The 1960s are not dead, at least not for some holdouts in Maubeuge, a small town two hours out of Paris. There on a cold weekend last April, numerous international theatre folk celebrated the momentous decade by eating a sumptuous five-hour meal while reminiscing about the past. The feast was sponsored by the Maubeuge International Festival, run by a 33-year-old French entrepreneur named Didier Fusillier. So devoted to new and experimental performance is Fusillier that he invited the leading American movers and shakers of the theatre of the 1960s (as well as a couple of hundred others) to dine with him over a weekend. Among the guests were La Mama herself, Ellen Stewart; Judith Malina and husband Hanon Resnikov, representing the new Living Theater; Joseph Chaikin and Jean-Claude van Itallie of the Open Theater; and the ever-acerbic writer and designer Richard Foreman. French theatre scholar Philippa Wehle, who had a hand in organizing the event, was the only other American besides myself there to observe, to wonder and to criticize.
Apparently Fusillier had enough money to lure to Maubeuge not only these Americans but the French and foreign press, festival producers and European theatre managers as well. How was this possible when just that week France had lost its main arts support on the assumption that too much money was spent for too little and that Socialists had their hands in the till? According to Fusillier, the town’s officials paid for the whole event themselves, and not the State. Besides, everything was planned before the national election.
So the feast began on Saturday afternoon with hors d’oeuvres of caviar, pate, smoked salmon, wine and champagne. In a banquet hall with long tables set for more than 200, our host and others asked us to react (between courses) to the “glorious 60s,” their meaning and influence, their benefits and blunders. One speaker noted that the avant-garde got its start in France and influenced the French theatre; another spoke with sorrow of the passing of the socialists and their ousted minister of culture Jack Lang, who gave the avant-garde its first chance during the heyday of the Nancy Festivals of the ’50s and ’60s. Those were the days, the speakers continued, days of a new Renaissance, an era that could no longer be approximated–or could it?
The first to venture an answer to the open-ended question was Judith Malina. Older, but feisty and radical as ever, Malina remembered “revolutionary times as fun.” But because of the legend of the Living Theatre, “we are having our difficulties today,” she said. “We have to stop mythologizing the past; it is a detriment to the future. We must change things and live in the stream of history. However, none of the reasons for the revolution have disappeared; there is still war, hunger and the homeless.
“It is not popular to discuss anything political now except aesthetics,” she went on. “But in the ’60s we knew what we wanted to say. Now they have beautiful forms, but what have they to say? Is anyone making plays about Somalia, or about the homeless? What can be done today in theatre that relates to our lives?”
Characteristically mischievous, Jean-Claude van Itallie evaded that question with a song in French: “None of This Is Worth the Full Moon over Maubeuge,” he warbled. Then in a sober, modulated tone, he credited as a welcome point of view the ’60s reaction against rigid ideas and worn-out conventions. But he maintained, in contrast to Malina, that theatre could not be political unless it was first personal: “We have to ask why we are creating theatre.”
Ellen Stewart had no doubts about why she did so: not to put forth any political ideas–“never, never,” she said–but to bring people together. “I have never known anything about politics. I am only interested in the human being, and my greatest pleasure is seeing the human being doing something he wants to do. La Mama is dedicated to all aspects of creating beauty with our fellow man.”
The introspective Richard Foreman was brief He claimed that since he is “not comfortable in the world” he has chosen to do private, idiosyncratic theatre, even though his work may be too difficult for the average audience to understand. Later he told me that he disliked much of the theatre of the ’60s and had been invited to Maubeuge for purposes he didn’t understand. Perhaps it was because Fusillier recently commissioned him to direct an opera for the Maubeuge Festival.
The speeches went on all afternoon and so did the food. By 5:30, most people were still eating but few were listening to the speakers any more. After all, we were in France, where eating takes precedence over everything.
Fusillier, a low-key, affable man with a doctorate in philosophy who runs the Maubeuge complex of five theatres and produces 120 shows a year on a budget of about $3 million, was happy with the outcome of the weekend. He has recently added the directorship of a theatre not far from Paris to his roster of undertakings, and just returned from a whirlwind tour of New York and other cities in search of adventurous work to import.
What he could not do, even with the resources at his disposal, was to recreate the genuine flavor of the ’60s. Still, most agreed that the era did have a profound effect on theatre. And, whether one looks at the past as mythology or with nostalgic longing, it was remarkable that theatrical history was recognized and celebrated in a little town in France with such unusual hospitality.
