In Montpellier, Julie Deliquet adapts on stage an unknown and joyful TV series from director Fassbinder

Is it a funny idea to adapt a German TV soap from the 1970s?

It was an editor who told me about this text unpublished in France, a real nugget discovered during a Rainer Werner Fassbinder retrospective. We do not know at all the first series of this director of television and cinema who is also a playwright. I who flirt with the different arts, I was seduced by this project which reveals an unknown Fassbinder. This work does not have the dark tone of his films or his plays at all. It is a joyful and united utopia on the theme “unity is strength”, on the edge of Jacques Demy’s magical cinema with a happy ending. Maybe because Fassbinder is aimed at the popular TV audience.

What attracted you in this text?

The hope that gives birth to social struggle. Intergenerational solidarities which allow me to distribute roles from 9 years old to 75 years old. I who defend a troupe theater, I am happy to merge five young comedians leaving schools with actors who have a much longer career than mine, such as Evelyne Didi and Christian Drillaud who experienced these 70s, especially at the National Theater Strasbourg, which Fassbinder’s Germany was close to.

The play is about a workers’ struggle that seems a little distant. Does it still resonate in our contemporary world?

It is a fable whose invoice is very “70s”. It takes place in Cologne and questions the beginnings of Europe. She speaks of reconstruction by a generation of baby boomers who do not bear the horror of Nazism and dreams of a better world. It is obviously not a direct mirror of our society. We know that the utopias of the 1970s did a lot of good in the attempts and had many failures in their resolutions. But there is hope. And these characters who struggle and find solutions together remind me of the everyday heroes who invented solidarity during the pandemic on the territory of my theater in Saint Denis. The working memory is still very strong there. The play shows that we can find confidence in humans. It is about workers, children’s rights, care for the elderly, the emancipation of women. This joyful spectacle gives hope. That it takes place in another era makes it easier to tackle the situations we are experiencing today.

What is the political context?

In Germany, it has nothing to do with that of France at that time. There are no Lip, the Communist Party is banned, the unions are not very active. There is therefore no leader, which promotes individual commitment: the struggle of some engages that of others. Ideas are born because people act. I also believe in the power of theater through action by associating amateurs, young people and professionals. Fassbinder had to believe in it too.

You adapted “Fanny et Alexandre” by Ingmar Bergman, then “A Christmas tale” by Arnaud Desplechin. What attracts you in these filmic works?

I do not have the impression to “go up” of the cinema. I try first to question the idea of ​​democracy, the community, the “doing together” by changing the supports, the tones, so as not to repeat myself. My cinema baccalaureate at Lycée de Lunel, my studies at Paul Valéry University related to the seventh art, and the Montpellier conservatory gave me a dual culture of theater and cinema. The conservatory gave me a taste for actors, film analysis a taste for staging. Taking a medium that is not made for the theater gives the impression of giving life back to a work that exists otherwise. But it is the very history of the theater to make people believe that this is the first time. Having been upset by Chéreau’s “Phèdre” does not prevent you from wanting to ride it today.

The region played a role in your training?

I was eleven years old when my parents left the Paris region to settle in Saint Just. I discovered a lot of films at the Mediterranean Festival in Lunel, at Cinemed in Montpellier. With theater clubs, I played in the arenas of Lunel, at the temple of Nîmes with a show on the prisoners of the Tour de Constance: these first steps on stage were very educational!