What is theater good for?: The book by the leading French writer Enzo Cormann from Eurydice Publications

“For more than twenty years that I have been writing plays, it seems to me that I have always thought of this more or less, though I have not always expressed it so epigrammatically (for which I apologize to those who have sometimes heard me orate on long during these twenty-three years…). However, I never managed to really talk about – at least explain clearly – what the theater – especially the theater – could help me to not “live and think like a pig”. And to this question I would like to try to present some evidence of an answer today.”

“Félix Guattari asked me to describe how I think the theatrical act is founded. How this act was perceived by me and how it developed into a ritual of subjectivity. As a process of singularity. What in my opinion were the motivations, the stakes. He asked me to briefly refer to what he himself calls unique arrangements of enunciation, from which, in my opinion, theatrical practice originates.

“I will clarify at the outset that I have been asked to express myself more ‘with my heart’ than with the covering of a conceptual cloak whose limits you will not have difficulty perceiving […]. The opinions that follow are based on a daydream about my practice. Their only ambition is that of a special emissary from the other side of the fourth wall […].”

A few words about the author

THE Enzo Cormann is a French playwright. He is a director, composer, Professor at the National Higher School of Arts and Techniques of the Theater of Lyon as well as at the Charles III University of Madrid.

He is the Artistic Director of the European Theater Workshop. In 2020 he was honored for his entire work with the Grand Prix du Théâtre.

His plays have been translated into Greek and staged: Diktat, translated by Andreas Staikos (AGRA publications) and directed by Manos Karatzogiannis, The storm persists, translated by Maria Efstathiadis, (AGRA publications) and directed by Konstantinos Hatzis. In 1999, Sister souls were translated by Dimitra Bissia in the publications of the French Institute.

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The contents of the book:

• Presentation
• Under a velvet skirt
• Fantasy, misunderstanding
• The Toolbox
• The great epic
• How did this thing get into us?
• Uncertainty of art / art of uncertainty
• Rethinking the theater
• What does the theater do for us?
• The monstrous writer
• “Gondo”: For mankind, after the disaster
• The dramatist and the authors of the war
• From beautiful animals to weeds

INFORMATION