ABSTRACT
It is not the core of the problem. The core is the encounter. The text is an artistic reality existing in the objective sense. Now, if the text is sufficiently old and if it has preserved all its force for today - in other words, if this text contains certain concentrations of human experiences, representations, illusions, myths and truths which are still actual for us today - then, the text becomes a message which we receive from previous generations. In the same sense, the new text can be a sort of prism which reflects our experiences. The entire value of the text is already present once it has been written; this is literature, and we may read plays as part of "literature". In France, plays published in book form are given
the title of Theatre - a mistake in my opinion, because this is not theatre but dramatic literature. Faced with this literature, we can take up one of two positions: either, we can illustrate the text through the Interpretation of the actors, the mise en scene, the scenery, the play situation... In that case, the result is not theatre, and the only living element in such a performance is the literature. Or, we can virtually ignore the text, treating it solely as a pretext, making interpolations and changes, reducing it to nothing. I feel that both of these two solutions are false ones, because in both cases we are not fulfilling our duties as artists, but trying to comply with certain rules - and art doesn't like rules. Masterpieces are always based on the transcendence of rules. Though of course, the test is in the performance.
