L’intime est un défi lancé à la représentation : comment montrer ce qui est par essence caché, ce qui échappe à l’espace public pour se loger dans le privé, entre les murs des foyers, ou dans le for intérieur ? A ce questionnement esthétique – que peut la représentation face au paradoxe de l’intime ? – s’ajoute un enjeu éthique : qu’a-t-on le droit de montrer de cette sphère régie par le secret et la pudeur ? Notre recherche se propose comme objet l’oeuvre du metteur en scène et cinéaste Patrice Chéreau. A la scène comme à l’écran, les corps y sont exposés jusqu’à l’excès, suscitant chez le spectateur malaise et fascination. Deux postures s’y dessinent : intrus ou voyeur, le spectateur est appelé à réfléchir son activité. Au théâtre, c’est l’articulation d’un dispositif scénique épuré et d’un jeu d’acteur puissamment charnel qui place le spectateur dans une proximité physique dérangeante à un corps débordant. Au cinéma, c’est en donnant à voir une nudité suintante, loin des standards lisses des images photoshoppées, que le cinéaste en appelle à une pulsion scopique qui met en branle une fonctionnalité haptique du regard. Ainsi, la représentation de l’intime suscite un besoin d’outrepasser la vision pour palper le visible. Or c’est précisément par le relais du directeur d’acteur que ceci est rendu possible. Ce que nous regardons, en dernière instance, est la relation qui unit Patrice Chéreau à ses comédiens, relation au sein de laquelle se joue une érotique de l’acteur, mais aussi une éthique de l’intime, entendue comme le moyen de dépasser obscénité, exhibitionnisme ou pornographie qui caractériseraient la représentation de l’intimité. / Privacy is a challenge launched to representation: how do we show what is hidden in essence, that which escapes the public sphere to find place in the private realm, between the walls of homes, or in conscience? In this aesthetic questioning - what can the representation accomplish in front of the paradox of privacy ? – here, an ethical stake is added: what can we show of this sphere governed by the secret and the decent ? The basis of our research is the work of the director and film-maker Patrice Chéreau. Both on stage as well as on screen, bodies are given to be seen until excess, creating embarrassment and fascination in the audience. Two postures take shape here: intruder or Peeping Tom. The spectator is called to reflect his activity. To the theater, it is the link between an uncluttered scenic device and a powerfully carnal act, that places the spectator in disturbing physical proximity to an overflowing body. In the cinema, by exposing the audience to a secreting nudity, far from the standards of images produced by Photoshop, the film-maker calls forth a magnified drive which creates a haptic feature of the glance. So, the representation of privacy arouses a need to exceed the vision in order to feel the visible. This is made possible via the director. In the final analysis, we look at the relationship between Patrice Chéreau and his actors, the relationship where not only the actor’s erotic, but also the ethics of privacy, take shape, both considered as the means to overtake obscenity, exhibitionism or pornography, characterizing the representation of intimacy.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Die Dissertation behandelt die Frage, wie sich mit dem von der Intertextualität abgeleiteten Theoriefeld der Intermedialität ein Text untersuchen lässt, wenn er als Theaterstück inszeniert und diese Inszenierung wiederum gefilmt wird. Wie verändert sich das Substrat des Texts bei dessen Übertragung auf die Bühne und auf den Bildschirm? Wie funktionieren diese Medien und Kunstformen zusammen im Theaterfilm? Diese grundsätzlichen Fragen stehen vor dem exemplarischen Vergleich von Bernard-Marie Koltès' Theaterstück "Dans la solitude des champs de coton" in Patrice Chéreaus Inszenierungen von 1987 und 1995, sowie deren Verfilmungen in der Regie von Benoît Jacquot bzw. Stéphane Metge. Aus dem derzeitigen Stand der Intermedialitätsforschung wird zu Theater und Film eine Analysemethode hergeleitet: Zunächst wird auf die "Framework"-Theorie E. Goffmans rückgegriffen, nach der jedwedes Handeln erst sinnvoll innerhalb vom Vorwissen strukturierter und dadurch erkennbarer Situationen vollzogen wird. So lässt sich die Aktion im Text, auf der Bühne oder dem Bildschirm mit jeweils anderen frames oder, wie C. Grivel diese Erscheinung nennt, créances in Verbindung bringen. Dabei dominieren in der Begegnung zwischen dem Dealer und dem Client, von der Koltès' Stück handelt, je nach formaler und medialer Vermittlung, die créance des Handels, des Kampfes oder der Verführung. Ihr Zusammenspiel wirkt irritierend auf den Leser oder Zuschauer. Mit vier Arten von Bedeutungsrelationen, nämlich Synchronisierung, Gegenläufigkeit, Überlagerung und Ausfächerung, lassen sich die intermedialen, semiotischen Prozesse beschreiben, die bei der Theaterinszenierung und deren Verfilmung auftreten. Wie der Transfer auf die Bühne und den Bildschirm das Textsubstrat bestätigt bzw. verändert, zeigt die Arbeit am Beispiel von Chéreaus beiden "Dans la solitude des champs de coton"-Inszenierungen, und zwar unter vier Aspekten: Zeitmuster, Schauplatz und Bühne, Licht und Atmosphäre, Gesten und Mimik. Die Untersuchung zeigt unter anderem, dass die Inszenierung von 1987 sowie Jacquots Verfilmung die im Text angelegte schematische Opposition zwischen Dealer und Client unterstreicht. Die Inszenierung von 1995 löst den Gegensatz zwischen ihnen auf und beschreibt den Dealer und den Client als Spieler im Spiel, deren Rollen austauschbar sind. Metges Aufzeichnung verweist schließlich auf die Lebendigkeit der Aufführung als einer Begegnung nicht nur zwischen Dealer und Client, sondern auch zwischen Darstellern und Publikum. / The thesis deals with the question of knowing, how 'intermediality', a theoretical field deduced from intertextuality, can aid in analysing a text being produced on stage and this staging having been filmed. In which way the substratum of the text will be transformed on its transfer to the scene and to the screen? How these media and art forms do function together in a theatre film? These basic questions follows a exemplary comparison of Bernard-Marie Koltès' theatre play "Dans la solitude des champs de coton" produced for the stage by Patrice Chéreau in 1987 and 1995 and the films of these stagings realised by Benoît Jacquot and Stéphane Metge. A method to analyse the relation between theatre and film in the case of a theatre film is deduced from the actual status of intermediality theory: The "framework"-theory of E. Goffman is recalled, according to which each action only becomes significant in situations that are distinguishable after having been structured by a previous knowledge. Any action in the text, on the scene or on the screen can then be associated with a frame or a "créance", as C. Grivel calls the same phenomenon. In the encounter of the Dealer with the Client, descibed in Koltès' play, dominate the créance of the deal, the fight or the seduction, depending on the form and the medium, by which the action is transmitted. Their interplay causes irritation. The intermedial, semiotic processes occurring in a theatre production and it's filmed version can be described by using four types of 'relations of significance' (Bedeutungsrelationen): synchronization (Synchronisierung), desynchronization (Gegenläufigkeit), superimposition (Überlagerung) and fanning-out (Ausfächerung). Taking the example of Chéreaus two theatre productions of "Dans la solitude des champs de coton", the thesis indicates how the transfer to the scene and to the screen confirms or modifies the substratum of the text. The demonstration follows four aspects: time structures, scene of action and theatre scene, light and atmosphere, gestures and mimicry. The analysis shows for instance, that the 1987 production and Jacquot's film version underline the schematic opposition between the Dealer and the Client that is established in the text. The 1995 production dissolves this antagonism between them and presents them as two actors in within the play, whose roles are interchangeable. Finally, Metge's video is a reference to the vivacity of the performance as a meeting not only between the Dealer and the Client, but also between the actors and the audience.

“Cinematic Theatricality” is the combination of conventionally “cinematic” and “theatrical” styles. It occurs on both screen and stage, and in intermedial performances. Despite their entwined histories, cinema and theater often define their aesthetics against each other. This dissertation posits that “cinematic theatricality,” in combining these allegedly “oppositional” aesthetic codes, actually intensifies the effects of both media. It is a dynamic that prompts explorations of relationship between intellectual and affective spectatorship in each medium. My definition of “cinematic theatricality” moves beyond dominant Brechtian conceptions of theatricality in cinema, and incorporates theater and performance scholarship that develops different understandings of theatricality as dynamic and affective. These other definitions of theatricality enable more sympathetic and mutually enhancing dialogues with cinema. I locate this cinematic theatricality in the work of four queer directors—Luchino Visconti, Patrice Chéreau, Werner Schroeter and Ivo van Hove—who were active in both European film and theater from the 1950s to the present. These directors’ works are often dismissed as “excessive” because they go “over-the-top” of realist aesthetic norms. The plenitude arising from the combination of cinematic and theatrical effects produces these aesthetic “excess,” styles of surplus that foreground the links between intellectual and emotional experiences of a medium. Different theatricalities produce different variants of excesses, each of which has its own aims and is rooted in these directors’ theatrical careers and their participation in the Regietheater (Director’s Theater) movement in post-war European theater. Nietzsche’s characterization of the “gestural,” decadentist excesses of Wagner’s theater suggests how editing can theatricalize the norms of cinematic continuity editing, creating simultaneous narcotic absorption in and critical distance from historical narratives. Opera’s tension between mimetic representation and “over-the-top” bodily and vocal expressivity leads to rhythmic, melodramatic relationships between the moving camera and the expressive performing body in the transmission of meaning. The queer traditions of camp theatricality, combining both ironic theatrical references and the sincerity and sensual intensity of performances, tie the signifying and sensorial aspects of cinematic spectatorship. In contemporary theater, screen-to-stage adaptations and productions with video and projection are often dismissed as overblown spectacles, too distracting to be meaningful or valuable. Cinematic theatricality on the stage makes video and projection intentional distractions. It forces the spectator to choose where to (not) look, to experience complex phenomena of intermedial “absence” and “presence,” in ways that challenge the norms and ethics of different mediated modes of showing and not showing. Cinema and theater have long expanded their senses of themselves beyond strict ontological characteristics, and our contemporary mediascape further encourages more dynamic understandings of both the cinematic and the theatrical. Cinematic theatricality, in its doubled entwinings, opens a way to combine formalist with affective readings of each medium, thus providing a richer understanding of each medium’s powers and effects. Cinematic theatricality’s permutations—the decadent, operatic, camp, and spectacular—suggest new ways of taxonomizing the “aesthetic categories” of contemporary intermediality’s ardor for excessive aesthetics, and its embrace of excess as a mode suitable for asking serious questions about history, politics, and identity.