Gwénola de Luze is a Franco-Swiss actress with an unusual background. As a young girl, she was already noticed by Francis Huster at the Cours Florent for the strength of her acting. Her ability to switch from drama to comedy has enabled her to navigate between film and theater over the course of her career. Despite this, she has more often been called upon to act in comedy. Is this why she was seduced by a dramatic comedy in which the female character can play on a wide range of emotions?
Fascinated for many years by a Swedish play that she was determined to stage in France, Gwénola began translating it, to make it easier to "convince" the person who would embark on the adventure with her. Her meeting with François Béchu in 2012 was to prove decisive... Today, they are in Avignon to share Erling with the public. A play, according to the director, "not just for fifty-somethings, nor just for young people, but a play for everyone, a Famille Bélier in reverse, a rarity."
Of Breton, Bordeaux (from a family of wine merchants) and Swiss (from Neuchâtel-Chigny-Morges) origins, Gwénola de Luze spent her childhood in the South of France, then part of her adolescence on the shores of the Bosphorus, in Istanbul-Constantinople. Back in France, in Paris, she spent her weekends going to the theater, and one evening, at the age of 15, declared to Bernard Menez, who had just come off stage, that she too wanted to be an actress.
After a detour through art studies (Ecole du Louvre and Sorbonne) and exciting teamwork at the RMN for the creation and opening of the Musée d'Orsay, one fine morning in 1988, Jacques Toja, a member of the Comédie Française, called her to play in "Les rencontres du Palais-Royal". And so she made her debut, for good, in the profession she had so long dreamed of.
As fate would have it, Bernard Menez found himself on her path in 2012, and she became his partner in Lesage's "Turcaret" at the Château de Suscinio. During the Festival du Morbihan, she met actor François Béchu, head of Théâtre de l'Echappée. He asked her to act in a play by Strindberg. Instead, she asked him to read a contemporary Swedish play, previously unpublished in France, by an author she knows well and who lives in Stockholm. François Béchu reads it in one go, "without seeing or sensing any flaws in the genre of too much or too little". He declares that Erling is indeed "a rare play, a gift the likes of which a director rarely 'touches' in his career as an assiduous reader: it has to be played!
For Gwénola, Christina Herrström's play is like "a distant echo of Strindberg. It's all very exciting. And for her, this powerful dramatic comedy, which oscillates between dream and reality, responds to the echo of a personal story... " It's very strange when the roles you play are crossed by what you've experienced in "real life". She adds with passion that it's "a magnificent role to play, written by a woman and directed by a man who has captured", she believes, "everything that plays out between the three characters in this dramatic comedy, leaving the door open to all kinds of reflections."
The author of the piece
Christina Herrström was awarded the Bergman Prize in 1987 by the great Swedish director, screenwriter and producer Ingmar Bergman, for writing her first play.
The story
It's the story of two former lovers who meet again by chance, in the middle of the Christmas rush, in a toy store, with their residual mutual passion and the tug-of-war it provokes. They talk to each other, say things to each other and don't say things to each other... At one point, a child - already a man, in fact - announces himself as their son. He enthusiastically asserts himself in the "mother's" space, becoming the "father's" home every time he visits. This "son" is Erling. The exchanges are poignant, lively and light, with a good dose of humor about our common fate: Loneliness.
With Erling, the countdown begins. We're in a tale with obstacles, the notion of time and duration. The daily routine that we cling to like a ritual. The stage becomes a place of possibilities and regrets. Bodies echo attempts, hesitations and perceptions.
Players
Gwénola's partners are Alexandre Fabre (Frémont in Plus belle La Vie) and young Samuel Giezek.
Director, François Béchu,
Choreographer, Claudine Orvain.
Gwénola's long-time friend, Argentine percussionist Minino Garay, created the music especially for the piece.
Théâtre de l'Arrache-Cœur, every night at 10pm, from July 7 to 30, 2017, in Avignon.
http://www.gwenoladeluze.com/