Listen to a recorded conversation between artist Alice Theobald and actor Thibault de Montalembert (Call my Agent, 2015-present; My Sex Life… or How I Got Into an Argument, 1996) from an event that took place at the South London Gallery in April 2022 to coincide with Theobald’s exhibition Il Y Aura (There Will Be).
Hear the entire conversation in the recording below, hosted by Art Monthly’s Chris McCormack, or read a selection of excerpts and quotes.
On how the work was made
Alice Theobald (AT):
I was doing a residency in Bordeaux in 2017. I decided I wanted to carry on with previous themes in my work around cliché and archetypes, and particularly the sort of mirroring in cinema and fiction and real life.
I’d always been interested in theatre of the absurd. I’d read about La Leçon before reading the actual play. Then I read the play and the themes within it struck me. 2017 is also around the time of Me Too, as well, which didn’t really have anything to do with it but it was sort of in the ether. I just enjoyed this dynamic between the two characters in the play. What struck me also was the text at the beginning which describes the dynamic between them and how it evolves and the power structure and the dominance kind of shifting.
With Thibault, I had, at around a similar time, been watching some Arnaud Desplechin films which Thibault was in in the ’90s. I really liked them and how the characters sort of search for love, or ways of making their lives more fulfilling, or just this desire to be understood. Soon after, I saw Call My Agent and I really liked making that connection. The curator I was working with on the film initially, Anne-Sophie Dinant, who had invited me to do the residency was also watching Call My Agent and when I was thinking about a character for this film she was like, “Oh, Why don’t you ask him?” And I was like, “No, he wouldn’t say yes”. But she had a good attitude towards it – just like, “Go for it”. We sent his agent the script, it wasn’t even a script, it was just a scenario in it. And then all the lines. But that was it.
Thibault de Montalembert (TM):
I asked her “I have to learn all those lines?!” She said yes. But I didn’t.
I especially like [this play] because when I was studying as a student at drama school, I used to do this. I had a very bad experience once. I was waiting outside of the school rehearsing my lines when I was 19 years old and suddenly, a dog jumps on me and he bit me. I have to go on stage after this happened to me and I was in the same state that you are in the film. So it’s strange, because there is an echo of my first experience some years ago and your film.
On the use and meaning of repetition in the film
AT:
I guess with language lessons, dialogue or the text you’re learning is often really banal but kind of like absurd within that as well in that banality.
TM:
[Actors] also have this Meisner Exercise where you have to repeat: “You have a nose I have a nose you have a nose, I have a nose, you have an eye, I have an eye”. You know, it’s something similar to this film in a way. You lose yourself and something else is happening between people, beyond the words.
AT:
In the meaning of what’s actually being said, there’s two things going on. There’s the dynamic between the characters and then what’s being said, which kind of has no relationship to what’s actually happening or the way that it’s being said. That’s the Meisner technique, this sort of theatre.
That’s the thing that I’m interested in – words becoming a stand in or a mask for what we’re actually thinking or meaning. Words being insufficient form of expression.
On teaching and directing
AT:
Within the processes, there was a lot of room for improvisation where I think there is more of you coming into the character. Maybe as somebody that’s also been an educator, because you created a school and you’ve done a lot of teaching.
TM:
I love to teach. I do it with my wife and we opened the school together. She says that I’m a little bit too much like a teacher in life with people. It’s part of my job. Like you, you’re a teacher too. It’s very important to work with people who learn things, you know, because you ask yourself new questions, you are refreshing everything, sometimes you discover new things.
AT:
The structure within the film allows for that dynamic between us both to occur because I’m directing it and I am, in a sense, telling you what I want from it; how I wanted the dynamic to change, and how the power structure or the dominance could change within it. But then also when you’re correcting me those are genuine corrections, my mistakes are genuine mistakes. This is a real life power dynamic going on within film, which is something that’s sort of constant.
TM:
You are the director and I’m the actor. You give me what you want to say, what you want to see and then when we act I tell you what I want to say and what I want to do.
On improvisation
AT:
I think the mistakes that I was making were repeated, though genuine, but I kept making the same mistakes so there were kind of rehearsed mistakes within the film. If we had rehearsed it too many times maybe those wouldn’t happen.
TM:
It’s like a jam session in a way. Because technically you know exactly what you want. So we have a frame and inside of it we can dance together you know, like the couple were dancing together. If you are really working with the other one you can you can catch with what is thrown to you and play with it.
AT:
And to allow space to be surprised as well.
On the dynamics between the characters
AT:
Some of the instructions that I gave you is that I wanted it to be about correcting the grammar, but then also the syntax and the iteration and delivery. So it becomes this kind of mix of a language lesson, but also a drama lesson. How to be, how to say something. It was like a behavioural lesson.
TM:
When I first saw the film, I found it funny. The man holds power over her but at the end, they are both victims of something. They are both exhausted. And that is very interesting.
On collaboration and music
AT:
I worked with Tom Hirst on the music. We’ve collaborated on various things for a long time, since 2009. I enjoy the collaboration, I like relinquishing my own responsibility at times, allowing that to happen. It’s nice working with people! It’s just nice to have something to react against. I’ve always had an interest in music. It’s such a powerful sense that can completely manipulate a scenario and how it’s read. Music has this power to seduce an audience but I’m also wanting to expose how that seduction somehow.
On theatre and acting
TM:
The first thing of all is theatre. It’s the last one and the first one for me. Maybe one day movies will disappear, but theatre never, never. People are always demanding that others tell them stories about themselves, about their life.
AT:
I’ve always been interested in ideas of authenticity, absurdity, acting as a practice and the idea of rehearsing to get to something more authentic. So rehearsing and rehearsing to get to the point of being more authentic. That’s what seemed like a good actor. There’s like a sort of weird contradiction in that. It’s like he’s like the best liar. Actors are really good liars, basically.
TM:
I don’t know if it’s because we are good liars, I think it’s because we are good travellers. You have this amazing guy, Daniel Day Lewis. Each role is travelling inside of him. He nearly goes to the point where he could be crazy. You can feel it because it goes so deep. And that’s what excited him. It’s not really about lying. It’s about something else. I know good liars in life. But I’m amazed by what they are capable of doing you know, they’re like politicians, some of them.
AT:
I’m always finding these parallels between acting and life and these different layers in all the different roles we have to take on within real life.
On the role of dance in the film
AT:
I wanted the dance to be this kind of structural intermission somehow. Thibault wasn’t very happy about it. It added to the awkwardness as well, this genuine awkwardness, it is this fantasy that isn’t very pleasurable for either of the characters, or actors!
TM:
The dance was really mechanical but the way you edited it was so fluid.
AT:
It’s a moment for the audience that acts a kind of break from the language, the heavy dialogue. It then spills out onto the floor of the gallery, taking you out of that screen, that frame. Going beyond the frame is another layer of interest that I’m thinking about.
Alice Theobald: Il Y Aura (There Will Be) is at the South London Gallery until 5 June 2022.