In specific terms, what happens when not all the actors have the same capacities as their fellow players, for movement, memorisation, or speech, or the ability to locate themselves in space? How can the shared stage become a space for revitalising the artistic individuality of each performer, and a valuable support for collectively rethinking their relationship to the text, to the character, to the fiction and to the space itself? This is precisely the challenge. 

I am convinced that the relationship of the theatrical object to mediation must be re-examined, in order to move the lines of demarcation. And to reconsider how we work together in a “mediated” stage space.
With the Justices artistic team, my ambition is to succeed in this with humility, by placing openness at the heart of the creative process. Between stage work, creative workshops and research workshops, our creative process weaves synergy networks. And thus it gives a shape, a unity and a dramatic depth to shared experiences previously too dispersed. That is something that matters a great deal to me.

Even more than in my previous creations, I feel that it is all a question of re-articulation. So, rehearsal work is an opportunity for sharing and dialogue, looking out for individual features and the mutual adjustments that emerge every day among all members of the artistic team. Here we are relying on the particular capabilities of each person, as tools for research and artistic demands. This brings out many more dramas, methods of narration and performance. Our approach relies on four requirements: sharing the stage, mutual adaptation, writing together, telling stories differently.

Similarly, the creative workshops are opportunities for us to create zones for experimentation and drama production, incorporating the “non-professionals”. In this way, we open up the rehearsal work to amateurs, people with or without disabilities. This allows the artistic team greater freedom to search and weave connections, new meanings through the diversity of outlooks. I love these new encounters that prolong the timescales for creativity. That’s what I love, it’s what makes me quiver. (Laughs)

It’s a question of opening the doors wider, just that. The research workshops (or Shared practices research programme) that Marie Astier and I initiated with the Théâtre National mediation team, provide the opportunity to offer professional artists with a range of capabilities a way to create shared spaces for artistic practices – lacking in the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles –, as well as periods for discussion about the resulting mutual adaptations. Finally, we are showing how inclusion is the lever in the search for new artistic practices. And what is more, it enhances the material of the drama. And for that, fantasy is also one of our tools. For sure!

What’s interesting is to see how we are learning to understand each other in a process that is neither sanitized, nor prescriptive. We put our cards joyfully on the table. That’s what we’re like. (Smiles)