Hello, welcome.
You stand before the house of Maria Casarès.
Maria Casarès acted in dozens of plays. More than a hundred. She was widely known for her tragic roles—she was a truly gifted tragedian—but what is lesser known is that she also acted in comedies and she loved them . . .
In truth, she loved to laugh.
But something in her physique, her voice, the depth of her dark regard, all pointed to tragedy. Even in her films, you remember her tragic roles, her painful side, like in Les Enfants du paradis, where she is in love with the mime played by Jean-Louis Barrault, while he prefers Garance, played by Léonie Bathiat (more famously known as Arletty).
Casarès, as you know, had an exceptional career. But though her life was exceptional, certain periods of time she passed through were tragic . . . She was the daughter of the first prime minister of Spain. And, as you know, it was General Franco who emerged the winner of that particular Spanish war. A more tragic war because it was a civil war. She had to flee with her family. In exile. To France. To Paris.
And all of a sudden, theatre . . .
A difficult profession. Poorly viewed. Though we were no longer in the times when they buried actors at night—even with his solid support, that’s what happened to Molière—it was a profession that was pretty despised. Even worse for women, as you might imagine. Actresses earned their living however they could. Some of them earned extremely well from their stage work, like Sarah Bernhardt, who made a fortune in theatre . . . [but] was detained by the police for prostitution.
*
Towards the end of the war, someone introduced Maria to a seductive young playwright. He had a prominent brow, and came from Algeria. He was called Albert Camus. She was cast in his first play, Le Malentendu. She played the role intensely, vividly, and, to be honest, truly tragically. Tragedy ran through her veins. Camus fell under her spell . . . She went on to play in the first production of The Just. And then in State of Emergency some time after. He always loved her. And that would last a long, long time. Until, one day, Camus died. In a car crash with Gallimard’s son. Camus had just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. For Maria, the crash was to be a dreadful event . . . She began to go downhill. Nothing interested her any more . . .
Some friends had the idea to get her to buy a house. She didn’t have any roots. She was one of nature’s nomads. But she had just had enormous success in the theatre, she had a little money in front of her . . .
Perhaps this house helped heal her grief, that vast grief.
Maria Casarès’ house is just that: a powerful antidote to grief, to the pain of loving, to irremediable loss. Sometimes in this house you hear strange noises. Nights aren’t exactly silent. The house is inhabited. You sense a presence . . . You have to have a very fine ear, a particular sensibility. But sometimes you’d swear you can hear somebody walking around. A seductive, amorous writer wandering the halls.
It’s always a very big thing for an actor or actress to create a new play. Maria Casarès was lucky to create many, throughout the length of her life. And what great plays. Written by great writers. Who are here. They come from time to time. They don’t visit many people. They come for Maria, who is here, herself. Over time, they took possession of parts of this property.
*
Let’s stop here. In front of this shed.
Strangely, Jean-Paul Sartre set up his quarters in this shed full of tools. It’s not too far from the house, which allowed him to watch Camus out of the corner of one eye. He wouldn’t share a room with Camus for anything in the world. Sartre and Camus had started out alright, but the next moment, it wasn’t going well. Sartre was also awarded the Nobel Prize, but he turned it down, in part to differentiate himself from Camus. The two men were very different. Camus was handsome, Sartre was toad-like. One eye looked to the right, while the other glanced to the left. Camus was born poor, his father an agricultural worker who was killed in the war; and his mother a cleaner who couldn’t read. By contrast, Sartre came from the protestant ‘haute bourgeosie’—he’d never wanted for anything . . . Sartre was an intellect of global renown. He happened to write for the theatre, amongst other things. He wrote The Devil and the Good Lord and Maria performed in that play’s creation. But that’s what we now disdainfully call “the theatre of ideas”: theatre about ideas, which is to say, ideas are expounded upon on stage, taking shape thanks to actors who physically manifest theories. It’s a little heavy, but at the time the play was a resounding success. So Maria hung around with Jean-Paul Sartre, who sometimes attended rehearsals. He watched her out of the corner of his eye as he always did (the other looking elsewhere), but Maria’s heart was taken, as you know, and Sartre knew too, which made him even more jealous.
*
What made Sartre retire to this shed from time to time? We don’t really know. There are different theories. The current one is: we think that Sartre—conscious of his privileged social background and having noticed that Maria had set her sights on an obscure Algerian born into poverty—might be trying to get Maria’s attention by making her think he cares about tinkering with things, like some man of the people. Touching, but completely useless.
But Maria’s no fool. She only comes here to reproach him for this attitude to Camus. Sartre tells her he’s changed, that he’s no longer the star, that he’s realized his meanness, but she doesn’t want to know. She always ends up leaving his shed in full tragic mode, having told him her four truths, which plunge Sartre into despair every time.
*
So let’s conquer the tower in front of us. That also houses an illustrious tenant.
*
Amongst the great writers that Maria performed was one whom Sartre knew very well. He couldn’t help but write a book on him. No one had ever asked him to, but he wrote the book all the same, a huge slab unearthing so much that the writer in question couldn’t write for years because reading the book made such a big impression on him.
Maria was in the creation of one of that writer’s plays . . . It was a pretty violent play about the Algerian war, the man was debauched, but his writing was sublime, so anything went. His name was Jean Genet.
*
There are some premieres of new plays that one remembers more than others. And Maria wasn’t likely to forget this one. The play spoke of the war in Algeria that had only just finished. (Algeria, which still and always led her back to Camus!) The play was terrifying: there were parachutists on stage (or at least actors playing parachutists) and they behaved really disgustingly.
*
The actors got used to the bags of excrement that furious audiences threw at them on the stage. Performing in those conditions took something heroic. Maria had never acted under anything like them.
Genet was clearly a man who didn’t write without having something to say. He was the type of writer used to scandal, whom nothing could scare.
*
Genet preferred men and didn’t hide it. Bad boys were his favourite. He’d spent many years in prison for theft, and his homosexuality had a key place in his life and his work. Maria could rest easy here. And perhaps it was in memory of prison that Genet chose this tower, beautiful from the outside, but a little cell-like in the interior . . . Maria had bought this house some years earlier, and invited him to visit it several times, but Genet always had things to do, causes to fight—in the United States, in Palestine—and was never free.
Perhaps he also chose this tower in homage to Oscar Wilde, locked up for being homosexual. In any case, he was always looking out, in case he saw Sartre arriving, which had the effect of making him flee immediately. But Sartre only looked at the house, in Camus’s direction, and barely gave a few furtive glances towards the tower.
Jean Genet was an odd type, asocial really, but Maria had been a renegade herself. She’d fled Spain with her parents. Prison would have awaited them if they’d stayed. Or maybe death. She felt tenderness for Genet, experiencing exile in his own country . . .
Just next to Jean Genet’s tower, there is a pond . . .
In summer, this pond is full of frogs and toads who croak together as evening falls. When the actors perform outdoors, in front of the wall here, they have to compete with the pond-dwellers, which is a nightmare!
*
Maria Casarès had the most blessed chance to meet some real monuments of literature. After the war was a difficult time, without doubt, but what creativity, what poets! What a life she had, when you think about it. And I’ve not even spoken about the Avignon Festival, its “Cour d’honneur”, her great roles from the repertoire: Shakespeare, Vilar, Gérard Philipe! I’m only telling you of the living playwrights Maria met, and loved. Those whose plays she played, and who regularly haunt this site, because they loved to visit this actress, their actress.
*
Let’s go into the house’s theatre at last. The sacred place.
*
An empty theatre is beautiful.
The last writer we’re going to talk about is not exactly from the same era as Camus, Sartre . . . and Genet. He came later. Which didn’t stop Maria from shaping one of his plays. The play that made him known to a wide public. That playwright who sometimes haunts these walls is called Bernard-Marie Koltès and the play Quay West.
Bernard-Marie Koltès had seen Maria Casarès play Medea when he was young and it transformed his life; it was she who injected a passion for theatre in him when he was twenty, and years later she created one of his plays . . .
Bernard was handsome like a god (Genet watched him continually from the top of his tower when he was there), and actually very kind, but none of his neighbouring residents found grace in those eyes.
He comes for Maria, and he finds her in this theatre. She interprets roles before him. He sits in the seats or just on a chair when the seats are removed. And he encourages her. He silently applauds the passages she recites into the silence, and they are both happy. It goes without saying that the others are sick with envy. When they hear Maria’s voice rising in the theatre they can’t stop themselves heading there, where they find themselves one in front of the other, and either say a frosty hello, or completely ignore each other.
*
In any case, it’s in this theatre that Maria’s ghost is most often to be found (in packed company). With Bernard who listens and applauds. Albert, Jean-Paul, and Jean who stand at the doors and can’t stop themselves applauding.
*
All who know and love her come and see her in this theatre where she sometimes gives private performances for friends. At the beginning of the show she blows kisses to Albert, who blows them back. After all, she’s at home and can do what she likes. There, alone on the stage, she gives it her all. She becomes the true tragedian that everyone knows. She is theatre like a heart that beats.
