Adrien BÉAL
Stage director

Adrien received a production grant for his play Récits des Événements Futurs.

What is your artistic background ?
My first directing experience goes back more than ten years, when I was a student at the University of Paris III. I first worked on texts by contemporary authors—Michel Vinaver, Roland Schimmelpfennig, Oriza Hirata and Guillermo Pisani. Then I directed an older play, Ibsen’s The Wild Duck, and from then on my work changed a little. I began to question my relationship to the texts more, and since then I have alternated directing texts by authors that ‘feed’ me with plays created through rehearsals with the actors. Vinaver, Schimmelpfennig and also Pasolini are the directors whose texts I have edited or worked from on set in recent years. My career has also been made up of important encounters with people who have welcomed me on their projects, such as Bernard Grosjean who runs the intervention theatre company Entrées de Jeu, in which I worked for many years, Guillaume Lévêque whom I assisted in directing a play by Vinaver, or the current team at La Colline where I did a long internship in 2010. Meeting actors and collaborators counts for a lot, and has helped me to evolve my way of working on the texts, on questions of space, of acting. I am thinking in particular of David Farjon, Guillermo Pisani, Arthur Igual; more recently Charlotte Corman, Etienne Parc and Pierric Plathier with whom I have just performed; and Fanny Descazeaux who has been co-leading the Théâtre Déplié’s company with me since 2009, and who is in charge of the production. Finally, my career and that of the company has been with theatres that welcome work, research and productions. For a long time, our home was the Théâtre de Vanves, then our network expanded to include several independent venues, all in the Paris region, that were attentive to small and little-known projects: l'Atelier du Plateau, l'Echangeur, Lilas en Scène, la Loge. Today, other places in the Paris region are also part of our project: the Studio Théâtre de Vitry, the Monfort; and to these places are now added large regional theatres, such as the Tandem Douai-Arras, the Comédie de Valence or the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne.

How do you see your profession today ?
I can talk about the Ile-de-France region, where I have seen many shows of all kinds over the last fifteen years. I believe that the variety of proposals and projects is very important here. It's enriching to be a spectator of that. What is striking, and says a lot about our profession, is the huge gap between the conditions and contexts in which shows are made and produced. We often have the impression that people who only evolve in the institution think they aretheatre. But this is not true. They are the most visible part of it for the general public. Alongside the institution which has the financial means, visibility and a certain level of comfort, many teams, many places work with very few resources and invent ways of working which contribute greatly to the evolution of the theatre landscape. There is of course movement of people and certain teams between these different levels, but reducing the differences in means could in particular enable spectators to benefit more from the diversity of productions. Some plays can only be produced within the institution, and others can only be produced outside, or at the edge.

How do you see yourself in 5 years ? In 10 years ?
I hope to continue making a place for myself, leave room for research, and for example make plays that I am not yet able to imagine today. And I dream of managing not to scatter and to stay focused.

This interview was conducted in 2014
Photo credit: Emilie Arfeuil