Les journées de la Culture du Bélarus

"Chagall... Chagall..."

La pièce "Chagall... Chagall..." a été mise en scène par Vitaly Barkovsky au Théâtre académique dramatique Yakub Kolas, à Vitebsk, en 1999. L'année suivante, en 2000 elle a reçu le Fringe First Award au Festival d'Edinbourg et un prix spécial au Festival international de Belaya Vezha à Brest (Bélarus).

Ce spectacle a reçu un écho favorable dans la presse anglaise :

"The Belarus artist Marc Chagall died in a lift, half way between the earth and sky: an appropriate place for a visionary inspired by ideas of flight. Other influences were memories of his Jewish upbringing in his hometown of Vitebsk.
In this affecting piece from the Belarus Slate Theatre, Chagall's final moments are recreated in a welter of images, fragments of dreams and half forgotten phrases. As his life slips away he returns to its beginnings.

In some ways this show should be entirely inaccessible for a British audience. It is performed in Belarusian, the synopsis is no great help, and it assumes that everyone is familiar with Chagall's work. But it works, not least because its spare, measured, distinctly eastern European modernist style is tempered by the welling emotion of Jewish folk memory and dance.
Not knowing what is being said means that you end up relating to the piece on an imagistic level. Tables transform into picture frames, whitewashed buildings fly across the air, Chagall's lovers, family and rivals metamorphose like ghosts in faded photos or old paintings, captured forever at that moment when the past meets the future and which is now lost forever" - The Guardian.

"Everything about this 70-minute tribute to Chagall, who was born in Belarus in 1887, is simply perfect with a breathtaking quality of acting. Chagall was shaped as an artist by the life of Vitebsk's Jewish community and by his love for the little city. Here, nine magnificent actors from the Yakub Kolas Belarusian Classic Drama State Theatre of Vitebsk recreate his life in a series of ten, exquisite, tableau-like scenes that shimmer with respect for the world the artist knew and with sorrow for the horrors that were to sleep it away" - The Scotsman.
"Although Marc Chagall's paintings may be familiar to most of us - for example, colourful dreamscapes of embracing couples - the circumstances of his life are probably less- well-known. Both, however, form the basis of this moving and atmospheric production by Yakub Kolus's company from Vitebsk, Belarus -birthplace of Chagall in 1889.

Moment before his death - between existence and non-existence - Chagall's life passes before us in a number of "memory fragments". Scenes, events and, above all, the people who were nearest to the great painter, are all depicted in a kind of dreamy tableau, much akin, stylistically, to Chagall's work. Ida, the painter's mother, his neighbour, Styapanauna, and his beautiful, delicate, and strange first love, Volechka, are all depicted with great conviction, Grigori Shatko's Commissar, Bolislav Sevko's Photographer and Gennadi Gayduk's Lead are memorable and powerful - these are actors in the tradition of Stanislavski Grotowski and Kanfor, where highly-crafted, physical skills are paramount" - The Herald.

Journées de la Culture du Bélarus

16 - 20 avril 2002
Espace Pierre Cardin - 1, Avenue Gabriel 75008 PARIS