If for some reason Florian Zeller’s theater has reached the category of contemporary classic, it is because he has known how to approach the avant-garde and post-dramatism to his liking, without ever forgetting the audience. And because he has read Harold Pinter in a formal way, without fear. His successful trilogy consisting of The Mother, The Father and The Son is proof, with complex structures and a terrifying psychological background. But also when he has dedicated himself to comedy, as in the play that we will see at the Teatre Akadèmia, La veritat de la mentida (L’envers du décor), directed by Guido Torlonia, where the classic aside, the moment in which the performers They address the public directly, they take center stage. Zeller tells us that he wanted to write a play about what is not said.
He wrote ‘La veritat de la mentida’ between ‘The Father’ and ‘The Son’, two tragic, heavy pieces. Did he feel like a little comedy, to laugh?
Yes, La veritat de la mentida belongs to the comedy register. It’s not the first one I’ve written. But it’s different from what I was doing at that time. Formally, to begin with, what has always interested me about theater is both what is said and what is not said, or what is implicit in what is said. It is something that I discovered as a spectator, as a reader, through the works of Pinter, the master of what is not said, also the master of underground relationships, of the apparent banality of language. He is a great explorer of subtext, which has more material and dangers than what is actually said. In it, what is not said is more important than what is said and offers precious material for the actors.
That has to do with theatrical language.
The exploration of theatrical language has always fascinated me and it is something that runs through my works: the use of banal, even anecdotal, language, irrigated by much more complex and violent underground rivers. L’envers du décor, as its name indicates (the back of the decoration), is born from the temptation, for once, to give direct access to what is not said, to the non-verbalized expression of our words. An underground war that ends up invading the scene. It’s a kind of fun, comic exploration between drama creatures.
You wrote it for Daniel Auteuil, right?
Yes. We met one day. We had wanted to work together for a long time, however, for different reasons, it had not been possible. We wanted to have fun like children, in a noble sense. I have always really liked what he has as an actor, that living thing of childhood. He wanted to rekindle mine and write a children’s piece.
Most of the work is voice-over, that is, a good part of it goes through the characters’ heads. Isn’t it more difficult?
The aside is one of the inherent principles of theater, a method of narration, which brings the scene and the audience into collusion and helps break the fourth wall. Therefore, it is a territory already explored by theater. Suddenly, though, it was about letting these asides grow like an excrescence. I liked the idea that it made the rest of the action gel, that it froze time, that it was like an iceberg. Something giant that cannot be seen and that social life, delicacy, corrections, respect, force us to hide.
What relationship does it have with comedy? ‘The Father’ must be the play with the most tragic ending in 21st century theater…
I am a more tragic than comic person. And that’s what interests me the most. But I think that the great actors are the ones who have access to this dimension of comedy. Because there is something related to childhood that seems to me to be inherent to the vitality of the actor. The great actor is connected to that part of childhood and, for me, comedy brings us back to that. To that innocent thing. The first comedy I wrote was called The Truth and it was a discovery, learning to laugh and make people laugh, to laugh with the actors. It made me very happy… Comedy and drama are two different paths. But all the authors I love have navigated between the two genres, even in the same work.
Where do your works come from?
Each work has a different story. Very often, I think of the actor when I write. It is the desire for a voice, for a presence, for a way of being in the world, that guides me in writing. But there is also a kind of innocence. I have never written a work truly searching for what I wanted to explain. For example, in The Father I did not intend to write a work about senile dementia. On the contrary. He wrote as if he were in a dream, in a slightly modified state of consciousness, with room for whatever might happen. In the case of La veritat de la mentida it was a little more intentional, because it was a comedy and it had a working title, The Underground War, which helped me. With the desire to offer material to laugh at Daniel Auteuil. I love him so much. I came across a photo of him, in Cannes, with Nicole Kidman next to him, who was two heads taller than him. He looked at her with so much love and admiration, with fascination.
What is the starting point of your trilogy, that of ‘The Father’, ‘The Mother’ and ‘The Son’?
First I wrote The Mother without knowing what would happen, inhabited by a phrase, a sensation. Digging that soil, I discovered the story. I remember that I searched a lot within myself before writing. I had the sensation of being some kind of thief: it was as if I was walking through a house that was not mine. I knew there was a mother, a son, who resonated within me. Until one day, by chance, I had an enlightenment. After a few days he had the work written… The father came shortly after. He wanted to do it, but he only had the title and he wanted it to be a kind of mirror of The Mother. I wrote it for an actor, Robert Hirsch, who is dead today. He was 86 years old when he made it… Then I remembered that I grew up next to my grandmother, that she was the one who educated me and, when I was fifteen years old, she began to suffer from senile dementia.
Is there material from your life, then, in these works?
I certainly re-explored my own history, but I never thought about it while writing The Father. When you write a novel, the exploration is always more conscious, of memories, of identity. But theater moves at the speed of orality, the verb is the boss and you always tread on terrain you didn’t know before. It has happened to me many times that I write a work and I am the spectator. I am the first viewer, in real time. My only function is to transcribe things that happen under my eyes… The child is born from the intention of closing something. I am a great admirer of Kieslowski and his Blue, White, Red, and that spurred me to close the trilogy. It took me years to make it. And it is very biographical.
They are great studies on human psychology.
I have never done research. I don’t know what I’m looking for when I write. What fascinates me about theater, as a spectator, is that it is a mirror where we look at ourselves, where we question ourselves about what we are, where sometimes we lose ourselves, sometimes we find ourselves again, sometimes we laugh at ourselves. The beauty of theater is discovering yourself. And often it’s not your goal. Sometimes you go just to distract yourself. Or to have fun… This reflective idea of ??theater, the fact of seeing each other, allows us to discover the experience of men’s lives through the experience of language. That is the ultimate beauty of theater. All living theater is an exploration of the psychology of human beings, because it is the raw material of theater.
Now he is transferring the trilogy to the cinema, also with considerable success. What place does theater currently occupy in your life?
An important place. I discovered theater quite late. My initial dream was about the novel. I didn’t know it, the theater. He simply loved literature. But I fell in love with this art form and had never imagined that it would occupy such an important place in my life. I have spent the last fifteen years in the theater, with my works or the works of others, and it has made me very happy. With covid everything changed and my relationship with theater changed. Today I live in the United States, in a city where there is less theater, less theater than in Paris. I maintain the loving bond. I go whenever I can, as a spectator. And I don’t lose the desire to write.
He gave the world premiere in London of his latest work, ‘The Forest’. How was the experience?
It was a strange experience, because then we were under covid restrictions. I couldn’t see the rehearsals and I didn’t collaborate in the production. It was like an appointment you can’t attend… Being released in another language is fascinating.
