conversations in ten questions 37 : Eva Schumacher

In this series of interviews we try to get to know the artists who were the artists of İstanbul Fringe Festival in 2022. Our fourth guest is Eva Schumacher from Théâtre Sauve Qui Peut. 

 Ayse Draz, Art Unlimited Performing Arts Editor & Mehmet Kerem Ozel, Writer 

© Louis De Ducla

What is the essence of performance in your opinion?

I think that performance is the result of two forces: time and the human. It is choosing a given moment, which is not going to last, and putting two people face to face, a performer and a spectator, one who makes a proposition and the other who receives and reacts to it. I like to think that performance is just about this meeting : two people who look at each other and give each other something, a piece of their story. Then it stops.

Do you believe in the transformative power of art? How?

Of course, I believe that art is a vector of change, because it transforms the way we look at things. It opens us to other stories, other points of view on what we think we know. I think that the stories we tell through the different arts can make us take a slight step aside, a small shift. And that is a great strength. The arts do not carry a message, or a doctrine, they are an open question, a moment of suspension in the real, that we can seize and make our own.

When you are working on a piece, what sources inspire you? Do dreams play a role in your works?

I work from stories that I have been given, that the actors come to carry, that I have read or that are my own. Dreams are always very present too, in fact there are several dreams told in this show, mine or others that I was given ! Dreams are an extraordinary inspiration, especially for a work of image and movement, because they have this strength to sum up, to simplify to the extreme an emotion, a situation, to condense it in an image or a word which anchors in you for a long time. I am also inspired by the scenes, the emotions that come from experimenting on stage as well as the musical proposals that emerge during the research. In this project the beautiful music of Caroline Martin was a great source of inspiration.

When do you decide to give a title to a work you are working on if it already does not have one?

The title always comes very quickly. It's a phrase that resonates and that we all end up attaching to. Here, the title is a sentence from the original play by Frank Wedekind. The words I probably used as a starting point. I liked the reference to the "first woman" who is very present in our show. As if we were denying the identity of the main character, Lulu, and bringing her back to her generic name: Eve, the Woman to whom we should always answer for our actions.

Are there any artist whom you can describe as "my master", or any person whom you think influenced your art most? And if there is such an artist or person, who?

There are many! But I am very influenced by the director Pippo Delbono, and his artistic approach. His work is incredibly sincere, and carries very strong images. He knows how to present himself and his actors in a form of total giving, commitment, and that moves me. He works with people and their experiences, and you can feel this humanity in his shows, which for me goes beyond any work of form or concept.

How do you think that this pandemic which humanity is facing at a global scale today will transform performing arts in the future?

I think it will change the way we create. Because a lot of artists have found themselves confronted with this programming bottleneck, this increasingly strict separation between emerging artists and others. I believe that we will have to invent new forms, new means, and maybe find a new public? The pandemic proved to us how resilient we were, and how much artists were able to create, produce, tell stories, we now have to find the right space, the place to create. I am rather optimistic because I believe that the system of artistic creation and diffusion needs a big change!

What does ‘Fringe’ signify for you?

I really like this term. For me it's the margin, not in the sense of the excluded but precisely, as I said above, in the sense of those who take that step aside, those who try something slightly different. Those who, at the side of the road, stop for a moment to look at where they are and what others are doing. I think it's in these creative spaces and momentum that we can find a real force of creation.

Can you tell us a little bit about the process of adapting Frank Wedekind’s Lulu?

It was very complex! And the team I work with has been really incredible, always trying, proposing, changing. First of all we worked on the original text as well as Alban Berg's opera (based on Wedekind’s play), looking for the scenes closest to us. We told ourselves in resonance, our stories of violence, of bodies, our frustrations. This work brought to light our main axis: we wanted to give this woman, Lulu, a voice that is absent from the original play. In the text, Wedekind wanted Lulu to be only in reaction to what others say about her, to how they define her. She hardly acts at all. We wanted to know what she really thought about her fate as a woman who is « too beautiful to live ». From this began a work of writing and musical composition, and I came with the text that we present today, which is a dive into the life of a Lulu already dead, under the gaze and the questioning of a narrator, a woman of today, in search of meaning on her own history.

If you had to translate Je t’appellerais Eve into a single sentence, what would that sentence be?

Lulu died for being born a woman, and we would like to reassure her, we would like to understand, we would like to call her all women so that she feels less alone and no longer falls silent.

Why did you decide to participate in the Istanbul Fringe festival particularly with this work of yours?

We were very eager to get involved in the great energy of the Istanbul Fringe. I could see the beautiful programming work done by this team as well on the content of the chosen shows as on the type of art, an opening to the multidisciplinary forms, to the experiments of stage. I also think that this show is an open door to many interpretations. It questions our relationship to the body, to youth, to appropriation and possession by desire. It's a tough show, because it talks about a dead girl, a girl who disappeared because she couldn't survive what the others were trying to impose on her, their violence. She had lost her name, her identity, she did not know how to escape. It's a show that burns, but that I hope resonates with many people, that questions us about ourselves, our future, our view of the other, of women. I hope it will touch the audience in Istanbul and I am very much looking forward to hearing their feedback and feelings!

[The Turkish version of this interview was published in unlimited]