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THÉÂTRE VIDY-LAUSANNE
AV. E.-H. JAQUES-DALCROZE 5
CH-1007 LAUSANNE
Production and touring
director
Caroline Barneaud
Mail: [email protected]
In charge of the project
Sophie Mercier
Mail: [email protected]
T +41 (0)21 619 45 83
P+41 (0)78 807 63 45
NICOLAS STEMANN
Nathan !?
after Nathan the Wise by G.E. Lessing
and Crassier/Bataclan by Elfriede Jelinek
Nathan !? © Samuel Rubio
NICOL AS STEMANN NATHAN !?
NATHAN !?
Direction :
Nicolas Stemann
Traduction and dramaturgy :
Mathieu Bertholet
Scenography :
Katrin Nottrodt
Music :
Waël Koudaih (Rayess Bek)
Costumes :
Marysol del Castillo
Video :
Claudia Lehmann
Assistant to the direction :
Nora Bussenius
Intern assistant to the direction :
Mathias Brossard
Intern assistant costumes :
Giulia Rossini
Decor construction :
Ateliers du Théâtre de Vidy
With :
Lorry Hardel
Lara Katthabi
Mounir Margoum
Serge Martin
Elios Noël
Véronique Nordey
Laurent Papot
Lamya Regragui
and two musicians :
Waël Koudaih (Rayess Bek)
Yann Pittard
Production :
Théâtre de Vidy
Coproduction :
MC93- Maison de la Culture de la Seine St-Denis, Bobigny
Théâtre National de Strasbourg
Théâtre National de Bretagne
Bonlieu Scène nationale Annecy et La Bâtie-Festival
de Genève dans le cadre du programme INTERREG
France-Suisse 2014-2020
With the support of:
Fonds d’Insertion pour Jeunes Artistes Dramatiques,
D.R.A.C. et Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur
L’Arche is the theatral agent of Elfriede Jelinek
Creation on September 14th 2016 at the Vidy Theatre
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NICOL AS STEMANN NATHAN !?
PRESENTATION
Nicolas Stemann has already directed Nathan the Wise, Lessing’s well-known masterpiece,
along with a “secondary drama” commissioned from Elfriede Jelinek (at the Thalia Theater in
Hamburg in 2009). Seven years later, in a Europe afflicted by a brand of terrorism marked by
religious ideology and violently confronted with the questioning of its models of integration and
tolerance, he reworks these two texts in a new production.
Nathan’s Promise
A long time ago, Nathan’s wife and their children died in a fire. Only Nathan survived. Nathan
was therefore condemned to survive in spite of the emptiness and absence. Lessing thus
describes the recovery of a wounded man’s dignity and faith in humanity. The German author
starts his drama with a new fire that destroys Nathan’s home again – another ordeal for the
old man.
For Nathan, the recovery of life occurs through his love for his adoptive daughter Recha. The
amazing thing is, Nathan the Jew has adopted a Christian girl, despite the fact that it was
Christians that caused the fire and destroyed his family. Nathan educates young Recha as
though she were his own daughter. It is through her that he becomes himself, that he
accomplishes who he is, that he becomes Nathan the Wise and overcomes what appears
insurmountable: the repetition of history.
Lessing’s Nathan the Wise thus opposes the surpassing of the self with the affirmation of
an identity: strive to be better, even if it means that this is only a rudimentary hope, a belief,
rather than conform to set behaviours determined in advance by habits and dogmas.
This belief in goodness resonates particularly well with our era, as crusades are again
justifying that houses be destroyed by fire.
Nathan the Wise is a promise: humans can be free, free and dignified, free of any influence,
any dependency, or any other person. Each individual can be both him or herself and different,
linked to everyone and to any other individual by the simple fact of being human. This is a
promise. And this promise also identifies a demand: the pressing need for an education of
humanity.
Nicolas Stemann commissioned Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek (Nobel Prize for
Literature 2004) to write a complement to Lessing’s text. She wrote Slag Heap and
Bataclan that comment and extend the original text.
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NICOL AS STEMANN NATHAN !?
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«NATHAN THE WISE»
BY G.-E. LESSING
SYNOPSIS
11187. Jerusalem, conquered by the crusades, has been taken over by the Sultan Saladin.
The old Jewish merchant Nathan returns from a business trip. His daughter Recha has just
been saved from her burning home by a young Templar; himself spared by Saladin for his
resemblance to his brother Assad. Nathan, who had already lost his wife and his sons in a
fire, makes a vow of gratitude to this young knight, who refuses it, protesting that he was
only doing his duty.
In the meantime, Saladin is ruined by his philanthropic charity, even though he needs funds
to continue the war and protect the city. He convokes and questions the rich merchant Nathan
on the three monotheisms – of which only one, logically, must speak the truth – hopeful that
the Jew’s attachment to his religion will enable him to take control of his goods. Nathan
responds with the parable of the rings, taken from Boccace :
A father owns a ring handed down from generation to generation and that is able to
make the wearer agreeable to God and men. He can’t decide which of his three sons
to give it to. He has two copies made and pretends to give to each of them the true ring.
Once the father has died, the sons accuse one another of lying. A judge convinces them
to make up their minds through the facts: the one who holds the real ring will inevitably
be the most beloved of the three.
Nathan compares the parable to the three religions : the true religion will be the one that
makes humans good – religion is thus concerned with goodness, and not with dogma or
truth. Meanwhile, the Templar has fallen in love with Recha, Nathan’s daughter, who he
saved. But Nathan, despite the fact that he was just preaching tolerance, seems to distrust
this potential union... The knight thus learns from the servant that Recha was adopted by
Nathan and that her parents were Christians : he goes to ask the advice of the patriarch of
Jerusalem. In spite of his caution, the patriarch condemns the Jew Nathan to the pyre for
having raised a Christian girl in the false religion... before a monk brings proof that Recha
and the Templar are brother and sister and that they are the children of Assad, Saladin’s
converted brother – a fact that Nathan did not want to admit and that Saladin was unaware
of...
Published in 1779, Nathan the Wise is Lessing’s last play. The Ring Parable, at the centre of
the drama, is considered to be one of the key texts of the Enlightenment period philosophy
concerning tolerance.
ERIC VAUTRIN
NICOL AS STEMANN NATHAN !?
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JELINEK AND STEMANN READERS
OF LESSING
TOWARDS A CRITIQUE OF TOLERANCE
Lessing’s story is a kind of dissertation read aloud – full of words, thoughts and utopia and
virtually devoid of action. In a few short monologues that can be inserted within Lessing’s
drama, Elfriede Jelinek introduces what the German author had put aside, what he had
neglected in favour of his moral, ethical and idealistic line of thought: the states of the body,
desire and flesh.
In Nathan the Wise, the desire of the two young people, Recha and the Templar, is literally
annulled in favour of the stability of the family: thus, in Lessing’s idealism, tolerance and
fraternity require the sacrifice of individual desires. In this sense, Nathan can also be read
as a tragedy of love rendered impossible in favour of social peace.
Nathan, a convinced and convincing idealist who values mutual goodness rather than
identification with dogmas, wants to have a house built in order to thwart the catastrophic
fate of his home. Jelinek has the protagonists state that this home will have a basement, a
reserved and hidden space, crammed with everything that does not respond to his ideal of
tolerance – that is, all forms of desire and conflict – recalling, by reappropriation, the Fritzl
affair: the Austrian man who had locked his own daughter in a basement for 24 years, raping
her and producing 7 children. She thus shows that while utopia helps humans to forge their
destinies, it also closes their eyes, and it thus maintains the conditions for its own impossibility,
by not taking what constitutes human nature into account.
Jelinek then compares faith and money, as similar systems of belief, making the capitalist
economy the fourth monotheism. Slag Heap is thus presented as “an exciting journey through
the history of the World, from ancient times to German idealism, the Holocaust and
contemporary history, with its times of war and crisis” – a journey that comes to measure
the humanist ideal against the yardstick of contemporary finance, questioning Lessing from
the perspective of our lives today, questioning the pertinence of the Enlightenment’s legacy.
Slag Heap, named after the mountains of waste accumulated by mining operations, highlights
the contradictions of Lessing’s drama, by opposing what he left out – by confronting Lessing’s
idealism and elegant language, and the Aujkldrung along with it, with the cruel violence of
reality.
Placed side-by-side and interwoven, Lessing’s and Jelinek’s text mutually enlighten
and criticise each other, providing a sounding board for the paradoxes of our era
regarding tolerance, integration, idealism and Europe’s heritage from the
Enlightenment.
However, it is not a question of either mocking the idea of fraternity or contenting
ourselves with nihilism: the precision of Jelinek’s critique and Stemann’s theatrical
sequences calls us instead to resist the urge to flee conflicts and aims to uphold
lucidity against a ‘holdall’ humanism that masks the cynicism and futility of hollow,
moralising discourses that are tirelessly repeated. Together, they seek to compare thoughts
and acts, discourses and politics, the analyses of the past and the choices of the present. Far
from coming undone, Lessing’s text is literally presented in all its force, but also with its
limitations and intrinsic violence. After the attacks in Paris in January and November 2015,
Stemann reinvests his Nathan the Wise project, which he had presented in an initial production
in German at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg in 2009 and he projects it in a Europe definitively
concerned by questions of tolerance, religion, identity and integration.
EV
NICOL AS STEMANN NATHAN !?
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NICOLAS STEMANN: POST-DRAMATIC
THEATRE AND THE TEXT
CLASH WITH THE PRESENT RATHER THAN DESCRIBE IT
Nicolas Stemann’s theatre could be compared to the theatre known as post-dramatic,
according to the categorisation developed by Hans-Thies Lehmann in the nineties. It shares
with Lehmann’s descriptions a formal liberty that combines genres and narrative mediums
at will. It is thus less concerned with the spectators’ adherence to a well-argued critical
reading than with confronting them with staged sequences that are meaningful through the
very experience that they provide.
Even if within a single production Stemann’s “stage writing” calls on all of the genres,
technologies and conventions available (particularly comedy, grotesque, video, chorality,
classical dialogues, public address, dramatic tension, fine arts, and music), it is nonetheless
based on a sharp interpretation of literary texts, whose narrative framework he
follows precisely.
The variety of mediums of narration thus serves as much to maintain the spectator’s attention
as to comment on the text, to increase its dramatic power tenfold, while revealing the subtext
and echoes with the contemporary world. Therefore, it is a matter of both discussing the
ideas of Lessing’s text and questioning its contemporary legacy, how it resonates with the
issues of our era and which authority it serves, over two hundred years after it was written.
Rather than presenting a brilliant demonstration or developing a moral discourse, Stemann
focuses on awakening lucidity against both cynicism and idealism, calling for the questions
raised to be confronted, rather than resolving them through confident and reassuring
commentaries. In this sense, his staging of Nathan !? is not a literary criticism or homage to
this classic text of German literature. On the contrary, Stemann takes Lessing to the letter,
thinks about what the text offers, while studying its resonances and similarities –
striking, in this case – with contemporary debates and issues.
This is lively, free theatre, as joyful as it is cruel in its irony, sometimes angry, often surprising
and hard-hitting, authorising all masks and the most daring juxtaposes, in service to an alert
and clairvoyant conscience, belonging squarely to our age.
EV
NICOL AS STEMANN NATHAN !?
Nathan !? © Samuel Rubio
Nathan !? © Samuel Rubio
Nathan !? © Samuel Rubio
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NICOL AS STEMANN NATHAN !?
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NICOLAS STEMANN
Direction
Theatrical direction
Born in 1968, Nicolas Stemann briefly studied philosophy
and literature before getting involved in theatre. He studied
theatre directing at the Max Reinhardt seminar in Vienna
and at the Institute for filmed theatre and film in Hamburg.
1995 Der Disney Killer de Philipp Ridley, Gostner Hoftheater
Nürnberg
1996 Antigonegone d’après Antigone de Sophocle, Kammerspiele
Hamburg
1997 TerrorSpiel d’après La Mouette d’Anton Tchekhov, Kampnagel
Hamburg
1997 Kiebich und Dutz de FK Waechter, Theater Pforzheim
1997 Leonce und Lena d’après Georg Büchner, Gostner Hoftheater
Nürnberg
1997 Werther ! d’après Les Souffrances du jeune Werther de Goethe,
Gostner Hoftheater Nürnberg, Hamburger Kammerspiele
1998 Einfach unwiderstehlich d’après Les Lois de l’attraction de Bret
Easton Ellis, Theater Basel
1998 Zombie ‘45-am Bass Adolf Hitler, Kammerspiele Hamburg
1999 Terror-Trilogie, Kampnagel Hamburg
1999 Verschwörung d’après Friedrich Schiller, Kampnagel
Hamburg
1999 Die Dollarprinzessin d’après l’opérette de Léo Fall,
Schauspielhaus Düsseldorf
2000 Dead Valley Junction d’Albert Ostermaier, Hamburger
Schauspielhaus
2000 Die schmutzigen Hände de Jean-Paul Sartre, Theater Basel
2000 Kauft Tasso d’après Goethe, Schauspielhaus Bochum
2001 Ich und Politik, TAT Frankfurt
2001 Die Orestie d’Eschyle, Schauspielhaus Hannover
2001 Dantons Tod de Georg Büchner, Theater Basel
2001 Hamlet de William Shakespeare, Schauspiel Hannover
2002 Die Dreigroschenoper de Bertold Brecht, Schauspielhaus
Hannover
2003 Das Werk d’Elfriede Jelinek, Akademietheater Wien
2004 Das Käthchen von Heilbronn, Deutsches Theater Berlin
2004 German Roots, Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen/ThaliaTheater Hamburg
2004 Antigone Columbiana, colegio del cuerpo Cartagena
2004 Vor Sonnenaufgang de Gerhard Hauptmann, Burgtheater
Wien
2005 Babel d’Elfriede Jelinek, Akademietheater Wien
2005-2007 Gefahr-Bar 01-12, Burgtheater Kasino Wien
2005 Schlachthof Fünf de Kurt Vonnegut, Schauspiel Hannover/
HAU Berlin
2005 Es el mejor vividero del mundo, El colegio del cuerpo
Cartagena/Kampnagel Hamburg
2006 Ulrike Maria Stuart d’Elfriede Jelinek, Thalia Theater
Hamburg
2006 Ende und Anfang de Roland Schimmelpfennig,
Akademietheater Wien
2007 Don Karlos de Friedrich Schiller, Deutsches Theater Berlin
2007 Über Tiere, d’Elfriede Jelinek, Deutsches Theater Berlin
2007 Iphigenie, d’après Euripide et Goethe, Thalia Theater
Hamburg
2007 Die Brüder Karamasow de Féodor Dostojewski,
Akademietheater Wien
2008 Die Räuber d’après Friedrich Schiller, coproduction avec le
Salzburger Festspielen, Thalia Theater Hamburg
2009 Die Kontrakte des Kaufmanns d’Elfriede Jelinek, Schauspiel
Köln
2009 Nathan der Weise d’après Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, en
collaboration avec le Schauspiel Köln, Thalia Theater Hamburg
2009 Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe de Bertolt Brecht,
Deutsches Theater Berlin
2010 La Périchole de Jacques Offenbach, Komische Oper Berlin
2011: Faust I & II de Goethe, Salzburger Festspiele, Thalia Theater
2014: Die Schutzbefohlenen, E. Jelinek, Thalia Theater
2015: Le Marchand de Venise, W. Shakespeare, Münchner
Kammerspiele
2016: Wut, E. Jelinek, Münchner Kammerspiele
Tackling both traditional repertoire and contemporary
writing, with a predilection for that of Elfriede Jelinek,
Nicolas Stemann broaches dramatic texts with a passion
that is continually renewed. Any new project provides him
with the chance to call theatrical form into question, with
the aim of finding the best means of deploying the inherent
energy of each work. Originally a pianist, working both for
theatre and opera, Nicolas Stemann built up his directorial
language with all the rigour and flexibility of a musician.
He creates his shows as the conductor of a loyal band of
associates.
From 2002 onwards, he distinguished himself with a
particularly liberated staging of Hamlet in Hanover. Later,
with Schiller’s The Bandits (2008), he started to put in
place a very musical application of theatre texts, treating
it above all as a score and in this way liberating himself
from the constraint of characters. Each of his productions
provides the occasion to invent a new and iconoclastic
way for the actors to appropriate the text and present it
to the audience. The French-speaking public in particular
has been able to discover his work at the Avignon Festival
with Les Contrats du Commerçant, an economic comedy,
and the complete Faust, I + II. He was present at the Vidy
Theatre in 2015 with Werther! a creation in French based on
Goethe’s text. From the 1205-16 season onwards, Nicolas
Stemann became a permanent director at the Münchner
Kammerspiele (directed by Matthias Lilienthal). In April
2016, he will stage Wut (= Rage), a text written by Elfriede
Jelinek following the attacks in Paris in January 2015.
© Samuel Rubio
NICOL AS STEMANN NATHAN !?
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PRESS EXTRACTS
Faust I + II
Die Kontrakte des Kaufmanns
CRÉATION 2011
THALIA THEATER DE HAMBOURG
CRÉATION 2009
THALIA THEATER DE HAMBOURG
“This great theatrical soap opera has the audience on
tenterhooks and is sustained with a masterly hand
by Stemann, a musician who performs and sings in
the show. [...] At the end, tireless, awakened by so
many contemporary questions, by beauty, humour
and emotion, the audience gave the troupe a standing
ovation. It was ‘the’ triumph of Avignon.”
“The work of an elite troupe, a brilliant and witty
brigade, like its impassioned captain, Nicolas
Stemann, with his musician’s soul – a gifted pianist,
enamoured of chaos.”
ARMELLE HELIOT, « AVIGNON: LE JOYEUX TRIOMPHE
DE FAUST », LE FIGARO (12.07.2013)
“Stemann has a knack for making heard what is not
always able to be heard [...] All the more so in that
all the styles are jostled together: farce, tragedy and
esoteric poetry. In this tangled web, Stemann strives
to pick out a few threads, while going all out on the
magic of cardboard cutouts and the grotesque. [...]
The action tenses up again in the last two acts, more
accessible in the original, which Stemann causes to
resonate surprisingly well with current economic,
political and environmental issues, like a premonitory
vision of the chaos of our age.”
RENÉ SOLIS, « STEMANN CREUSE SON FAUST »,
LIBÉRATION (12.07.2013)
“The pick of the crop from this 67th Avignon Festival
was deservedly hailed with a quarter of an hour of
applause: the audience stamping and yelling, as
though drunk on theatre.”
« MARATHON ENDIABLÉ », LES ÉCHOS (15.07.2013)
ARMELLE HELIOT, « AVIGNON : LA TONIQUE FÉROCITÉ
DE JELINEK EXALTÉE PAR NICOLAS STEMANN », LE
FIGARO BLOG (24.07.2012)
“How uplifting it is to savour the ways in which
Nicolas Stemann savvily animates his stage. First,
plot out time, by devising a page counter, so spectators
can follow what remains of their experience with
this troupe of young, super-charged, multi-talented
actors who play music, sing, move incredibly well,
form a quasi-tragic choir, and launch into wild
burlesque.”
FABIENNE PASCAUD, « CRISE FINANCIÈRE ET CRISE DE
RIRE À AVIGNON AVEC LE DUO STEMANN-JELINEK »,
TÉLÉRAMA (24.07.2012)
NICOL AS STEMANN NATHAN !?
CONTACTS
DIRECTION :
VINCENT BAUDRILLER
DIRECTOR OF PRODUCTION
AND DIFFUSION :
CAROLINE BARNEAUD
[email protected]
+41 (0)21 619 45 44
IN CHARGE OF THE PRODUCTION
SOPHIE MERCIER
MAIL: [email protected]
T +41 (0)21 619 45 83
P+41 (0)78 807 63 45
IN CHARGE OF THE DIFFUSION
ANNE-CHRISTINE LISKE
[email protected]
+41 (0)21 619 45 83
PRESS & COMMUNICATION :
SARAH TURIN
[email protected]
+41 (0)21 619 45 21
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR :
CHRISTIAN WILMART /
SAMUEL MARCHINA
[email protected]
+41 (0)21 619 45 16 / 81
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