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THEATRICAL APPROACHES TO MYSTERY: “KENOSIS” IN VALERE NOVARINA S WORKS The actor’s dance in For Louis de Funes is a dance scene in which the puppet of Louis de Funés takes the role of the actor more vividly than the real actor, Tibor Mészaros. The dance acquires the same function as the sheer logological proliferation and numerical mania in Novarina’s other performances. (For instance, Novarina writes the following in The Drama of Life: “The action takes place in the Arseman Factory, in the Assman Fictory, in the Aceman Rictory, in the Raceman Frictory ... The action takes place in a melodrome that measures one hundred meters by one hundred meters by one hundred meters by one hundred meters by one hundred meters by one hundred meters by one hundred meters.””? ) The text of For Louis de Funes adapted for the stage begins with an appeal (“The theatre should not restart!”) followed by a list, like in classic comedies such as Moliére’s La malade imaginaire [The Imaginary Invalid] or The Marriage of Figaro, with the purpose of putting the audience into a hypnotic state, and the actor ruptures the ordinary use of language. As Weiss notes, citing Novarina, these kinds of lists, presented in the form of a litany, have as their goal to “repeat the names until a whirling drunkenness” sets in, “instantiating an incantatory, often exorcistic, use of language“ that leads to resurrection.*° The dance is a nondancing, an exhausting exercise performed by an awkward body thrown into the world, i. e. into André Malraux’s “condition humaine” [human condition]. This use of language and the dancing to death have roles in his actor’s training that is similar to the role of physical exercises in Grotowski’s method. The comic and medieval-style profane music of Christian Paccoud contrasts with sacral allusions, and the alternation between the music and the sacral allusions forms a circular dramaturgy specific to Novarina’s theatre which, like a spiral, ends in renewal. This ritual borrows a great deal from the discontinued medieval tradition*® and the breath-taking courage and acrobatics of the world of circus. Returning to For Louis the Funés, the text then makes statements about the actor’s work, creating neologisms introducing hundreds of metaphors. The actor not only says things, he also acts out the process of annihilation, the transition from death to resurrection, which constitutes the basis of Novarina’s dramaturgy. As his double, the puppet of Louis de Funés helps the actor in this process. In the most climactic moment from a dramaturgical point of view, Tibor Mészaros pulls out a puppet to illustrate the doubling of his person. The image of the perfect actor, the marionette as such is not unknown 3 Valére Novarina, The Drama of Life: Prologue, in idem, The Theater of the Ears, 11. 24 Allen S. Weiss, In Praise of Solecism, in ibidem, 32-33. ® See the Resurrection scene from Unknown Act presented in Avignon in 2007. N. Koble, M. Séguy, Désoubli. Rencontre avec Valére Novarina, in Passé présent, Le Moyen Age dans les fictions contemporaines, Nathalie Koble, Mireille Séguy (dir.), Paris, ENS rue d’Ulm, « Aesthetica », 2009, 83-95. 26 * 313 ¢ Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 313 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:26
