Notes from the conversation with Wajdi Mouawad and Oriol Broggi

« Le propre du traumatisme c’est de s’effacer de celui qui le vit. Il est absent pour celui qui le porte. Je m’explique avec une image : vous portez un sac à dos vide et tous les jours quelqu’un vous y ajoute un petit caillou, si petit que vous ne sentez rien. Et comme ça tous les jours. Le poids que vous finissez par porter est très impressionnant mais vous ne le sentez pas. Un jour, il arrive un évènement qui fait que ce sac à dos vous est ôté, alors vous prenez conscience non pas du poids mais de la légèreté. Vous vous sentez soudainement léger. Puis, on vous le remet et, en quelques secondes vous prenez conscience de tout le poids que vous portiez. »

What happens with trauma is that it fades away for the person experiencing it. It is absent for those who carry it. Let me explain with an image: you carry an empty backpack, and each day someone adds a small stone to it, so small that you don’t notice anything. And this happens every day. The weight you end up carrying is quite impressive, but you don’t feel it. One day, an event occurs that causes this backpack to be taken off you, and then you become aware—not of the weight, but of the lightness. Suddenly, you feel light. Then, they put it back on you, and within seconds, you become aware of all the weight you were carrying.

Wajdi says that theater has served this function for him. It was in a class when he was studying theater in Quebec that a good teacher, with whom they did improvisations, made him realize that he was carrying the experience of war without being aware of it. “You, Wajdi, have you lived through the war?” And Wajdi replied, “Not really.” Teacher: “But you say that you left Lebanon fleeing from the war, right?” Wajdi: “Yes, but I only lived through it for four years. I only saw one person die. The war has lasted for more than 15 years.” Teacher: “But then you did experience it... You lived through the war for 4 years of your life.”

This realization made him aware of how easily we carry traumas and how theater helps us bring them to the surface. It allows the pain we carry inside to emerge, even when we do not know we have it within us. Theater brings forth both personal and collective traumas.

2. Friends who extend their hands to help you lean in and look into your own abyss.

« Si vous êtes au bord d’une falaise, sur un ravin, le danger c’est le vertige, c’est de tomber. La manière de pouvoir s’approcher de ce ravin et de se pencher en toute sécurité pour voir les profondeurs, c’est de tenir la main de quelqu’un pour ne pas tomber. Si vous-même vous êtes le ravin, il faut tenir la main ou vous tomberez ; et pour moi, ce sont les auteurs qui nous tiennent la main. Tenir la main de Kafka, de Sophocle, de Rodoreda, afin de voir le ravin propre sans risque de tomber. »  

If you are on the edge of an abyss, in a ravine, the danger is dizziness, the fall. The way to approach this ravine and lean in safely to see its depths is to take someone’s hand to avoid falling. If you are the ravine yourself, you need to hold onto someone’s hand or you will fall; and for me, those who take our hands are the authors. Take the hand of Kafka, of Sophocles, of Rodoreda, in order to see your own abyss without the risk of falling.

This way of understanding theater, as a place where actors, an author, a company, extend their hands to help you look at personal abysses (traumas, doubts), implies a way of understanding culture that goes beyond “consuming culture.” We consume culture when we distract ourselves, and also when we learn things we didn’t know, when we become “cultured.” But this more intimate understanding of theater, going to the theater, allows us to go beyond ourselves, to confront ourselves on deeper (and perhaps more honest or consequential) levels. We need a different way of listening to the play, of being there, of inhabiting the theater, of accompanying each other.

3. Believing and Not Believing in Reconciliation

« La vérité n’est pas une propriété. »

Truth is not a property.

It is very difficult today to talk about reconciliation when the conflict in Gaza is as raw as it is, when the world is such a violent place. Wajdi has always believed in it; if you had asked him about reconciliation two years ago, he would have answered that it is his belief, that he believes in it and that he makes theater to make it possible. But today that has changed.

He draws a parallel with a passage from Saint Teresa of Jesus, who at one point loses her faith. Despite having devoted her life to it, she loses her faith. Then she tells herself that, from now on, the act of faith will become a rational act; a decision. Not a belief, but a decision. It is very different. He is doing the same with theater: he does not feel that reconciliation is possible, and then he decides to keep insisting on it, to keep trying as a bet, even though he does not believe in it. He waits for something different to happen, waiting for a new motivation to move him.

In this “meanwhile,” he convinces himself that theater is memory projected into the future. When you do not see that reconciliation can come soon, or do not believe that a performance can ultimately help to walk toward reconciliation, then you dedicate yourself to preserving testimonies of a way of living, of understanding things, of stories that show how we could reconcile. You preserve the memory of the present moment and throw it toward the future so that our children and our children’s children can find their way.

 

Oriol asks if perhaps the plays can help us reconcile with distant realities or help us to coexist with them. Like in Mouawad’s image of the hypotenuse, in which two characters who were previously together at the same point (A) enter into disagreement and separate, each moving to a different point (B, C), forming a triangle (A, B, C). They cannot return to the initial point (A) because they are in conflict and cannot ignore what has happened; the only thing they can do is draw a new line that did not exist before between their new positions. That is, if they want to relate again, they can only draw the hypotenuse of the triangle they create.

 

« N’importe qui, est un chagrin potentiel pour tout le monde. »

Any person is a potential grief for everyone.

It is essential to seek nuance in antagonistic positions. It is what can help us understand the other, what brings us closer to them. In the nuance is where empathy lies—or the possibility for empathy.
Wajdi dedicates the most beautiful characters to those who, in real life, would be his enemies. To achieve understanding, to gain empathy, to seek nuances beyond the condition of enemies.

Even if there is no hope, or if we leave behind the belief that theater can change the world right now, we can continue telling stories. To preserve memory for the future, as we said, and also because stories are composed of nuances.

Oriol highlights that in Mouawad’s plays, the characters, while speaking of war and the tragedies that plague our world, also talk about many other things. About youth, the cry for identity from adolescents, difficult family relationships, beauty, the need to love, etc. This makes the characters empathetic toward us. By discussing the greatest pains of our world (war, massacres...), they also speak to our lives and the pains of everyone. We, who live distanced from all these contexts, can enter them because we do so through these characters, who, at their core, resemble us. With empathy for the more immediate problems, we can understand the larger issues.

Wajdi adds in this regard that in theater, everything lies in the quality of particular relationships. The context of war is part of the dramaturg’s, director’s, or company’s craft that works on the play. However, what will truly matter to the audience (what will make them connect) will be this child speaking to their mother, or this mother talking with her mother. By knowing these specific relationships, we can grasp the magnitude of the tragedy of living in a context of war. Through empathy with that specific relationship between the characters, we can empathize with the great tragedy they have to endure in the context of war. Everything is situated on a new scale; we approach it because we can see ourselves in it. The human dimension of great conflicts is recovered.

5. Collecting the Pieces of a Puzzle

« Ce qu’on fait, aura du sens pour une personne. Il n’y a qu’une personne qui a vraiment besoin de voir ce qu’il vient voir ou d’entendre ce qu’il entendra. Et c’est pour cette personne et seulement cette personne qu’on écrit, qu’on parle, qu’on joue. Mais ce qui est beau c’est que, même si on joue uniquement pour une personne, on ne sait pas qui est cette personne et donc c’est potentiellement tout le monde ! »

What we do will make sense to one person. There is only one person who truly needs to see what they are about to see or hear what they are going to hear. And it is for that person—and only that person—that we write, that we speak, that we act. But the most beautiful thing is that, even if we act for just one person, we do not know who that person is; therefore, they can potentially be anyone!

 

Wajdi uses an image to explain his creative process and where he currently finds himself. Imagine that we go to Paris and find a single piece of a puzzle, and then we go to Tokyo and find another one; nothing would lead us to think that they are part of the same puzzle. But then we go to Quebec and find another piece, then to Lebanon, and to Barcelona, and... Little by little, we start to sense that they will form a background image. We do not know what the image will be, but we must hold on to the pieces we have found so far in order to finally understand the deeper image they create.

The creative process, as he understands it, works this way. This is also how we can understand the great conflicts of the world. When we do not have a complete picture of what is happening, when we do not fully grasp it, we must cling to the pieces we find, even if they have no initial connection. Then we can bring them together and form the deeper image they create.

 

For example, one piece he has found recently is “Times are glorious for murderers.” Those who have power and do not exercise it to resolve the conflict, all those interested in the massacre and in murder. The times are glorious for the assassins. We must continue searching for the other pieces of the puzzle that will allow us to discuss it in theater.

You can watch the entire conversation here: