Public Theatre?

When thinking about the reception area at the cultural centre I manage, what interests me is the notion of hospitality; in other words, the possibility of indicating to each individual that they are welcome and that their singularity interests us. They are there as individuals, but also as potential representatives of groups: a generation, a social class, a cultural tradition. A society is based on the coming together of different people sharing a common activity. Hospitality, which uses multiple signs to make it clear to everyone that they are at home, serves to open the doors of the theatre, and it allows those who do not feel legitimate to become so merely by crossing the threshold. It also makes it possible to keep the place “sacred”, which is what makes it a place apart, with its codes (those of the theatre): a safe place, existing for what people really are. We ask the spectator to make a great deal of effort: giving the artist’s idea a chance, "entering" it, putting aside their prejudices as much as possible, accepting the possibility of being surprised, accepting that here we talk about the tragic dimension of existence... In short, the least we can do is look after spectators when they come inside the place. This applies to the whole team: communication, reception, box office, restaurant, technology, and so on.

Our places are no longer, I believe, places of social distinction. Sometimes we deplore this, accurately considering that they are less and less frequented by political or economic elites. However, it seems to me that, on the contrary, this state of affairs frees us and gives us the chance to occupy the position that society expects of us. I was lucky enough to have great discussions about theatre with my grandmother, but we were never able to actually talk about the same thing. She used to go to the theatre because one had to go there regularly to maintain one’s social rank. It was not an unpleasant experience for her, but she chose her outings depending on the people who might be there (the place, the date, the possibility of a particular event and so on). As for me, very early on I was fascinated by the mystery of performance; the stage; the exchange with the auditorium (or lack of it); questions of the history of art and avant-garde movements. I never understood that she could go see a show that seemed uninteresting to me. She never understood my passion and what could really excite me. Forgive me this long anecdote, but thinking about this has allowed me to dismantle many prejudices about our surroundings. Faced with the incessant questioning of us as a minority, an elite practice, and a failure when it comes to democratising culture, I make the case for a different way of looking at the problem. What is essential for us to remain a common good is not allowing any social group within society to appropriate the exclusive use of our places. We must therefore be resolute in ensuring that our users are diverse. That the bourgeois classes no longer consider our places spaces of distinction and social recognition is therefore a piece of good fortune: it can allow others who believed we were not speaking to them to feel involved.
Live performance is not on the scale of the mass media. We are at an individual level, where the human relationship is at the heart of the exchange. We can invite personally; consider everyone's participation; imagine ways of providing information on our very specific activities; and solicit allies and partners, so that everyone feels part of our places and can want to share them with those close to them, helping them to make discoveries. Live performance is specific in that it requires the spectator’s participation in order to exist.

This presupposes that we pit equality among individuals against art as an unshakeable conviction.
This central issue of accessibility leads to the activation of a desire to visit our places and the works presented there, and the limiting of the various constraints and impediments on doing so. I cannot say which of these two actions requires the most work and inventiveness.

Some of the constraints are very practical. Three of the main ones would be ticket prices, transport and children (many frequent spectators stop coming after the birth of their first child). I think these are very serious organisational issues to be considered when it comes to pricing policy, scheduling our shows, and the possibility of having children looked after.
However, some more subtle constraints – the ones I call impediments – are more difficult to detect. The work of sociologists, starting with that of Pierre Bourdieu, certainly gives us some clues: the fear of not belonging in a place; the fear of others watching (very much present in working-class districts), and the fear of not knowing how to master the codes. To fight these impediments, we have tools: those inherited from popular education movements; those of artistic and cultural education which advocate frequent visits, practice and encounter – all these we can implement in an alliance with the structures of education. This is all provided that real political ambition is translated into the possibility of mobilising human and financial resources and having dedicated premises.

There is also something deeper perhaps. What do we basically offer? Isn't what we are looking for a place where we can personally and collectively be shaken up? Aren’t the subjects that have been dealt with on theatre stages since the dawn of time the very subjects that obsess humanity: death, love and power? In short, I believe that, on the grounds that we were places of possible pleasure, we have sometimes refused to accept that coming to see the works we put on is not without risk. And that risk is what we are looking for; the risk that a sentence, a word, an emotion, can set off a private thought and allow us to change our view of ourselves and the surrounding world. If we stated that our social legitimacy lies in being places with resources for possible emancipation – places where it would be possible to learn on our own about life, at our own pace, through artistic creation – I think we would avoid a number of sterile debates and misunderstandings. In any case, this is the conclusion reached by my reflection on the specific translation of cultural rights via the establishment for five years now of La Fabrique d’Expériences.

The Maison de la Culture in Seine-Saint-Denis (MC93), which I run, set up this "Experience Factory" which brings together practical workshops, creative residencies involving people living in the area, and places for meeting and reflection that help renew its relationship with the users of the institution that it embodies. Indeed, the idea of the Fabrique d'Expériences stems from observing that the public theatre must no longer think of itself only as a place for programming shows, but also as a place that contributes to bringing society together, and participates in the life of the city. The Factory is our tool for experimenting; it is a place of reflection, rich in internal discussions.

Reflection on cultural rights feeds into the Factory. However, their very broad and often dogmatic definition makes it difficult to understand them specifically: they need to be experienced. In the cultural field, this human right can be translated into the ability of each person to generate and deploy their own imagination. There is no rule for this and that is what makes it interesting and difficult.

If the Factory is made up of projects in multiple forms, it stimulates a state of mind within the team: thinking about the right place in each of our actions (administration, production, technical issues, public, etc.) for each artist and each spectator. It infuses them with transversality. Specifically, when it started up during the working period when the theatre was closed, it allowed each member of the team to meet and listen to the local area. We made a diagnosis based on hypotheses and shared experiences, from which we developed actions and projects. In this way, we have acquired expertise in terms of cultural engineering and knowledge of the territory, which we strive to share as widely as possible.

A particular logic has been deployed in every project and has gradually become our modus operandi, allowing the development of research-action expertise shared between the artists and the team. Transmission and encounter are at the heart of our approach, based on the idea that each participant has something to contribute through their view of art and life. Enacting equality is a cornerstone of La Fabrique, and we all know that it is not easy.

Artists are at the heart of the Factory. Projects transform the artists, the team and the participants. It is when this transformation works that we can say that the project has succeeded. In what way has everyone moved? What links have been forged? How have our imaginations expanded? All these questions can be the groundwork for self-assessment. There is no a priori method, but the accumulation of experiences has made it possible to gain knowledge of the most favourable conditions. The art is to sketch contours to ensure greater freedom within. However, we are wary of reproducing devices that would aim to apply recipes while forgetting to question the meaning of what we do together.

One thing is certain, the experience requires commitment and intellectual honesty from everyone involved, beginning with the artist. No banality is possible, no routine. Things, gestures and places must be thought out to make them beautiful and conducive to making the experience happen: the risk-taking is shared. Everyone – artist as well as participant – is needed. It is this delicate mediation work that the theatre team does, finding the conditions for the artistic experience, so that something unique and unprecedented can be played out every time.

La Fabrique is also based on the existence of a network of accomplices, representatives and committed partners. Without them we would be missing a limb. We maintain regular relationships with 70 partners in the social field in the area as well as the entire National Education network. These relationships are based on mutual trust and solidarity. It is through experiences, which are sometimes difficult but most often happy, that trust is built. The more it exists, the more we can embark on innovative adventures. The interest of these experiences makes it possible to deconstruct prejudices: to see a show with a reputation as being "difficult”; to go out in the evening; to meet an artist who has never been faced with socially marginalised audiences; to integrate people with psychological or physical difficulties within collective artistic adventures bringing together participants with diverse profiles, and so on. Nothing on this list is self-evident; the difficulties are real. But it is only by overcoming them that we can open up the field of possibilities and experience equality.
Today, we are increasingly concerned about sharing our experiences, our tools. It is a matter of thinking of ourselves as a place of resources on mediation. We are developing training in the form of experience sharing so that representatives can become independent in supporting spectators.

So let's say that we are the possible places for an experiment that aims at emancipation. This means we must also accept being places of controversy – for expressing concerns and hopes, which are not always the same, depending on each person’s experience. We are possible places for updating misunderstandings and prejudices in a contemporary society which has increasing difficulties with conversation. This makes it all the more important to ensure that there is no symbolic seizure of power within our places. I believe that this means being as precise as possible about what we offer and accepting the diversity of perceptions and feelings, considering that this diversity is the very justification of what we are. This commits everyone, starting with the team, to considering the possibility of divergent points of view and the interest of these differences. This is very stimulating but it's not always easy.

The difficulty of the project is in accepting that society is plural and fragmented and that increasingly the relationships between groups of people lead to conflict. These conflicts have sometimes been found inside the venue, especially in the first year after reopening. There were several incidents that always occurred in the same way: "regular" spectators refusing, even before the start of the show, to coexist with new spectators: young people in a very lively but attentive group with all outward signs showing that they came from the 9-3 (the working-class district where the MC93 is located). But, in time, these young people have become regulars in our theatre, and we now have no more incidents. My interpretation is that the regular spectators who did not wish to share the place with others have not returned.

If what we have to transmit in cultural support is the practice of bringing the imprint of the show inside and thus growing the spectator’s experience, then in programming we can trust the artists. It is a question of sharing the risk of creativity; of supporting research in terms of forms; of wiping out notions of radicalism which seem to me ineffective in art (either the works in terms of the form and puts across an emotion or an idea if only to a single spectator, or it is not successful), and calling on deliberately eclectic aesthetics. Programming, then, means working with deliberately assumed subjectivity; putting across a point of view on the world through the works and the artists; and allowing a deconstruction of our perceptions, an affirmation of our convictions, the elaboration of thought for ourselves and not in the place of others; and, ultimately, the observation of our different sensitivities.

Then we are in the right shared place. In a historical period in Europe where we are looking for ourselves; where our identities and the collective perception of ourselves are endlessly re-examined; the performing arts can provide sensitive and intellectual tools for envisioning a new order of things which everyone – for better or worse – senses is coming. We must make our contribution to it.

Hortense Archambault
Director of the MC93, Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis in Bobigny, a suburb of Paris.When thinking about the reception area at the cultural centre I manage, what interests me is the notion of hospitality; in other words, the possibility of indicating to each individual that they are welcome and that their singularity interests us. They are there as individuals, but also as potential representatives of groups: a generation, a social class, a cultural tradition. A society is based on the coming together of different people sharing a common activity. Hospitality, which uses multiple signs to make it clear to everyone that they are at home, serves to open the doors of the theatre, and it allows those who do not feel legitimate to become so merely by crossing the threshold. It also makes it possible to keep the place “sacred”, which is what makes it a place apart, with its codes (those of the theatre): a safe place, existing for what people really are. We ask the spectator to make a great deal of effort: giving the artist’s idea a chance, "entering" it, putting aside their prejudices as much as possible, accepting the possibility of being surprised, accepting that here we talk about the tragic dimension of existence... In short, the least we can do is look after spectators when they come inside the place. This applies to the whole team: communication, reception, box office, restaurant, technology, and so on.

Our places are no longer, I believe, places of social distinction. Sometimes we deplore this, accurately considering that they are less and less frequented by political or economic elites. However, it seems to me that, on the contrary, this state of affairs frees us and gives us the chance to occupy the position that society expects of us. I was lucky enough to have great discussions about theatre with my grandmother, but we were never able to actually talk about the same thing. She used to go to the theatre because one had to go there regularly to maintain one’s social rank. It was not an unpleasant experience for her, but she chose her outings depending on the people who might be there (the place, the date, the possibility of a particular event and so on). As for me, very early on I was fascinated by the mystery of performance; the stage; the exchange with the auditorium (or lack of it); questions of the history of art and avant-garde movements. I never understood that she could go see a show that seemed uninteresting to me. She never understood my passion and what could really excite me. Forgive me this long anecdote, but thinking about this has allowed me to dismantle many prejudices about our surroundings. Faced with the incessant questioning of us as a minority, an elite practice, and a failure when it comes to democratising culture, I make the case for a different way of looking at the problem. What is essential for us to remain a common good is not allowing any social group within society to appropriate the exclusive use of our places. We must therefore be resolute in ensuring that our users are diverse. That the bourgeois classes no longer consider our places spaces of distinction and social recognition is therefore a piece of good fortune: it can allow others who believed we were not speaking to them to feel involved.
Live performance is not on the scale of the mass media. We are at an individual level, where the human relationship is at the heart of the exchange. We can invite personally; consider everyone's participation; imagine ways of providing information on our very specific activities; and solicit allies and partners, so that everyone feels part of our places and can want to share them with those close to them, helping them to make discoveries. Live performance is specific in that it requires the spectator’s participation in order to exist.

This presupposes that we pit equality among individuals against art as an unshakeable conviction.
This central issue of accessibility leads to the activation of a desire to visit our places and the works presented there, and the limiting of the various constraints and impediments on doing so. I cannot say which of these two actions requires the most work and inventiveness.

Some of the constraints are very practical. Three of the main ones would be ticket prices, transport and children (many frequent spectators stop coming after the birth of their first child). I think these are very serious organisational issues to be considered when it comes to pricing policy, scheduling our shows, and the possibility of having children looked after.
However, some more subtle constraints – the ones I call impediments – are more difficult to detect. The work of sociologists, starting with that of Pierre Bourdieu, certainly gives us some clues: the fear of not belonging in a place; the fear of others watching (very much present in working-class districts), and the fear of not knowing how to master the codes. To fight these impediments, we have tools: those inherited from popular education movements; those of artistic and cultural education which advocate frequent visits, practice and encounter – all these we can implement in an alliance with the structures of education. This is all provided that real political ambition is translated into the possibility of mobilising human and financial resources and having dedicated premises.

There is also something deeper perhaps. What do we basically offer? Isn't what we are looking for a place where we can personally and collectively be shaken up? Aren’t the subjects that have been dealt with on theatre stages since the dawn of time the very subjects that obsess humanity: death, love and power? In short, I believe that, on the grounds that we were places of possible pleasure, we have sometimes refused to accept that coming to see the works we put on is not without risk. And that risk is what we are looking for; the risk that a sentence, a word, an emotion, can set off a private thought and allow us to change our view of ourselves and the surrounding world. If we stated that our social legitimacy lies in being places with resources for possible emancipation – places where it would be possible to learn on our own about life, at our own pace, through artistic creation – I think we would avoid a number of sterile debates and misunderstandings. In any case, this is the conclusion reached by my reflection on the specific translation of cultural rights via the establishment for five years now of La Fabrique d’Expériences.

The Maison de la Culture in Seine-Saint-Denis (MC93), which I run, set up this "Experience Factory" which brings together practical workshops, creative residencies involving people living in the area, and places for meeting and reflection that help renew its relationship with the users of the institution that it embodies. Indeed, the idea of the Fabrique d'Expériences stems from observing that the public theatre must no longer think of itself only as a place for programming shows, but also as a place that contributes to bringing society together, and participates in the life of the city. The Factory is our tool for experimenting; it is a place of reflection, rich in internal discussions.

Reflection on cultural rights feeds into the Factory. However, their very broad and often dogmatic definition makes it difficult to understand them specifically: they need to be experienced. In the cultural field, this human right can be translated into the ability of each person to generate and deploy their own imagination. There is no rule for this and that is what makes it interesting and difficult.

If the Factory is made up of projects in multiple forms, it stimulates a state of mind within the team: thinking about the right place in each of our actions (administration, production, technical issues, public, etc.) for each artist and each spectator. It infuses them with transversality. Specifically, when it started up during the working period when the theatre was closed, it allowed each member of the team to meet and listen to the local area. We made a diagnosis based on hypotheses and shared experiences, from which we developed actions and projects. In this way, we have acquired expertise in terms of cultural engineering and knowledge of the territory, which we strive to share as widely as possible.

A particular logic has been deployed in every project and has gradually become our modus operandi, allowing the development of research-action expertise shared between the artists and the team. Transmission and encounter are at the heart of our approach, based on the idea that each participant has something to contribute through their view of art and life. Enacting equality is a cornerstone of La Fabrique, and we all know that it is not easy.

Artists are at the heart of the Factory. Projects transform the artists, the team and the participants. It is when this transformation works that we can say that the project has succeeded. In what way has everyone moved? What links have been forged? How have our imaginations expanded? All these questions can be the groundwork for self-assessment. There is no a priori method, but the accumulation of experiences has made it possible to gain knowledge of the most favourable conditions. The art is to sketch contours to ensure greater freedom within. However, we are wary of reproducing devices that would aim to apply recipes while forgetting to question the meaning of what we do together.

One thing is certain, the experience requires commitment and intellectual honesty from everyone involved, beginning with the artist. No banality is possible, no routine. Things, gestures and places must be thought out to make them beautiful and conducive to making the experience happen: the risk-taking is shared. Everyone – artist as well as participant – is needed. It is this delicate mediation work that the theatre team does, finding the conditions for the artistic experience, so that something unique and unprecedented can be played out every time.

La Fabrique is also based on the existence of a network of accomplices, representatives and committed partners. Without them we would be missing a limb. We maintain regular relationships with 70 partners in the social field in the area as well as the entire National Education network. These relationships are based on mutual trust and solidarity. It is through experiences, which are sometimes difficult but most often happy, that trust is built. The more it exists, the more we can embark on innovative adventures. The interest of these experiences makes it possible to deconstruct prejudices: to see a show with a reputation as being "difficult”; to go out in the evening; to meet an artist who has never been faced with socially marginalised audiences; to integrate people with psychological or physical difficulties within collective artistic adventures bringing together participants with diverse profiles, and so on. Nothing on this list is self-evident; the difficulties are real. But it is only by overcoming them that we can open up the field of possibilities and experience equality.
Today, we are increasingly concerned about sharing our experiences, our tools. It is a matter of thinking of ourselves as a place of resources on mediation. We are developing training in the form of experience sharing so that representatives can become independent in supporting spectators.

So let's say that we are the possible places for an experiment that aims at emancipation. This means we must also accept being places of controversy – for expressing concerns and hopes, which are not always the same, depending on each person’s experience. We are possible places for updating misunderstandings and prejudices in a contemporary society which has increasing difficulties with conversation. This makes it all the more important to ensure that there is no symbolic seizure of power within our places. I believe that this means being as precise as possible about what we offer and accepting the diversity of perceptions and feelings, considering that this diversity is the very justification of what we are. This commits everyone, starting with the team, to considering the possibility of divergent points of view and the interest of these differences. This is very stimulating but it's not always easy.

The difficulty of the project is in accepting that society is plural and fragmented and that increasingly the relationships between groups of people lead to conflict. These conflicts have sometimes been found inside the venue, especially in the first year after reopening. There were several incidents that always occurred in the same way: "regular" spectators refusing, even before the start of the show, to coexist with new spectators: young people in a very lively but attentive group with all outward signs showing that they came from the 9-3 (the working-class district where the MC93 is located). But, in time, these young people have become regulars in our theatre, and we now have no more incidents. My interpretation is that the regular spectators who did not wish to share the place with others have not returned.

If what we have to transmit in cultural support is the practice of bringing the imprint of the show inside and thus growing the spectator’s experience, then in programming we can trust the artists. It is a question of sharing the risk of creativity; of supporting research in terms of forms; of wiping out notions of radicalism which seem to me ineffective in art (either the works in terms of the form and puts across an emotion or an idea if only to a single spectator, or it is not successful), and calling on deliberately eclectic aesthetics. Programming, then, means working with deliberately assumed subjectivity; putting across a point of view on the world through the works and the artists; and allowing a deconstruction of our perceptions, an affirmation of our convictions, the elaboration of thought for ourselves and not in the place of others; and, ultimately, the observation of our different sensitivities.

Then we are in the right shared place. In a historical period in Europe where we are looking for ourselves; where our identities and the collective perception of ourselves are endlessly re-examined; the performing arts can provide sensitive and intellectual tools for envisioning a new order of things which everyone – for better or worse – senses is coming. We must make our contribution to it.

Hortense Archambault
Director of the MC93, Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis in Bobigny, a suburb of Paris.