A puerta cerrada
Serge Nicolaï
Pubblico. Il Teatro di Casalecchio di Reno, Casalecchio di Reno
24/05/2013
, 
21:00
25/05/2013
, 17:30
from "Huis Clos" by Jean-Paul Sartre
direction and set design Serge Nicolaï (Théâtre du Soleil)
creation assistance Olivia Corsini (Théâtre du Soleil)
orginal music Jean-Jacques Lemêtre (Théâtre du Soleil)
lights Fernanda Balcells e Elsa Revol (Théâtre du Soleil)
mise-en-scene assistance Maria Gracia Garat
stage manager Fabio Petrucci, Victoire Berger-Perrin, Maria Gracia Garat
adaptation and translation Serge Nicolaï e Olivia Corsini
with Maday Mendez, Josefina Pieres, Nicolas Sotnikoff, Daniel Cabot
organization (Italy) Claudio Ponzana
co-production Fabio Petrucci (Timbre4 - Buenos Aires), Clara Pizarro (Patio de Actores - Buenos Aires), APC Productions (Parigi), Théâtre du Soleil (Parigi)
with the collaboration of Ambasciata di Francia - Buenos Aires, Instituto Nacional del Teatro (Argentina), Alliance française - Buenos Aires
thanks to Associazione Artisti Drama for the collaboration
Running time 1h 30’
National première
Played in Spanish with Italian subtitles
Ispired from Jean - Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos (Behind closed doors), Serge Nicolaï puts on stage A puerta cerrada, the result of the successful artistic meeting between Claudio Tolcachir, director of the Teatro Timbre 4 of Buenos Aires, and Serge Nicolaï, actor of the Theatre du Soleil: "My desire to stage Huis Clos was born, first of all, from a meeting: the one of an actor with other actors" says the same Nicolaï that continues "several years ago, I met in Paris the company Timbre 4 and their director Claudio Tolcachir. I was immediately seduced by the liveliness and the truth of their way of acting that I hadn’t seen for a long time on a European stage."
In A puerta cerrada three characters are found, after death, in the same room: they are Garcin, a journalist, Inès, an employee at the post office, and Estelle, a rich and worldly woman. Through their voices Jean-Paul Sartre describes here "his hell": the protagonists are questioning the damn, hiding their miseries, justifying what they have done wrong in life and doing everything not to fall and die, they who have already died. The gaze of the other, in this text that intends to speak about freedom, becomes a sort of paroxysmal and anxious consciousness very similar to the one, according to Serge Nicolaï’s point of view, to which contemporary humanity is subjected.
"When Timbre 4, a theatre independent company in Argentina, asked me to
stage a show in their area of residence in Buenos Aires, I immediately
thought of Huis Clos. This text struck me very deeply, as a dear
friend left out in all the years of theater studies and then resurrected at the moment I was asked to direct a new pièce with new actors. (...)
In this arena in which the protagonists are hurled one against each other, there are three chairs, a closed door (which confirms the impossibility to escape), four actors. That's all. I didn’t want to see nothing else but the actors who live, but live without comfort, without crutches, I removed each item of furniture. (...)
In Huis Clos, the characters are hopelessly imprisoned each one to their own fork, they desperately stir not to fall and die, while in fact they are already
dead. We know from the beginning that nothing will change, we know that there is no way out, we are in hell and from hell there is no escape. Everything is fixed, as the same cast: they will change, nothing will budge. It is a show without moral development. (...)
The coexistence of three characters, where each one is located in front of his demon, has to take at the same the perspective of others. This terrible look
can not be accuser, ridiculous, bad. But above all happens that all three become addicted to it because they are trapped in a space without mirrors, in which the only image they have of themselves, is one obtained through the gaze of others!
In the vision of hell proposed by Sartre there’s no need of executioners or guardians, since each character becomes the one of the other, but above all of himself. The three characters in the play make this bitter experience, each one haunted by his own story, each one in the condition of the victim but only under the gaze of others, each one condemned for eternity to suffer the weight of the gaze and the presence of others, no way out. They are totally inseparable and interdependent. And this is forever.
We live in a society where the gaze of the others on our life takes a paroxysmal sense.
The protagonists of Huis Clos have all three killed themselves (in different ways), so that they could be saved from the gaze of others. It is man himself who is responsible for his actions and his own destiny, the very existence and the consequent stay of Hell is a reminder of the responsibility with which we must use our freedom”.
Sergei Nicolaï
http://apuertacerrada-sergenicolai.blogspot.fr/
www.theatre-du-soleil.fr
Serge Nicolaï
Actor, director and set designer since 1997, Serge Nicolaï worked in the company of Ariane Mnouchkine at the Théâtre du Soleil shows in Et Soudain des nuits d’Eveil, Tambours sur la Digue, Le Dernier Caravansérail, Les Éphémères, and recently in Les Naufragés du Fol Espoir.
He has worked with other directors, including Irina Brook, Benoît Lavigne and Marta Stebnika.
Al also worked as actor in film and television.
