User:WillyMeriwether/Valère Novarina

Valère Novarina is a Franco-Swiss playwright, essayist, director, and painter, born May 4, 1942 in Chêne-Bougeries, near Geneva.

Biography
Valère Novarina is the oldest child of architect Maurice Novarina (1907-2002) and actress Manon Trolliet. His brother, Patrice, an architect and visual artist, was born on June 30, 1944. His childhood and adolescence were spent in Thonon-les-Bains, a city in the Chablais Savoyard.

After obtaining the Baccalaureat, he studied philosophy and philology at the Sorbonne, writing a university thesis on the dramatic theory of Antonin Artaud.

His first play (L'Atelier volant) was staged in 1974, directed by Jean-Pierre Sarrazac. In 1976, he produced Falstafe, a free adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV, for La Criée, National Theatre of Marseille.

In 1987, he was acclaimed for the direction of his play, Le Discours aux animaux at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon at the Festival d'Avignon, featuring a memorable performance by André Marcon.

He has directed many of his own plays: Le Drame de la vie, Vous qui habitez le temps, Je suis, La Chair de l'homme, Le Jardin de reconnaissance, L'Origine rouge, La Scène, L'Acte inconnu, Le Vrai sang. He has also produced two programs for France Culture 's radiophonic workshop : Le Théâtre des oreilles (1980) and Les Cymbales de l'homme en bois du limonaire retentissent (1994).

Three films have used extracts from his texts : Zanzibar (1989), directed by Christine Pascal, Soigne ta droite (1987) and Nouvelle vague (1990), directed by Jean-Luc Godard.

His work entered the repertory of the Comédie-Française in 2006, with L'Espace furieux (1997),.

He has been a fixture of the Festival d'Avignon for many years, having been regularly invited there since the first term of Bernard Faivre d'Arcier. In 2007, he opened the festival in the "cour d'honneur"--the honors courtyard, in front of the Palais des Papes--with his play L'Acte inconnu. In 2015, he presented his play Le Vivier des Noms at the Cloître des Carmes.

In 2017, he was a candidate for the chair 37 of the Académie française, vacated by René Girard. Michel Zink was elected instead.

The theater of Novarina
According to Nicolas Tremblay "Valère Novarina's œuvre essentially amounts to an oral theater of words. The action of the texts takes place on a bare stage nearly free of decor, where characters come and go at will, their entrances and exits unrelated to causality. The interest of this chaotic theatrical presence resides in the lines that emerge from nowhere in their strangeness which partakes as much of mystery as buffoonery. Novarinian theater, obsessed by the Word and its provenance, constantly provokes the separation of the body and the voice, in a joyful excess with origins in primitive revelry." His theory of theater and philosophical thought are expressed remarkably well in his opuscule Pour Louis de Funès, followed by Lettre aux acteurs (collected along with other texts in Devant la Parole in 1999) and help to get a handle on his often disconcerting plays. Essentially, the fundamental and recurring question for Novarina seems to be: why does the human animal possess the faculty of speech? Expressed in another manner, why did flesh meet word? From which arises the issue of the hole through which speech passes through the body. The fundamental experience of theater, according to Valère Novarina, is a witnessing of the eternal miracle which occurs just as it did on the first day: we go there to hear animals speak.

For Novarina, "the theater allows us to regain consciousness" of language not as a chain of mechanical concepts but as a liquid, a dance, a living matter. "It invokes words, explores language, a real matter that fills the void of the stage and gives body to the characters." In Le Vivier des noms, 1,100 characters are mentioned, called, and presented over the course of fifty-two independent scenes, "a true poetic magma, where words caress and evade one another, as they reveal the human condition."

The power of his writing, the originality and the strength of his writing, make him the successor to Antonin Artaud and one of the most notable contemporary dramatists.

Theater

 * L'Atelier volant (1974), pièce de théâtre.
 * Falstafe (1976), éd. Ch. Bourgois, pièce de théâtre d'après Henry IV de Shakespeare, rééd. P.O.L., 2008, pièce reprise au Théâtre national de Chaillot.
 * Le Babil des classes dangereuses (1978), éd. Ch. Bourgois (rééd. 2011), roman théâtral.
 * La Lutte des morts (1979), éd. Ch. Bourgois, roman théâtral.
 * Lettre aux acteurs (1979), éd. l'Énergumène.
 * Le Drame de la vie (1984), éd. P.O.L, rééd. Poésie/Gallimard, 2003, pièce de théâtre, créée au festival d'Avignon, reprise au festival d'automne à Paris ; Le Drame de la vie - fragment, créée au Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers.
 * Le Monologue d'Adramelech (1985), pièce de théâtre, créée au festival d'Avignon, reprise au festival d'automne à Paris.
 * Cent dessins (1986).
 * Pour Louis de Funès (1986).
 * Le Discours aux animaux (1987), pièce de théâtre, créée au festival d'Avignon, reprise au festival d'automne à Paris.
 * Théâtre (juin 1989), ce volume réunit les cinq premiers textes publiés par Valère Novarina et qui étaient épuisés : L'Atelier volant, Le Babil des classes dangereuses, Le Monologue d'Adramélech, La Lutte des morts, Falstafe.
 * Le Théâtre des paroles (1989) (rééd. 2009).
 * Vous qui habitez le temps (1989), pièce de théâtre, créée au festival d'Avignon, repris au festival d'automne à Paris.
 * Pendant la matière (1991).
 * Je suis (1991), pièce de théâtre créée au théâtre de la Bastille dans le cadre du festival d'automne à Paris.
 * L'Animal du temps (1993), adaptation théâtrale.
 * L'Inquiétude (1993), adaptation théâtrale, créée au festival d'Avignon, repris au festival d'automne à Paris.
 * Le Feu (1994), écrit avec Thérèse Joly.
 * La Loterie Pierrot (1995).
 * La Chair de l'homme (1995), pièce de théâtre, créée au festival d'Avignon.
 * Le Repas (1996).
 * Le Jardin de reconnaissance (1997), pièce de théâtre, créée au théâtre de l'Athénée à Paris.
 * L'Espace furieux (1997), inscrit au répertoire de la Comédie-Française.
 * L'Avant-dernier des hommes (1997).
 * L'Opérette imaginaire (1998).
 * Devant la parole (1999).
 * L'Origine rouge (2000), pièce de théâtre, créée au festival d'Avignon.
 * L'Équilibre de la croix (2003).
 * La Scène (2003), pièce de théâtre, créée pour le festival d'Avignon et pour le théâtre Vidy-Lausanne.
 * Lumières du corps (2006), Recueil d'aphorismes sur le théâtre, éd. P.O.L.
 * L'Acte inconnu (2007), pièce de théâtre, créée pour le Festival d'Avignon (cour d'honneur).
 * Le Monologue d'Adramélech (2009), éd. P.O.L.
 * L'Envers de l'esprit (2009), éd. P.O.L.
 * Le Vrai sang (2010), création (mise en scène de l'auteur) à l'Odéon-théâtre de l'Europe, Paris, janvier 2011, éd. P.O.L, 2011
 * Je, tu, il (2012), Éditions Arfuyen.
 * La Quatrième Personne du singulier, éd. P.O.L, (2012).
 * Jean Dubuffet, Valère Novarina, Personne n’est à l’intérieur de rien (Correspondance, 1978-1985), L’Atelier contemporain, (2014).
 * Le Vivier des noms, éd. P.O.L, (2015).