Chroniques de maux (de l’extrême ordinaire) ; suivi de Attaques à vide : bousculer la situation théâtrale au confluent de l’humour et de l’invective dans la pièce Rouge Gueule d’Étienne Lepage
Alice in wonderland and Nietzsche have in common neither the lace nor the song. However, something much stronger unites them; we shall discover it maybe this day when pigs will fly, or at the end of this play, according to the goodwill of the characters within. Meanwhile, by the very depths of their enclosure, they can’t wait anymore. For what ? Their salute ? The hour of the knell? Their hour of glory? Tremendous incapables, decadent pugilists who kill themselves trying not to kill themselves, who burst out in verbosity, setting themselves up in spite of themselves against eloquence. Fighting this Other who interferes insidiously in itself and who drives to the loss of the me. It is in a crazy lucidity that egos disturb each other without exchanging, attack without reaching, roar without being heard, in the hope, maybe, of waking up in the land of Nod. As indicated in the title, Chroniques de maux (de l’extrême ordinaire) stages a series of chronicles among which the characters are testifying their ill-being. The language and the situation of utterance of this play without acts, falls within resolutely "poetic-trash" esthetics, and the atmosphere aims to alternate heaviness with playfulness.   Rouge Gueule, by Étienne Lepage, presents a structure aiming obviously at "attacking" the Other, whether it is about a character or about a reader-spectator. Attacks commited on the one hand by raw humor, influenced by the popular culture, the trivial; a humor which works in a rather classic way by using processes easily identifiable and ceaselessly reused by the author. On the other hand, the structural design of "fight" shows itself by the invective, as well as by the violence characterized, from the beginning to the end, by a lack in the motivation of the actions. So, this study, Attaques à vide. Bousculer la situation théâtrale au confluent de l’humour et la violence, looks into Rouge Gueule, by being interested in the relations that maintain the humor and the brutal universe of the play, in the perspective where the humor is inextricably connected to the violence. A particular attention is dedicated to the typical character of Lepage as well as the esthetics of the trash "arsenal". The latter is analyzed to better circumscribe the attacks: are they the means, and, if so, to what end considering that the fable, and thus the "quest", in contemporary theater is often questioned. This study will see how, in Lepage’s play, the "vacant" attacks are the driving strength of what Hans-Thies Lehmann appoints the "theatrical situation".
Québécois Humour Invective Crise Étienne Lepage Theater Contemporary Humor Language Crisis