Oldal 258 [258]
ANDRÁS VISKY
[Pantagruel’s Sister-in-law]"" called L’Homme qui ne rit pas [The Man Who
Doesn’t Laugh]. Dressed in black, a large man — Cristian Stanca, also one of
Purcarete’s favorite actors — receives the viewers from among boxes, placed
downstage, that conceal people and foods. One can peer into the boxes: a live
fish and naked man in a tub, cauliflower, freshly dripping blood (one cannot
tell whether animal or human), and on one of the boxes, Hans Holbein’s ter¬
rifying Dead Christ in its original dimensions. At the end of the performance,
that builds on Rabelais’ eating-mystique, the actors knead bread dough, then,
after they've carefully stretched the base material, they strip an actor naked,
lay him on a round table, cover his entire body with the dough and then push
him into the incandescent oven. In the final scene, L’Homme qui ne rit pas en¬
ters, at which they remove the freshly baked human-stuffed bread and give it to
the man in black, accompanied by a carafe of red wine. L'Homme qui ne rit pas
tears off the human-shaped bread’s head and begins to eat. An anti-eucharist.
It is not the symbolic signs and elements that form the Lord’s supper here, but
the actual man. L’Homme qui ne rit pas, that is, the grim or humorless man: is
a cannibal. Pantagruel’s Sister-in-law examines the question, with much humor
and virtuosic theatrical invention, of whether the world, as well as ourselves
and the other, can be recognized via the communal ritual of eating. Then,
in the final scene, having displayed the dark side of the question, Purcärete
radically excludes the possibility that play — humor, laughter — could be left
out of this process of recognition. Laughter, on the other hand, can onlybea
communal act. L'Homme qui ne rit pas eats alone, and he eats humans. He does
not laugh. God, for His part, created the universe in seven bursts of laughter.
The character of Lucifer is born from this knowledge: the non-singing char¬
acter also cannot laugh. The theater of Silviu Purcärete is of a deeply meta¬
physical nature. In this theater, the world is still whole, all its horrors to the
contrary. In this prolonged age of all-enfolding violence, his theater remem¬
bers this laughter: it echoes the child’s voice taking part and playing in nature.
FEBRUARY 23, 2020
The first full rehearsal, the mythical and terrifying first throw of the theatrical
dice.°® This is where the composition as a whole first makes itself felt, even if
7 Silviu Purcarete: Cumnata lui Pantagruel [literally Pantagruel’s Sister-in-law but usually
rendered in English as Pantagruel’s Cousin], a silent work inspired by texts of Rabelais. Cluj,
Hungarian State Theater of Cluj, premiere 28 May 2003. A co-production of the Hungarian
State Theater of Cluj, the Radu Stancu National Theater of Sibiu, and the Company Silviu
Purcärete of Lyon, France. See, e.g., http://www.lesartsetmouvants.com/media/pantagruels_
cousinl__095739600_1910_16022012.pdf, accessed 28 August 2020.
Translator’s note: the original uses the word snür, referring to the game of pitching pennies,
so a literal translation would read “the first pitch of the penny.” A metaphor more common
68