimensions. Trois mises en scène de Lavelli, Sjöberg, Schröder.” Revue d’Histoire du Théâtre 56, no. 4 (2004): 333–58. Garner, Stanton B., Jr. “Artaud, Germ Theory, and the Theatre of Contagion.” Theatre Journal 58, no. 1 (March 2006), 1–14. Garrido, Germán. “‘Una comedia de la muerte’: Copi y sus profanaciones del sida.” Escena: Revista de las artes 78, no. 2 (January–June 2019): 71–91. Godard, Colette. Jérôme Savary, l’enfant de la fête. Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 1996. Gombrowicz, Rita. Gombrowicz en Europe: témoignages et documents, 1963–1969. Paris: Denoël, 1988. Gombrowicz, Witold. Le Mariage. Translated by Koukou Chanska and Georges Sédir. Paris: Christian Bourgois, 1994.

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CHAPTER 5

Conclusions: Developing an Actor-Network Dramaturgical Vision

The Argentines of Paris: Past and Present Actor-Networks In the preceding chapters I closely examined a select number of stage productions and art works as points of access to a web of relationships primarily involving a group of Argentines of Paris. By following the traces left by these theatre and visual artists between the 1960s and 1990s, I foregrounded the most relevant associations that progressively spun threads of intercultural theatre-making between Argentina and France. Highlights of my archival research are materials related to Savary and Copi’s Good Bye Mister Freud, a production that had all but disappeared from critical awareness; the detailed history of Rodríguez Arias and TSE’s early trajectory, not yet described in detail in any language; and the behind-the-scenes agreements and disagreements that transpired among the co-producing partners of Cachafaz at the Théâtre de la Colline directed by Lavelli. Each of these discoveries shed light on the considerable number of agencies that collaborated to certain productions in decisive, interconnected ways, and yet were unwittingly or deliberately blackboxed and forgotten. Actor-networks are more challenging to corroborate than mere physical systems because they also subsist as ephemeral performed associations. I here focused on collaborative pairs between Copi and each of three

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Boselli, Actor-Network Dramaturgies, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32523-6_5

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directors, who pursued rather independent trajectories on their own, but appear as a network when viewed through the lens of their relationships with the playwright. Of course, apart from Copi, Savary, Arias, and Lavelli—the most vocal spokespersons in this composite actor-network— several other artists were involved, even if not always appearing in the spotlight. An example is TSE’s visual artist Juan Stoppani, who worked in various capacities with Arias but also for Lavelli, Copi, and Savary on separate occasions. Similarly, the artist Roberto Platé designed sets for both Arias and Lavelli, and the performer Facundo Bo became the link between TSE and Lavelli’s company for The Night of Madame Lucienne. Encompassing an even larger number of actors, this study also attempted to account for certain phases in the nomadic lives of theatre groups, a process of multi-actor territorialization and deterritorialization that gradually transformed the company put together for Arrabal’s The Labyrinth into The Grand Magic Circus and caused TSE’s destination to abruptly shift from New York to Paris. Even though my selection highlighted artists born in Argentina, it is clear that a diverse array of other nationalities were involved. For instance, the TSE group was aided by British art critic Lawrence Alloway and gathered Venezuelan performers on their way to New York, while Savary and Lavelli, at the beginning of their careers, gained critical recognition thanks to Spanish and Polish artists, respectively. Naturally, there were numerous French actors, such as the organizers of the University of the Théâtre des Nations or the theatre critics who publicized the Argentine artists’ activities. Of these, Le Monde’s Colette Godard kept a watchful eye on the careers of all the Argentine directors studied here and operated as a constant link between their works and the Parisian audiences. Central for Arias and Lavelli was also scholar Robert Abirached, who acted as a nexus between the French state and its decentralized theatre network. Indeed, politicians at the highest levels exerted a significant influence: while, in Argentina, General Onganía engendered the atmosphere of repression that induced the TSE members to flee the country, in France, President Mitterrand and his ministers of culture actively welcomed Latin American intellectuals and nurtured their development. One focus of my analyses has been the agency of non-human actors, which rarely surfaces in all its weight in non-ANT descriptions of theatrical creations. I showed how the visual arts offered material support for these practitioners’ subsistence, as in the case of Copi’s sketches sold on the Pont des Artes, the refreshments at art exhibitions that fed Savary during

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hard times in Buenos Aires, or the auction that partially funded TSE’s tour to the US. I also detailed how the translations of theatrical objects from other productions, such as costumes or set pieces, contributed to the success of Lavelli’s stagings. Even everyday objects demonstrated a surprising level of agency: clothing items at a New Jersey department store or the batons and chains used by right-wing hooligans in Paris against Eva Perón played a crucial role in shifting TSE’s trajectory. While these non-human actors were quite tangibly on display, others were less visible but nevertheless consequential: the champagne in Good Bye Mister Freud or the disease agents involved in the casting of The Night of Madame Lucienne or Cachafaz unquestionably influenced those productions’ end results. Furthermore, I described how certain city neighborhoods facilitated the emergence of visual arts and theatre performances. This was the case of the area around Place de la Contrescarpe in Paris or the manzana loca in Buenos Aires, both of which sparked an ebullience of creativity and friendships among like-minded practitioners. I also underscored the relevance of institutions such as the Di Tella Institute in Buenos Aires, which generated its level of funding by attracting foreign developmental capital from outside the confines of the national state. In fact, at a global level and beyond the strictly artistic field, even the relationships among nation states had a significant impact on the artists’ destinies. An example of this type of agency is the fact that Savary was born in Argentina due to the events leading to WWII and returned to his native country as an adult because of France and Algeria’s tense relationship: it is precisely due to those international actors that Savary is included in this study. In sum, I have laid out a broad selection of the human and non-human actors that might appear in a theatrical analysis based on the notion of an actor-network dramaturgy. Methodologically, this mode of analysis’s particularity lies in starting from a material node on the network—the realized staging—and then proceeding to research the actors directly connected to the production itself. Thus, a theatre production expresses its agency not only as an entity that enables other connections, as Rodríguez Arias’s Drácula, or possibly creates debt, as in the case of Savary’s Good Bye Mister Freud or Lavelli’s The Wedding, but also as the privileged assemblage that points the researcher in the direction of other assemblages and their lines of becoming, without the perils of abstract generalizations. Hence, a theatre production offers a unique perspective on a universe of both witting and unwitting actors that work together despite their different natures and are all somehow connected through time and space.

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In fact, it is worth remarking that it takes time for thoughts, actions, and material things to surface out of the network. Actors need to be aligned with the emergence in time of a number of other entities in order to fully profit from their associations. For instance, Lavelli had the fortune to apply for a contest held only every three to four years: had the Young Companies Competition taken place just one year earlier, no one knows if the director would have stayed in France after all. A similar coincidence occurred when Lavelli was nominated to a national theatre. Because a state law had just changed the age limits for public administrators, time delays worked to push Guy Rétoré out and bring the younger Lavelli on board. Evidently, the quality and significance of networked associations depend not only on whom or what is involved but also on when exactly the performance of those associations occurs. In my case, I was fortunate that the timing of my on-site research allowed me to connect with the living network of the Argentines of Paris through Arias. I contacted the director in July 2017 as soon as I arrived in Paris. However, since the summer academic break in the northern hemisphere coincided with a lull in the French theatre season, for an in-person interview I then waited until I could travel to Buenos Aires the next month. Arias had graciously accepted to meet with me at the café of the Ateneo Grand Splendid, a former theatre transformed into a bookstore on Avenida Santa Fe, where he arrived wearing his characteristic fedora hat. I had been studying a series of “snapshots” of Arias’s past productions, but time had clearly moved on: here was a director all focused on the present and future, who collaborated with many new artists. This first encounter was followed by an invitation to attend a series of events organized by the Centro Cultural Kirchner, the largest cultural center in Latin America. Under the title “Aventuras compartidas” (“Shared Adventures”), the program included a multi-room exhibit and Tres tangos (Three Tangos), a performance in French, Italian, and Spanish with the complement of a full orchestra.1 Underscoring both Arias’s fame in France and his connection to Buenos Aires, the daily La Nación described the whole program as “[a]  The libretto is by Gonzalo Demaría. Other components of the program were an exhibit of visual artist José Cuneo’s cartoon version of El Tigre (The Tigre, one of Arias’s latest musical shows), an installation by video-maker Alejandro Rumolino with clips from Arias’s recent productions, and the reading by performer Fanny Blanco of a monologue by Arias himself, Soy Ya Ya (I am Zsa Zsa) on the life of actress Zsa Zsa Gabor. 1

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journey through the artistic life of one of the most prominent representatives of contemporary French theatre who, on this occasion, has decided to make himself fully known in the city that witnessed his birth.”2 When I arrived at the Centro Cultural Kirchner for the performance of Three Tangos, after looking at the costumes and installations, I watched in real time the interview that Arias was giving to Argentine television. Combined with the exhibit’s stage-worthy lights, this was a much more formal situation than I had experienced at the café and Arias was now in full public mode, a show-business star immersed in his element. However, the most epiphanic moment for me occurred shortly after that interview. Before the beginning of the show, I wandered outside the exhibit rooms and suddenly found myself in the midst of a group of people that included US performer Larry Hager, Arias’s partner and historical TSE member, and Juan Stoppani with his partner, costume and set designer Jean Yves Legavre, who had collaborated on the Good Bye Mister Freud costumes. Eventually, after the show, I was introduced to some of Arias’s current collaborators, playwright Gonzalo Demaría and the performers of Three Tangos.3 Thus, in a single evening, I could simultaneously connect with Arias’s past and present: on meeting artists I had only studied through archives, I could for the first time witness the performance of certain associations and ponder those that were no longer active. For a moment, I had the impression of actually touching a few threads of the network I had so persistently tracked up to that point. As a matter of fact, it was through that very network that, two days later, I was invited to Stoppani’s artistically decorated house in the Boca neighborhood of Buenos Aires. As the visual artist spoke not only of his work relationship with Arias but also of his partnerships with Copi, Savary, Lavelli, and Facundo Bo, I began to discern a more intricate web of relations that were artistic as well as very personal, intense, and occasionally fraught. For example, hanging on a wall of Stoppani’s living room was a picture of Lucy Bo, who had also left Buenos Aires for Paris to assist her sister Marucha after the performer’s aneurism. No interview or review I had found mentioned Lucy, but she was the missing link to her son, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo, an Argentine performer and director who moved to 2 3

 “Una visita al mundo creativo de Alfredo Arias,” La Nación, August 10, 2017.  Carlos Casella, Marcos Montes, and Alejandra Radano.

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France in 1987 and initially spent time working for Arias and with his uncle Facundo. Even if Di Fonzo Bo never met Copi in person, his later stagings of the artist’s plays and comics with the collective Les Lucioles are evidence of the agency of an actor-network beyond the physical life of the author. Indeed, during my stay in Buenos Aires, I could also buy a ticket to Di Fonzo Bo’s double bill of Eva Perón and The Homosexual or the Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself, produced by the Teatro Nacional Cervantes. And, at the same venue, I attended a production of Copi’s plays starring Marilú Marini, who has decided to move on from TSE and join a different assemblage.4 Clearly, each node of the network leads to several other interconnected actors that could offer further directions for exploration. Research could continue, for example, by delving into Di Fonzo Bo’s early apprenticeship with Arias in Paris, his work with his Les Lucioles teammates, his collaborations with other Argentine theatre artists—like Rafael Spregelburd—in French-language productions of Argentine plays, or his role as artistic director of the Comédie de Caen, Normandy’s National Dramatic Centre. Or, one could examine the latest, more fluid oscillation of the Argentines of Paris between the two continents, as in the case of Arias’s and Lavelli’s recent work in the French capital and Buenos Aires. In fact, other Argentine playwrights could figure among these directors’ associations, as in the case of Lavelli’s staging of Roberto Mario Cossa’s grotesque La Nona (The Granny) at La Colline or Arias’s collaboration with Kado Kostzer for his Famille d’artistes (Family of Artists) at Aubervilliers. Finally, it would be intriguing to trace the lines of non-human actors such as Copi’s comics, from the pages of satirical magazines and newspapers to the performative versions created by Arias with Marini or Di Fonzo Bo with Les Lucioles. But outside the particular subject of this book, I would like to further reflect on what an actor-network dramaturgical vision offers for the diachronic and synchronic investigation of theatre and performance at large.

4  El día de una soñadora (y otros momentos…) / La journée d’une rêveuse (et autres moments…) (The Day of a Dreamer [and Other Moments…]). Adaptation and direction by Pierre Maillet, another member of Les Lucioles. Produced by the Comédie de Caen, a National Dramatic Center directed by Di Fonzo Bo since 2015.

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Actor-Network Dramaturgies: An Expanded Awareness for Theatre and Performance Studies What should an ANT analysis pay more attention to, in order to perceive the complex dramaturgies that allow performances to arise from the network of expressive and everyday associations? What actions should be performed more pointedly by an ANT researcher? Expand Research Beyond the Artistic Field by Including Longer Genealogies of Humans, Things, and Events As has become evident from this study, before an artist or group reaches the point where their value is fully revealed, they will have journeyed through a complex set of other networks, groups, and locations that have left some traces of their agency in the present of the period researched. The first step in an actor-network analysis would likely entail looking well beyond the immediate artistic boundaries of staged productions: clearly, broader horizons are needed to account for a majority of aesthetic and practical choices by the artists involved. Perceiving longer lines of becoming of actor-networks allows for an expanded timeframe to reveal the effects of multiple, interconnected genealogies of humans, things, and events. This archaeological-genealogical method is not new in itself but becomes more fertile when combined with ANT’s commitment to meticulously reconstruct the continuity of associations that link a performance with all the components that influenced its development and stage life. Where continuity appears broken, the ANT theatre historian sees an opportunity for more in-depth research. This approach empowers the researcher to describe with more certainty the actions of each co-creating entity converging to produce a performance in addition to their overall combined outcome. In fact, following the lines of actor-networks into the past should also be complemented with what occurs during a show’s run and after, for example, to gauge its agency on a theatre group, its spectators, producers, or funding for future productions. Listen to More Types of Actors, Human and Non-Human, at All Levels of Scale Of course, the list of actors interpellated by an ANT analysis is always provisional, and a more reliable history of performance depends on becoming

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alert to a wider set of actors and the nuances of their agency: actors from the personal and convivial sphere, including parents and friends; actors from the backstage artistic sphere: designers, craftspeople, technicians, and crews, normally just mentioned by name in the evening program; actors involving other artistic disciplines; actors who provided funding directly or indirectly, for example by buying products that benefited one of the sponsors; actors who are visible or invisible, physical or intangible; actors who support and encourage but also those who impede or interrupt; actors as singular or multiple entities, from individuals to committees to large foundations; larger- and smaller-scale actors, from historical movements to microbes; actors who are extremely vocal and others who remain silent or have been silenced; and, of course, both human and non-human actors, including the theatre productions themselves, along with the critics, newspapers, and readers or spectators who interact with them; the list goes on. Embrace Nomadic Identities Be it an individual artist or a staged production, it seems no longer possible to speak of “Argentine” or “French” artists and theatre, or refer to any other adjective corresponding to a nation state without wondering how many “others” are blackboxed by it or how many peripeteias around the globe have been simplified. In an ANT context, it would be more effective to speak of artistic entities by highlighting their connections with less abstract physical spaces, such as specific theatres, festivals, or cities. Perceive the Networks and Reveal Their Multiple Connections Even if neatly packaged for the paying public, a performance’s networked boundaries extend beyond its run at a particular venue and location. This aspect is rarely visible but may yield surprising insights when certain components of the assemblage are revealed synchronically or diachronically engaged with others. The same designer could quietly be creating for different theatre companies; the same theatre’s personnel could be at work on productions by several troupes for a festival; a performer could be playing in two consecutive shows during the same evening; or a set piece could have been built for an earlier show and continue to be used for a later one. If we only looked at the isolated productions, we would miss how two or

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more performative events are indeed materially linked and may reciprocally feel the ripples of actions that affect both of them. Of course, not every ANT analysis can afford to convey the complexity of all networks and their interactive combinations: in this study, I have demonstrated how it is possible to selectively cut the network to investigate meaningful slices of the whole by alternating emphases on just some of its aspects. In fact, actor-networks themselves provide more detail in certain areas rather than others and thus inform each analysis based on the unique conglomerates they interpellate. It is always exciting to navigate the network because one soon becomes aware of a whole series of convergences, coincidences, and forks in the road, where the destiny of artists and their creations hangs in a delicate balance between being and non-being. “If this, and that, and that other actor had not done exactly what they did or exerted its agency precisely in that way, the performance would have been quite different or would never have existed!”—one might exclaim. For the researcher, that moment is the historiographic equivalent of witnessing a coup de théâtre. Once we begin perceiving all the network threads and how they relate to each actor, drama becomes visible not only in the present of the staged production but also at all junctures leading up to it. Value Both Friends and Foes, Successes and Failures There might be conflict between national states or producing partners, aesthetic divergences between a director and a performer, or violent reactions to a show. And yet, at some point one becomes aware of how these same conflicting actor-networks collectively shape the outcome by performing their reciprocal associations. Together, friends and foes exert a level of pressure that leads to outcomes not necessarily in line with their intentions to support or harm. Just like effective play analysis scrutinizes both the “good” and “evil” characters of a play, an ANT investigation should value all engaged actors, while measuring the distance between their intentions and their actual effects. Whereas for the artists themselves a production’s satisfying outcome is assessed in terms of impact on the audience, increased fame, or ticket sales, for the ANT researcher both gloriously successful and flawed or failed performances can reveal a fascinating nexus of agencies worth pursuing. The paradox, of course, is that seamless productions tend to blackbox their actors more completely,

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whereas any glitches or breaks in their execution expose the actors more clearly and therefore yield more specific, exciting results for the researcher. Ultimately, it is all about choosing a node on the network and setting out to follow the associative rays that radiate from it in all directions: in this way, one can almost feel the pulse of all the actors at work in creating theatre. By analyzing the work of Copi, Savary, Arias, Lavelli, and their theatre groups, networks, and assemblages, I have given several examples of how no artist ever creates on their own but rather weaves together the threads performed by a multitude of converging human and non-­ human actors.



Synoptic Chronology of Relevant Events, 1930–1993

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Boselli, Actor-Network Dramaturgies, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32523-6

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Argentina

1938

1935

1930 Military coup headed by General José Félix Uriburu ends Hipólito Yrigoyen’s presidency, September 6. Beginning of the “infamous decade” of fraudulently elected governments. 1934

Year

France

Copi’s father, Raúl Damonte Taborda, begins writing for Crítica. Jérôme Savary’s family moves to the American Midwest to flee the imminent World War II.

Chapter 2

Marucha Bo born in Morón, Greater Buenos Aires.

Juan Carlos Stoppani born in Buenos Aires.

Chapter 3

Synoptic Chronology of Relevant Events, 1930–1993

Jorge Lavelli born in Buenos Aires.

Chapter 4

264  Synoptic Chronology of Relevant Events, 1930–1993

Argentina

1942 1943 June 4, President Ramón Castillo’s government overthrown by group of junior officers heavily influenced by Juan Domingo Perón. End of the “infamous decade.” 1944

1941

1940

1939

Year

France liberated from Nazi occupation.

September 3, France declares war on Nazi Germany, after their invasion of Poland. Germany invades France; the Vichy collaborationist regime is established in southeast France.

France

Crítica forced to support Perón’s military government.

Damonte Taborda becomes Crítica’s director; visits US Congress Savary born in Buenos Aires.

Damonte Taborda marries Georgina Nicolasa Botana; Copi born in Buenos Aires. Savary’s family moves to Argentina.

Chapter 2

Alfredo Rodríguez Arias born in Lanús, Greater Buenos Aires.

Facundo Bo born in Buenos Aires.

Roberto Platé born in Buenos Aires. Marilú Marini born in Mar del Plata.

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

(continued)

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Argentina

1951 Evita withdraws from her candidacy to vice-president in upcoming elections due to illness, August 31.

1945 Perón becomes vice-president, war minister, and secretary of labor for President Edelmiro Farrell. Perón arrested but freed by popular pressure on October 17. Birth of Peronism. Perón marries María Eva Duarte (Evita), October 22. 1946 Perón wins the elections, becomes president, June 4. Dissolves all existing parties, creates the sole official Justicialista party. 1947

Year

(continued)

Crítica belittles Perón and suffers violent attacks. Copi’s family moves to Montevideo, Uruguay.

Jeanne Laurent initiates the process of theatrical decentralization (1945–1952)

Savary’s family returns to France. The Botanas lose control of Crítica to Peronist investors.

Damonte Taborda sells Crítica to Copi’s grandmother Medina Onrubia and her sons.

Chapter 2

France

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

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Argentina

1955 The Liberating Revolution leads to the toppling of Perón, September 16. General Pedro Eugenio Aramburu becomes president. Peronism is declared a crime. 1956

1952 Evita is named Spiritual Leader of the Nation by Congress, May 7. Perón begins his second term as president, June 4. Death of Evita, July 26. 1954

Year

Algerian War of Independence against France begins

France

Savary moves to Paris on his own.

Copi’s family returns to Argentina.

Copi’s family moves to Paris.

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

(continued)

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Argentina

1962 Frondizi arrested, March 29. Fights between military factions end with victory for the Azules, led by General Juan Carlos Onganía.

1960 The exiled Perón takes residence in Spain 1961

1957 Arturo Frondizi of UCRI (Intransigent Radicals) wins elections with support of Peronism. 1958 National Endowment for the Arts (FNA) created. Frondizi becomes president, May 1.

Year

(continued)

Second edition of the University of the Théâtre des Nations in Paris. Algeria granted independence from France.

University of the Théâtre des Nations opens.

Fifth Republic and new Constitution approved by referendum. Charles de Gaulle elected president.

France

Copi, unable to receive funds from his father, is forced to stay in Paris. Savary held in prison for a month in Argentina during his military service.

Savary leaves Paris for New York.

Savary begins studies at the École national supérieure des Arts Décoratifs.

Copi stages his first play, An Angel for Madame Lisca, Teatro Sarmiento, Buenos Aires.

Chapter 2

Arias, Facundo Bo, and Stoppani meet in Buenos Aires.

The Di Tella Foundation is officially established.

Chapter 3

Lavelli starts studying at the University of the Théâtre des Nations. Lavelli stages Ionesco’s The Picture at the conclusion of the second year of the University of the Théâtre des Nations.

Lavelli moves to Paris.

Chapter 4

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Chapter 3

1965

1964

Savary stages Arrabal’s The Labyrinth, Théâtre Daniel Sorano, Vincennes, near Paris.

Di Tella exhibition Experiencias visuales 1967. Arias directs Adventures 1 and 2.

Savary directs Copi’s sketch Primera Plana publishes a The Alligator, UNEF Festival, cover on the Grupo Pop. Paris. Arias directs Drácula at the Di Tella.

Chapter 2

1966 Argentine Revolution: General Juan Carlos Onganía’s military dictatorship begins June 28. 1967

France Savary returns to Paris, works Stoppani and Arias move to Calle de Melo, Buenos as barman at Arlette Reinberg’s cabaret. Aires; exhibit at the Lirolay Gallery. The Di Tella Institute inaugurates its downtown building. Savary participates in the Arias and Stoppani take University of the Théâtre des over two floors of the Nations; writes his first two Lirolay Gallery with their plays, The Invasion of Olive creations; throw them into Green and The Boxes; directs the River Plate. Copi’s sketch The Tea in Ibiza, Spain. Savary stages his two plays at the Comédie de Paris.

Argentina

1963

Year

(continued)

Lavelli directs Gombrowicz’s Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy, Théâtre de Bourgogne and Théâtre de l’Odéon, Paris. Lavelli directs Copi’s sketch Saint Genevieve in her Bathtub, Bilboquet and American Center, Paris.

Lavelli wins the Young Companies Competition with Gombrowicz’s The Wedding, Théâtre Récamier, Paris.

Chapter 4

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Arias/TSE stage The Lavelli directs Copi’s History of Theatre, Théâtre The Homosexual or the de l’Épée de Bois, Paris. Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself, Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, Paris.

Savary/Grand Magic Circus stage Zartan, the Unloved Brother of Tarzan, Théâtre 140, Paris.

1970 Onganía forced to resign by military junta led by General Alejandro Lanusse, June 8. 1971

President De Gaulle resigns

1969

Lavelli directs Copi’s The Day of a Dreamer, Théâtre de Lutèce, Paris.

Arias directs Futura and Love & Song (El lobizón), Di Tella. Di Tella exhibition Experiencias 1968, with Plate’s The Restroom. TSE on tour: Teatro Ateneo, Caracas; Hunter College Playhouse, New York City. Stoppani and Bo fly to Paris. Arias meets Copi in New York City, then moves to Paris. Arias directs Copi’s Eva Perón, Théâtre de l’Epée de Bois, Paris.

The Labyrinth hosted at the Mercury Theatre in London; Interact International Theatre Festival at Brandeis University (Waltham, MA), and La MaMa, New York City.

Civil unrest, with strikes by students and trade unionists in May. Théâtre de l’Odéon occupied by around 2,500 students on May 15.

Chapter 4

1968

Chapter 3

Chapter 2

Argentina

France

Year

(continued)

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Argentina

1976 Isabelita deposed by a military coup. The new military government initiates the violent National Reorganization Process, involving thousands of killings and disappearances.

1974 Perón dies, July 1; his third wife María Estela Martínez de Perón (Isabelita) becomes president. 1975

1973 Perón’s third presidency begins, October 12

1972

Year

France

Chapter 3

Savary works as screenwriter with Topor on a film, The Butcher, the Star, and the Orphan, with Copi among the actors.

Marilú Marini moves to Paris.

Savary/Grand Magic Circus at Munich Olympic Games; The Last Days of Solitude of Robinson Crusoe presented at various venues. Savary/Grand Magic Circus stages From Moses to Mao, Théâtre National de Strasbourg. Savary and Copi present Good Stoppani designs costumes Bye Mister Freud, Théâtre de for Good Bye Mister Freud. la Porte Saint-Martin, Paris.

Chapter 2

(continued)

Lavelli stages Copi’s The Four Twins, Le Palace, Festival d’Automne, Paris.

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Argentina

1982 The military government is weakened after losing the Falklands/Malvinas War with Britain. 1983 After democratic elections, Raúl Alfonsín becomes president, December 10. 1984

1981

Year

(continued)

François Mitterrand elected president; nominates Jack Lang Minister of Culture and doubles the ministry’s budget; Robert Abirached becomes Director of the Theatre and Spectacles Department.

France

Grand Magic Circus stages Fat Pig (Théâtre Mogador, Paris) and Bye Bye Show Biz (various venues).

Chapter 2

Arias stages The Seated Woman, adapted from Copi’s comic strips. Copi plays The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur at the Théâtre de la Bastille, Paris.

Chapter 3

Copi realizes he has contracted AIDS

Chapter 4

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1993

1990

Savary nominated director of the Théâtre National de Chaillot (until 2000). Arias directs Copi’s The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur and Loretta Strong at Aubervilliers.

Chapter 2

1988

Mitterrand reelected president.

France

Copi is able to visit Argentina a last time, thanks to the new political climate in the country.

Argentina

1987

1985

Year Arias nominated director of the National Dramatic Center of Aubervilliers/ Théâtre de la Commune.

Chapter 3

Arias directs Copi’s Cachafaz at La Colline.

Lavelli directs Copi’s The Night of Madame Lucienne, at the Avignon Festival and Aubervilliers. Lavelli begins as artistic director at the Théâtre de la Colline, Paris (until 1996); directs Copi’s Grand Finale.

Chapter 4

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Index1

A Abirached, Robert, 154, 203–204, 204n113, 204n114, 205n117, 219n178, 220, 246, 254 Actant/actants, see Actor-network/ actor-networks Acteur réseau, see Actor-network/ actor-networks Actor-network dramaturgy, 5, 12, 14, 15, 19–88, 182n23, 246, 255, 259–273 Actor-network theory (ANT), 3n3, 5–8, 6n8, 7n11, 8n15, 8n16, 9n21, 10, 10n25, 12, 13, 15, 20, 21, 21n3, 32, 40, 43, 45, 51n119, 61, 64, 65, 74, 85–88, 94, 94n6, 96, 128, 130, 136, 140n219, 150, 175, 175n4, 213, 224n204, 259–261

Actor-network/actor-networks, 1–15, 2n2, 3n3, 4n4, 6n9, 7n11, 10n24, 10n25, 20–23, 23n8, 25n16, 26, 33, 38, 38n68, 41, 43, 45, 47, 48, 55, 60n150, 61, 62n161, 64, 66–87, 93–99, 94n6, 96n9, 103–108, 115–117, 120, 122, 123n129, 124, 128, 132–134, 147–152, 163–166, 174–178, 175n4, 175n5, 182n24, 196, 197, 200, 202–205, 207, 208, 210n138, 214, 216, 216n166, 217, 233, 234n249, 242–247, 244n297, 253–262 Adventures 1 & 2, see Aventuras 1 y 2/Adventures 1 & 2 Agencement, see Actor-network/ actor-networks

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 S. Boselli, Actor-Network Dramaturgies, Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-32523-6

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INDEX

Agency/agencies, 2n2, 5–7, 5n5, 9, 9n21, 10, 13, 20, 22, 23, 27, 41, 60n150, 64, 66n178, 69, 73, 75, 84–86, 93, 96, 128–133, 136, 151, 165, 166, 175–177, 182n23, 185, 193, 195, 224n204, 228, 245–247, 253–255, 258–261 AIDS, 14, 154, 177, 202, 215, 217, 223, 225n205, 230, 230n230, 231n240 Aircraft (as actor), 224 Alcohol/alcoholic beverages, see Wine Algerian war, 40, 40n78, 86, 255 Alianza Francesa (French Institute), Buenos Aires, 99 Alliance Française, Paris, 187, 187n50 Alliance/alliances, 33, 34, 34n53, 87, 98, 245 Allio, René, 155 Alloway, Lawrence, 115–117, 132, 166, 254 Alvarado, Roberto, 118n106, 200n99 Alzheimer’s, 10, 14, 178, 239, 240, 240n277, 244 American Center, Paris, 50n116, 196–198, 196n86, 245 Anouilh, Jean, 28 Aramburu, Pedro Eugenio, 34, 181, 182n23 Argentina, 1–15, 20, 23–26, 24n11, 27n26, 28, 28n30, 33, 34, 36–42, 36n61, 42n84, 86, 94, 96, 98n14, 99n17, 101, 105n41, 124n133, 128, 131, 146, 148, 150, 153, 154, 162n346, 164, 165, 174n1, 179n9, 179n11, 182n24, 184, 188, 189, 195n83, 200, 210n137, 220, 224, 224n201, 232n246, 253–255 Argentine of Paris/Argentines of Paris, 2, 14, 22, 23, 32–35, 49, 61, 85,

165, 179–196, 208, 245, 253–258, 263–273 Arias, Alfredo/Arias, Alfredo Rodríguez, 1, 4, 9, 11–14, 35n55, 60, 60n152, 95, 97–167, 177, 178, 227, 233–246, 253, 254, 256, 262 Arnó, Maricarmen, 232n246 Arrabal, Fernando, 44n94, 48–60, 63, 63n168, 185n39, 196, 197, 197n89, 199, 200n99, 209n131, 254 Arroyuelo, Javier, 114n87, 129 Artaud, Antonin, 177n8, 186n45, 191 Arts Déco, see École national supérieure des Arts Décoratifs Asquini, Pedro, 180n13 Assemblage/assemblages, 2–4, 3n3, 4n4, 6n8, 9–12, 10n25, 31–35, 37, 39, 41, 49, 57, 58, 58n144, 67, 71, 72, 75, 76, 77n220, 84, 85, 87, 93, 95, 96, 102, 128, 131n169, 142, 143, 145, 149, 152, 157n318, 161, 165, 166, 175n4, 178, 195, 202, 210, 211, 214, 224, 224n204, 231, 231n242, 236, 238–241, 244, 245, 255, 258, 260, 262 Association/associations, 2, 5–7, 6n8, 11, 13, 15, 23, 25, 29, 32, 33, 48, 62, 66, 73, 85, 94, 94n6, 95, 97, 99, 102, 102n32, 120, 140n219, 150, 165, 166, 174n1, 175, 177, 178, 183, 186n47, 187n49, 194, 195, 197, 200, 200n99, 204n113, 207, 210n138, 216, 227, 233, 247, 253, 256–259, 261 Aubervilliers, see Théâtre de la Commune, Aubervilliers/ La Commune Audiberti, Jacques, 99n19

 INDEX 

Aventuras 1 y 2/Adventures 1 & 2, 109, 112–113, 115, 116, 129, 134n183, 141 B Barletta, Leónidas, 98n15 Barrat, Martine, 63, 63n165, 196–198, 196n87, 200n99 Barrault, Jean Louis, 54, 54n129, 57, 133, 183, 189 Basaldúa, Héctor, 182 Battle Berres, Luis, 28 Baty, Gaston, 15, 203n109 Beck, Julian, 60n151 Beckett, Samuel, 44, 193n76 Benmussa, Simone, 133 Bercut, Louis, 228, 228n222 Berliner Ensemble, 184, 191n70 Berro, Marcial, 114n90, 118n105, 123 Berthelot, Claude, 134, 148n272, 149 Besson, Marie Dominique, 163n350 Bilboquet, Paris, 198, 198n92, 198n93, 199n95 Black box/black boxes/blackboxed/ blackboxing (ANT), 6, 6n8, 10, 20, 32, 41, 75, 76, 85, 86, 150, 152, 155, 166, 213, 245, 253, 260 Bo, Facundo, 1, 98–100, 107n51, 109, 112n76, 114, 118, 118n105, 123, 129–131, 133n181, 134, 139, 139n214, 145, 148, 149, 153, 158n323, 161n343, 165, 178, 205, 208, 210, 215, 215n160, 217, 234, 234n250, 234n253, 237–239, 239n276, 243–245, 254, 257, 258 Bo, Lucy, 257 Bo, Marucha, 1, 98, 107n51, 109, 110n67, 112n76, 114, 117–118,

277

118n109, 124, 131n171, 132–135, 133n180, 140, 153, 159n329, 257 Boero, Alejandra, 180n13 Botana, Carlos Natalio/Pitón, 30, 30n37 Botana, Helvio, 28–30, 30n37 Botana, Natalio, 24, 25, 30 Botbol, Albert, 185, 185n40 Braque Prize, 116, 124n137 Brecht, Bertolt, 97n11, 113n83, 184, 236, 236n258 Breton, André, 49 Brion, Françoise, 210 Brook, Peter, 66n177, 208n127 Bruneau, Philippe, 140, 146 Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1, 11, 13, 14, 22–26, 28, 30n40, 32, 37, 40–42, 42n86, 42n87, 45, 46n101, 93–167, 174n3, 178, 179, 179n9, 180n13, 181, 181n18, 183, 183n28, 183n29, 195, 195n83, 196n87, 201, 210n137, 232n246, 255–258 Bullrich, Francisco, 103n35 Bundles of lines/braid of lines, 29, 43 Buñuel, Luis, 194 C Cachafaz, 4, 10, 14, 70n192, 133n181, 158n323, 177, 178, 215n160, 222, 233–246, 235n255, 239n272, 239n276, 253, 255 Cairol, Julian, 132, 132n177, 133n178 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 186n45, 209n131 Camnitzer, Luis, 130, 131 Camp, 107, 108, 108n57, 111n70, 112–113, 115, 119, 129, 140, 140n221, 141

278 

INDEX

Camus, Albert, 99n19, 189 Cancela, Delia, 101n25, 107, 107n51, 110, 112, 116, 116n98, 125, 134 Cancer, 135, 136, 140n219 Caracas, Venezuela, 95, 115, 120, 130, 166 Carrière, Jean-Claude, 208n127 Cartel des Quatre, 15 Casarès, Maria/Casares, María, 39, 176, 176n7, 194, 195, 205–218, 226n212, 245 Casella, Carlos, 257n3 Castelli, Leo, 115–117, 166 Castelo, Nélida, 109n60 Castillo, Ramón, 25, 25n17 Cazzaniga, Alicia, 103n35 Ceccatty, René de, 238, 238n271, 239, 239n272, 239n276 Center for Inter-American Relations, New York, 117, 130, 131n171 Centofanti, Jorge, 118n105, 118n109, 129 Centro Cultural Kirchner, Buenos Aires, 256 Cérémonie pour une chèvre sur un nuage/Ceremony for a Goat on a Cloud, 199, 199n96 Champagne, 81–85, 255 Chanska, Koukou, 189–190, 190n60 Charasse, Jacques, 149, 149n278 Chauveau, Patrick, 19 Chayka/The Seagull, 180, 181n16 Chekhov, Anton, 28, 55, 180 Chetout, Wally, 159n329, 161n343 Chirac, Jacques, 217 Círculo de la Prensa/Press Club, Buenos Aires, 181 Circus, see Grand Magic Circus Collaborative circle/collaborative circles, 61, 62n159, 67, 99, 99n16

Collaborative pair/collaborative pairs, 14, 60–67, 69n189, 73, 74, 87, 99n16, 101, 209, 253 Collective creation, 20, 67, 69, 73–76, 74n202, 87, 152n294, 207n123 Comédie de Paris, Paris, 48, 49 Comédie Française, 173, 187, 204, 222n190, 222n194, 226n210, 231n236 Communitas, 59 Concours des Jeunes Compagnies/ Young Companies Competition, 47, 47n104, 187–194, 197, 203, 245, 256 Conglomerate/conglomerates, 56, 128, 261 Constellation/constellations, 4, 23, 34, 85, 154, 197 Contrescarpe/Place de la Contrescarpe, Paris, 43–45, 48, 54, 61, 62, 147, 255 Controversy, 47, 72, 76 Converge/convergent/convergence/ converging lines, 4, 8–10, 20, 21, 44, 65, 107, 122, 196–202, 208, 233, 236, 261 Copeau, Jacques, 37, 203n109, 206n120 Copi/Raúl Damonte Botana, 1, 19–88, 95, 132–162, 173–247, 253 Corneille, Pierre, 226n210 Cortazar, Augusto Raúl, 182 Cossa, Mario, 258 Costanera beach, Buenos Aires, 99–102, 127n154 Coutureau, Jacques, 54 Crazy Horse, Paris, 79, 79n224 Crítica, 24, 24n13, 25n16, 26, 28, 29 Crombecque, Alain, 43, 44n93, 48, 48n110, 49, 66, 66n177, 66n178, 82n240, 144, 149, 207

 INDEX 

Cuneo, José, 256n1 Cunningham, Merce, 99, 117n104, 208n127 Cutaia, Carlos, 114, 114n90, 118, 129, 131 D Damonte, Jorge, 27, 132, 237n262 Damonte Taborda, Raúl, 23–28, 34, 182n23 Danse Bouquet, 107 Danza Actual, 106, 196n87 Dasté, Jean, 37 d’Aubeterre, Hilcia, 44–48, 62, 63, 63n166 The Day of a Dreamer, see La journée d’une rêveuse/The Day of a Dreamer de Cuevas, George/Marquis de Cuevas, 38, 38n71, 39 de Gaulle, Charles, 203 De María, Gonzalo, 167n354 De Moïse à Mao/From Moses to Mao, 57, 66, 67, 70, 74n202, 76 Debts, 48, 49, 84, 194, 255 Decentralization, 14, 37, 38n68, 173–247 Demaría, Gonzalo, 256n1, 257 Derbecq, Germaine, 101, 101n26 Descent lines, see Genealogy/ genealogies/genealogical Deterritorialization, 95, 131, 134, 149, 164, 165, 254 Dhem, Bass, 159n329, 162 Di Fonzo Bo, Marcial, 257, 258, 258n4 Di Tella Institute, see Instituto Torcuato Di Tella/Torcuato Di Tella Institute, Buenos Aires Di Tella, Guido, 104 Di Tella, Torcuato, 97, 99–104, 103n37, 103n38, 104n39,

279

107–126, 111n70, 114n90, 115n94, 128, 129, 166 Discépolo, Armando, 236, 236n258 Disease agents, 4, 176, 255 Dislocated (action), 128, 164 Drácula, 109–113, 112n75, 112n76, 115–117, 119, 119n111, 129, 134n183, 141, 162n345, 166, 255 Dramaturgy, 7n12, 12, 15, 20, 21, 80 Drouot, Jean Claude, 140, 145, 149, 152 Drugs, 30, 41, 64, 65n176, 105n44, 137n204, 201n103 Duchaussoy, Michel, 226, 226n212, 227, 227n213, 228n221, 229, 231n235, 231n236 Dullin, Charles, 15, 184, 184n32, 187, 203n109 E École national supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, 40, 43, 48, 62n159, 63 Economic support, 23, 33, 41, 44, 65, 207n126 El baño/The Restroom, 109, 124–129 El lobizón, see Love & Song Eliot, Thomas Stearns, 121n117 Emerge/emergence, 4, 7, 20, 22, 23, 45, 50, 64, 128, 160, 177, 255, 256 Enroll/enrolling/enrollment/ enrollments, 6, 6n8, 9, 10, 25n16, 38n68, 40, 54n127, 55, 81, 136 Entity/entities, 2n2, 6, 8n16, 9, 10n25, 20, 23n8, 45, 51n119, 96, 116, 134, 136, 175, 175n5, 176, 178, 242, 246, 255, 256, 259, 260 See also Actor-network/ actor-networks

280 

INDEX

Ergon, 7n12, 86, 86n250 Esviza, Marta, 114n90, 118n105, 120 Eva Perón (person), see Evita Perón (María Eva Duarte) Eva Perón (play by Copi), 4, 13, 26–28, 35n55, 95, 96, 132–154, 157n317, 162, 162n346, 163, 165, 166, 181, 182n23, 201, 245, 255, 258 Event-network theory, 64 Evita Perón (María Eva Duarte), 28n27, 135, 136, 146, 147, 151 Experiencias 1968, 106, 125 Experiencias visuales 1967, 106, 125 F Fabre, Valentin, 219, 219n179, 221n188 Family/families (as actors), 8, 12, 22–25, 85, 136, 179 Farrell, Michael, 61, 62, 64, 99n16 The Fashion Show Poetry Event, 131 Ferrandiz, Gloria, 30n40 Festival d’Automne, Paris, 19, 22, 66, 66n178, 78, 81, 87, 202, 204 Festival d’Avignon/Avignon Festival, 14, 177, 184, 201n102, 204–218 Festival de la libre expression/Festival of Free Expression, Paris, 50, 196 Festival des nuits de Bourgogne/ Festival of the Nights of Bourgogne, 47n104 Festival du Jeune Théâtre International/Festival of International Young Theatre, 134n183 Festival International d’Art Dramatique de la Ville de Paris/ City of Paris International Festival of Dramatic Art, 46n101

Festival International d’Art Dramatique et Lyrique/ International Festival of Dramatic and Operatic Art, 46n101 Feydeau, Georges, 230 Filiation/filiations, 33, 34, 34n53, 48n109 Fini, Leonor, 132n173 Folies-Bergère, Paris, 66, 66n179, 77n220, 142, 233, 234 Fondo Nacional de las Artes (FNA), 180–184, 192n72, 245 Fous des Folies, 234n250, 238, 239, 240n277 The Four Twins, see Les quatre jumelles/The Four Twins France, 1–15, 20, 32, 32n48, 35–41, 44, 46n101, 57, 86, 87, 98n14, 99n17, 108, 114n87, 116, 121n119, 133, 135, 146, 152n294, 162n346, 163–165, 176–178, 183–185, 187, 187n49, 193, 193n74, 195, 203n109, 204, 206, 206n120, 210n137, 216, 217, 217n173, 224, 234n249, 253–256, 258 Franck, Frédéric, 236, 237n262, 242–244, 243n294, 243n295, 244n297 Freud, Sigmund, 126, 127n154 Friendship, 22, 61–63, 85, 99n16, 147, 165, 186, 207, 208, 225n206, 233, 234n249, 255 From Moses to Mao, see De Moïse à Mao/From Moses to Mao Frondizi, Arturo, 20, 34, 42 Fuentes, Carlos, 208n130 Funding/funds (as actors), 5, 135 Futura, 113–115, 116n96, 119n111, 124, 129, 129n162, 134n183, 141

 INDEX 

G Gabardin, Marie, 174n3 Gambaro, Griselda, 109 García Lorca, Federico, 27, 194, 221n189, 226n210 García, Víctor, 43, 44n93, 45–48, 48n110, 62, 65, 65n176, 133 Garran, Gabriel, 154n306 Gay-Bellile, Christian, 74, 82–84, 85n247 Gémier, Firmin, 39n73, 46n101 Genealogy/genealogies/genealogical, 3n3, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20–22, 29, 35, 35n57, 45, 59, 103n38, 121, 215, 259 Genet, Jean, 150, 150n287, 157n317, 157n319, 193n76, 236, 236n258 Germany/German, 25, 53, 85, 118n109, 124, 193n74 Gide, André, 189 Giménez, Edgardo, 102, 106, 107, 107n52 Giono, Jean, 36 Giraudoux, Jean, 206n120 Godard, Colette, 43, 57, 62, 68, 110n67, 152, 254 Goddess, 109, 129, 130, 133, 134n183, 139, 139n214 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 208 Goldenberg, Ariel, 174n1 Gombrowicz, Witold, 178, 187–195, 245 Gonzalez, Rafael, 182 Good Bye Mister Freud, 4, 11–13, 19–88, 152, 201, 202, 214, 253, 255, 257 Grand Finale, see Une visite inopportune/Grand Finale Grand Magic Circus, 12, 13, 19–88, 59n148, 60n150, 68n185, 68n187, 71n194, 71n196, 72n199, 82n240, 84n244, 231n242, 254

281

Grand Théâtre Panique/Grand Panic Circus, see Grand Magic Circus Greco, Alberto, 101, 101n28, 102 Grotowski, Jerzy, 60n151 Groupe de recherche 62, 186, 186n45 Grupo de Trabajos Experimentales (Experimental Works Group), see TSE group/TSE Grupo Pop, 104–108, 109n61 Guerín, Federico, 237n263 Guibourg, Edmundo, 182, 182n26 Guy, Michel, 66 H Hager, Larry, 159n329, 161n343, 162, 162n345, 234n251, 239, 257 Happening/happenings, 53, 56, 59n148, 100, 102, 102n33, 106, 106n48, 109, 109n59, 109n61, 131, 131n171, 199 Heftre, Mona, 68, 68n186, 82 Herszberg, Laurence, 237n262, 243, 243n295 Heterogeneity/heterogeneous, 6n9, 9, 10, 10n25, 33n51, 71, 87, 93, 175n4, 231, 236, 244, 245 Heterotopia/heterotopic/ heterotopical, 96, 97, 103–108, 111, 112n75, 122, 125, 128, 143, 157, 165, 228 Hiegel, Catherine, 227, 227n219, 228n222, 231n236 Higgins, Frank Wayland, 35 History (as actor), 9, 12, 20, 44 The Homosexual or the Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself, 60n152, 201, 258 See also L’homosexuel ou la difficulté de s’exprimer/The Homosexual or the Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself

282 

INDEX

Hooligans, 96, 151, 164, 165, 255 Hovelaque, Claire Hélène Béatrix, 35, 37, 41 Hugo, Victor, 208n127 Human actors, 5, 11, 12, 14, 15, 20, 64, 85, 96, 164, 176, 216, 262 Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), 215, 217 Hunter College Playhouse, New York, 117, 131 I Identities, 12, 15, 22, 30n40, 31, 32, 33n52, 45, 60n150, 130n164, 132, 132n172, 157, 175, 175n5, 192n72, 195, 260 See also Actor-network/ actor-networks Immutable mobile, 121, 190n64, 224 Independent theatre (in Buenos Aires), 98, 181, 183, 201 Instituto Torcuato Di Tella/Torcuato Di Tella Institute, Buenos Aires, 97, 102–104, 103n37, 104n39, 107–123, 109n59, 113n84, 114n90, 115n94, 125, 126, 128, 129, 166, 255 Interact International Theatre Festival, 56 Interessement, 45 Intermediary/intermediaries, 51n119, 74, 117n100, 143, 150–152, 224n204 The Invasion of Olive Green, 44 See also L’invasion du vert olive/The Invasion of Olive Green Ionesco, Eugène, 44, 184, 186, 186n45, 193n76, 206n120, 209n131, 213n150, 221n189, 226n212, 227n219, 230, 230n232, 234n251 Iturbe, Nora, 109n60, 112n76

J Jacoby, Roberto, 126 Jaimes, Jaime, 99n19 Janáček, Leoš, 224n200 Jarry, Alfred, 47, 137, 186n45, 188n54 Jaua, Zobeida, 129n163, 130n165, 159n329, 162 Jay, Jean-Claude, 227, 228n222, 231n236 Jodorowsky, Alejandro, 49–51, 50n116, 51n118 Jouvet, Louis, 15, 38n68, 183, 183n29, 203n109 K Kamien, Ana, 106, 107 Kantor, Tadeusz, 56n138, 208n127 Karagheuz, Hermine, 129n163 Kemp, Lindsay, 54 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 42n86 Khetib, Miloud, 210 Kitsch, 71n196, 108, 108n57, 117–120, 206n119 Kostzer, Kado, 258 Kukułczanka, Jadwiga, see Chanska, Koukou L The Labyrinth, see Le labyrinthe/The Labyrinth La femme assise/The Seated Woman, 154, 174n3 Laferrère, Gregorio de, 33 La journée d’une rêveuse/The Day of a Dreamer, 60n152, 65, 140n222, 185n39, 200, 258n4 L’alligator/The Alligator, 62, 63 La MaMa Theatre, New York, 56, 57n140, 58 La Menesunda, 105

 INDEX 

La morsa/The Vise, 184 Lang, Jack, 154, 203, 203n112, 204n113, 219 La nuit de Madame Lucienne/The Night of Madame Lucienne, 4, 14, 177, 178, 202, 205–218, 223, 224, 233, 233n247, 246, 254, 255 La Pyramide/The Pyramid, 68n186 Las aventuras de la Vicky/The Adventures of Vicky, 101, 142n237 Lastreto, Susana, 237n263 Latin Quarter, Paris, 44, 44n95, 44n96, 133, 148n271 Laurent, Jeanne, 38n68, 203 Lavelli, Jorge, 1, 4, 11–15, 41, 47, 60, 60n152, 65, 65n176, 132n173, 133, 133n178, 140n222, 158n325, 173–247, 253–258, 262 La voleuse de Londres/The London Thief, 100, 100n23 Lebel, Jean-Jacques, 50n116, 196, 197 Lebois, Michel, 40, 43, 56n139, 67n183 Lecoq, Jacques, 184 Legavre, Jean Ives, 152, 257 Le jeu de l’amour et du hazard/The Game of Love and Chance, 155 Le labyrinthe/The Labyrinth, 49, 49n112, 50n117, 51–60, 63, 254 Léotard, François, 204n113, 220, 221, 221n188 Le Palace, Paris, 201n103, 202 Le Pen, Jean Marie, 149n278 Lerminier, Georges, 187n50, 190n62 Les boîtes (The Boxes), 44 L’Escale cabaret, 44, 48, 62, 65, 85 Les derniers jours de solitude de Robinson Crusoë/The Last Days of Solitude of Robinson Crusoe, 57

283

Les escaliers du Sacré-Cœur/The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur, 13, 70n192, 95, 154–164, 206, 207n123, 238, 240, 241 Les Lucioles, 258, 258n4 Les paravents/The Screens, 150 Les quatre jumelles/The Four Twins, 60n152, 201, 201n103, 202 Le tableau (The Picture), 186 Le thé (The Tea), 62 Leviathan, 10, 53, 54n127, 75 Levy, Martine, 243, 244 L’histoire du théâtre/The History of Theatre, 152, 152n294 L’homosexuel ou la difficulté de s’exprimer/The Homosexual or the Difficulty of Sexpressing Oneself, 60n152, 70n192, 201, 258 Lichtenstein, Roy, 109 Lineage, 12, 13, 20, 86 Line of becoming/lines of becoming/ line of flight, 8, 8n17, 9, 12, 22, 32, 43, 44, 86, 95, 96, 96n9, 109, 214, 255, 259 L’invasion du vert olive/The Invasion of Olive Green, 44 Lirolay Gallery, Buenos Aires, 101, 124n137 The Living Theatre, 60n151 London, 53–56, 95, 134 Loretta Strong, 156n314, 207n123 Los Independientes, 180, 180n13 Love & Song, 109, 117–120, 129 Lovero, Onofre, 180n13 Luxe, 202, 202n107 M Machine/machines, 6, 9, 23n8, 41, 73–81, 214 Magic Circus, see Grand Magic Circus Magnet place, 61, 62 Maillet, Pierre, 258n4

284 

INDEX

Malraux, André, 203, 218 Manzana loca/crazy block, 13, 95, 97, 99, 101, 101n26, 103, 122, 123, 165, 255 Marijuana, 30, 41, 65n174 Marini, Marilú, 98, 98n14, 101n25, 106, 107, 109, 109n59, 117, 117n104, 118, 118n109, 121n117, 129, 131, 153, 153n299, 154n305, 159n329, 159n330, 160, 237n263, 258 Marivaux, Pierre de, 155, 186n45 Martínez, Graciela, 106, 196, 196n87, 197, 197n90, 199n95, 200n99 Marx Brothers, 230 Masson, Diego, 191 Méchant Théâtre, 226 Mediator/mediators, 116, 117n100, 123n129, 128, 131, 144, 150–152, 165, 166, 222n192, 224n204 Medina Onrubia, Salvadora, 23, 28–32 Mercury Theatre, London, 53 Mesejean, Pablo, 101n25, 107, 107n51, 110, 112, 116, 116n98, 125, 134 Meshwork, 2, 3n3, 8, 96n9 Microbes, 2, 5, 11, 177, 216n166, 260 Microsucesos/Micro-Events, 106 Miller, Arthur, 179 Minujín, Marta, 102, 105–107, 109n59 Mitterrand, François, 154n307, 173–174, 174n1, 174n2, 203, 204n113, 217, 254 Mnouchkine, Ariane, 67, 67n182 Molière, 206n120 Money, 7, 12, 22, 27, 34, 36n59, 41, 81–85, 98, 100, 104n39, 115, 176, 194, 226, 244, 246

Monirys, Sabine, 63, 63n168, 68n186 Monsieur Loyal, 55, 55n132 Monster/monsters, 6n8, 140n219, 146 Montes, Marcos, 257n3 Montevideo, Uruguay, 26, 27, 235n255, 237, 237n264 Montmartre, Paris, 156–159 Montparnasse, Paris, 28, 196n85 Moretti, Michèle, 140 Moretto, Marcia, 109n60, 112n76 Mossian, Yirair, 181 Munich Olympic Games, Germany, 57 Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 129n162, 133 Museo de Arte Moderno, Buenos Aires, 124 Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes/ National Fine Arts Museum, Buenos Aires, 100, 104 Mussolini, Benito, 244 N Natale, Rodolfo, 210, 210n137, 215n160 National Drama Center of Aubervilliers, see Théâtre de la Commune, Aubervilliers/ La Commune Navarro, Fanny, 167n354 Navarro, Roberto, 237n263 Network/networks, see Actor-­ network/actor-networks Neveux, Georges, 100 New York City, 36, 40–42, 42n87, 53, 56, 57, 57n140, 63n165, 65n176, 70, 95, 104, 105, 105n41, 115–117, 119, 120, 130–132, 131n170, 133n178, 134, 166, 216, 254 Nicola L., 63

 INDEX 

Nicolasa Botana, Georgina, 25 Nicolin, Jérôme, 154n305 The Night of Madame Lucienne, see La nuit de Madame Lucienne/The Night of Madame Lucienne Node/nodes, 9, 12–14, 22, 43, 95, 96, 128, 175n4, 255, 258, 262 Nomadic/nomadology, 15, 33n52, 95, 96, 132n172, 164, 165, 254, 260 Non-human actors/non-human agents/non-human entities, 6n8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 20, 41, 64, 85, 94, 136, 165, 176, 177, 195, 215, 223, 224, 254, 255, 258, 260, 262 Norén, Lars, 210n138 Novoa, Yoel, 114n90, 118n105, 120 Nuevo Teatro, Buenos Aires, 180, 180n13 O Obaldia, René de, 186n45 Obligatory passage points, 11 Ocampo, Victoria, 182 O’Horgan, Tom, 53 O’Neill, Eugene, 27, 179, 208n130 Onganía, Juan Carlos, 34, 96, 122, 122n121, 127, 128, 164, 182n24, 254 Ordre Nouveau, 148, 148n271 Organización Latino Americana de Teatro/OLAT/Latin American Theatre Organization, 180–183, 181n16 Oteiza, Enrique, 104, 124, 127 P Panic movement/panic theatre, 48–51, 62n159

285

Panorama/panoramas, 133–152 Parergon, 7n12, 86, 86n250 Paris, 1, 2, 4, 11, 13–15, 19, 22–24, 28, 32–34, 36, 38, 38n71, 39, 42–45, 42n86, 46n101, 49, 53, 57n141, 58, 61, 63, 65n176, 67n182, 68, 68n185, 78n223, 85, 88, 93–167, 173–247, 254–258 Pascual, Héctor, 132 Pasteur, Louis, 175, 177n8, 217 Patte, Jean-Marie, 186, 186n46 Pavillon de Marsan, Paris, 47 Peauger, Annick, 239 Pedrazzini, Horacio, 107n51, 109n60, 114n90, 118n105 Perón, Juan Domingo, 25–28, 34, 135, 138, 138n206, 140–142, 143n240, 146, 146n262, 147, 148n270, 151, 181, 182n23 Perrottet, Jean, 219, 219n179 Petraglia, Jorge, 113n84 Philipe, Gérard, 39 Pinasco, Juan Carlos, 182 Pinter, Harold, 99n19 Pirandello, Luigi, 55, 99n19, 179, 184 Pitoëff, Georges, 15, 203n109 Planchon, Roger, 113n83 Platé, Ellen, 118n105 Platé, Roberto, 1, 98, 98n14, 99, 102, 106, 109, 110n67, 117, 118n109, 120, 121, 124–129, 131n171, 132, 133, 133n180, 139n210, 143, 150–153, 159, 160, 164, 165, 234n250, 237n263, 241, 254 Polledo, Eduardo, 113, 114 Pop, 102, 106–110, 108n57, 112, 117, 119, 126, 127n154, 136, 137, 197n90 Posthuman, 3, 3n3, 15 Poulange, Dominique, 210, 210n138

286 

INDEX

Presle, Micheline, 19, 22, 68, 68n184, 68n185, 76, 78n223, 81, 81n235, 83n241 Prieto, Nyrma, 129n163, 130n165 Puzzovio, Dalila, 106, 107 R Radano, Alejandra, 257n3 Ralite, Jack, 154, 154n307 Rat costume, 213 puppet, 143n238, 206n119, 210, 210n137, 212, 212n145, 213n148 Reinerg, Arlette (cabaret), 43, 44, 49, 65 Resistencia Popular, 28, 31 The Restroom, see El baño/The Restroom Reterritorialization, 95, 152 Retoré, Guy, 218, 219n178, 220, 256 Revolución Libertadora/Liberating Revolution, 28 Rezvani, Serge, 208n130 Rhizomatic, 3, 13, 22, 85, 86, 95, 177 Ríos, Chacho, 109n60 Riva, Emmanuelle, 140, 201 Rivas, Humberto, 118n106, 200n99 Robnard, Jacques, 186, 191n66 Rodríguez Muñoz, Alberto, 180, 181n16 Romandini, Mariana, 118n106 Romero Brest, Jorge, 102, 104–108, 126n147 Rondano, Miguel Ángel, 106, 107 Rondo, Ernesto, 83 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano, 25 Rovère, Liliane, 210 Ruggeri, Ruggero, 179, 179n11

S Sainte Geneviève dans sa bagnoire/ Saint Genevieve in Her Bathtub, 178, 196–202 Salgado, Susana, 101n25, 107, 109n60 Salomon, Alain, 154n305, 159n329 Sánchez, Florencio, 33 Santantonín, Ruben, 105, 129 Sari-Seeri, 222, 228, 228n223 Savary, Jacques, 36, 36n61, 37, 41, 44, 227, 253 Savary, Jérôme, 1, 4, 9, 11–13, 15, 19–88, 53n124, 63n166, 68n184, 68n186, 71n196, 77n220, 78n223, 98, 152, 152n294, 154n305, 173, 174n1, 174n3, 175, 176, 178, 185, 197, 201, 207n123, 214, 254, 255, 257, 262 Scène à quatre (Foursome), 184 Schussheim, Jorge, 123 Schwartzbrod, Stephanie, 159n329 The Seated Woman, see La femme assise/The Seated Woman Sédir, Georges, 190 Seguí, Antonio, 197n90 Seine-Saint-Denis, Paris, 154n307, 155, 163 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus, 209 Sennett, Mack, 230 The Sermons of Jean Harlow & the Curses of Billy the Kid, 152 Seyrig, Delphine, 68n187, 139 Shakespeare, William, 55, 208n130, 209n131 SIAM manufacturing company, 103 Silva, Kallé, 239, 239n274, 240, 241n285 ́ Slub/The Wedding, 178, 187–195, 191n69, 193n74, 213, 255 Sociology of translation, 7

 INDEX 

Socks (as actor), 96, 131, 166, 255 Sonnabend, Ileana, 117, 133, 166 Souza, Rodolfo de, 237, 237n263, 239, 239n276, 240, 241n285 Spectacle Jean Tardieu, 187 Spregelburd, Rafael, 258 Squirru, Carlos, 106, 107 The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur, see Les escaliers du Sacré-Cœur/The Steps of the Sacré-Cœur Stewart, Ellen, 56 Stoker, Bram, 109 Stoppani, Juan, 1, 88, 88n253, 97, 99–102, 101n25, 106–108, 107n50, 110, 111, 112n76, 114–116, 115n93, 116n98, 118, 118n105, 119n111, 121n117, 122, 122n125, 123n132, 125, 126, 126n147, 127n154, 129–132, 129n161, 131n170, 131n171, 134, 135, 142, 142n237, 152, 153, 160n335, 164, 165, 201n102, 254, 257 Stravinsky, Igor, 208n130 Studio des Champs-Elysées, Paris, 185 T Tardieu, Jean, 187 Teatro Ateneo, Caracas, Venezuela, 130 Teatro Coliseo, Buenos Aires, 195 Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, 224n200 Teatro del Pueblo, Buenos Aires, 98n15 Teatro Grand Splendid, Buenos Aires, 179 Teatro San Martín/San Martín Theatre, Buenos Aires, 194, 195, 232n246 Territorialization, 164, 254 Testa, Clorindo, 103n35

287

Théâtre de Bourgogne, Paris, 195 Théâtre de Chaillot/Théâtre National de Chaillot, Paris, 39n73, 153, 154n305, 173 Théâtre de la Bastille, Paris, 158 Théâtre de la Cité internationale, Paris, 68n185, 201n102 Théâtre de la Colline/La Colline/ Théâtre National de la Colline, Paris, 13, 14, 173, 174n1, 175–177, 194, 195n83, 204, 205, 210n138, 218–222, 220n183, 221n187, 226, 226n211, 228, 228n222, 228n223, 229n224, 232–246, 232n245, 232n246, 234n249, 236n258, 253, 258 Théâtre de la Commune, Aubervilliers/La Commune, 14, 95, 154, 154n307, 155, 157, 159–164, 159n329, 163n348, 166, 173, 174n1, 177, 204, 208, 208n128, 214, 214n157, 223, 233, 242, 246, 258 Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, Paris, 78n221, 84n244 Théâtre de l’Atelier/L’Atelier, Paris, 236, 237, 242–245, 242n291, 242n292 Théâtre de la Ville, Paris, 185n40, 220n183 Théâtre de l’Épée de Bois/Épée de Bois, Paris, 43, 95, 129n162, 133, 134, 148n272, 151, 152n294 Théâtre de l’Est Parisien (TEP), Paris, 218 Théátre de l’Odéon, Paris, 54, 54n129, 195, 204 Théâtre de Lutèce, Paris, 43, 185, 185n39, 201n101 Théâtre de Plaisance, Paris, 53, 63

288 

INDEX

Théâtre de Poche/Théâtre de Poche-Montparnasse, Paris, 152, 185, 185n39 Théâtre des Maturins, Paris, 154n305 Théâtre des Nations, Paris, 46n101, 183, 184, 186 Théâtre d’Orsay, Paris, 57, 57n141 Théâtre du Châtelet/Châtelet, Paris, 66, 66n179, 77n220, 80 Théâtre du Soleil, Paris, 67, 67n182 Théâtre National de Strasbourg, 57n141, 204 Théâtre National Populaire (TNP), 39, 39n73, 67n182, 183, 183n28, 200n99, 218, 220 Théátre Odéon, Paris, 54, 54n129, 204 Théâtre Récamier, Paris, 190, 192 Théâtre Sans Explications, see TSE group/TSE Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt, Paris, 46n101, 185, 192, 192n71 Tía Vicenta, 31, 42 Topor, Roland, 50, 68n186, 68n187, 73, 199n95 Touchard, Pierre-Aimé, 187, 187n50, 188, 190, 190n62, 195, 245 Tournafond, Françoise, 237n263, 238n266 Trajectory, 3, 4, 9, 11, 22, 23, 34, 96, 104n39, 115, 118n108, 121, 123n129, 125, 142n237, 162, 176, 178, 181, 188, 192n72, 197, 197n90, 208, 238n271, 245, 253–255 See also Line of becoming Transatlantic, 1, 14, 147–150, 166, 167 Translation/translations, 6, 6n8, 6n9, 7, 9, 10, 10n25, 13, 20, 29, 35, 41, 43, 45, 55, 84n244, 85, 94n6, 95, 113, 117, 162, 163,

166, 189, 189n56, 190, 214, 218, 232n246, 238, 255 Translocation, see Translation/ translations Trejo, Mario, 113n84 TSE group/TSE, 4, 13–15, 88, 93–167, 121n119, 173–247, 253–255, 257, 258 U Ubu Roi (King Ubu), 47, 137 Un ángel para la señora Lisca/An Angel for Madame Lisca, 30n40, 235n254 Une chèvre sur un nuage/A Goat on a Cloud, 49n113 UNEF festival, 63 Une visite inopportune/Grand Finale, 14, 177, 221n189, 229n224, 231n235, 232n244 Unión Cívica Radical (UCR, Radical Civic Union), 24, 25, 34, 153n301 University of the Théâtre des Nations, 46, 46n101, 47, 183–186, 192n71, 245, 254 Uriburu, José Félix, 24 V Valle-Inclán, Ramón del, 46, 194 Vasochi, Salo, 181 Verdonck, Kris, 21 Vilar, Jean, 39, 39n73, 59, 59n148, 183, 183n28, 208 Villalba Welsh, Emilio, 182 Villanueva, Roberto, 105, 113n84, 153n299 Vingt-quatre heures/Twenty-Four Hours, 153 Vitez, Antoine, 39n73, 208n127, 213n151

 INDEX 

W Washington, D.C., 120, 130 Weave (of actions), 9, 12, 20 ́ The Wedding, see Slub/The Wedding Whitman, Robert, 109 Wilde, Oscar, 28, 68n184 Williams, Tennessee, 28, 179 Wilson, Robert, 66n177 Wine, 12, 22, 41, 64–66, 65n174, 65n176, 69, 85, 147 Wine (as actor), 64, 65, 85 World War II, 36, 86, 188, 255 X Xirgu, Margarita, 27, 194n80

289

Y Yrigoyen, Hipólito, 24, 34 Yvonne, princesse de Bourgogne/ Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy, 186n48, 195 Z Zachwatowicz, Krystyna, 186, 186n47, 186n48, 188–190, 196 Zartan, le frère mal aimé de Tarzan/ Zartan, the Unloved Brother of Tarzan, 57, 68n185 Zedong, Mao, 121n117 Zorrilla, China, 27