6 MARCH - 1 APRIL 2009

Denis Podalydès

Podalydès & Guests

THEATRE

In association with the Comédie-Française

Denis Podalydès (a sociétaire actor with the Comédie-Française) reads his text Voix off with invited guests. Guests include Yassine Bakouch, Marcel Bozonnet, Emmanuel Bourdieu, Gérard Desarthe,André Dussolier, Éric Elmosnino, Dominique Pinon, Bruno Podalydès, Éric Ruf, Jean-Pierre Vincent, Michel Vuillermoz, Jacques Weber…

"I trust my voice to convey everything about me. Written and spoken words are my entire existence."

Denis Podalydès and guests read Voix Off — an exercise in creative writing, acting and theatre. A ballet of the faultlines and metamorphoses of the spoken word, that uninterrupted realm extending from the stage to ordinary, everyday conversation. A rich landscape of intonation and rhythm, murmur, humming, timbre and register, inchoate vocalisations, stutterings. A faithful interpreter with a pronounced taste for mimickry, inhabiting the very tonality of meaning, Denis Podalydès summons a cast of fleeting, sovereign presences through the medium of words, and his own voice.

In this original autobiographical essay, the echoes and resonant fragments of a life are used to track the essential truth at the heart of each living soul, in the timbre or inflection of a word, a vowel. Denis Podalydès tells his own story through the voices that have forged his own truth. A self-portrait scattered throughout Podalydès's portraits of a succession of voices: his closest relatives, friends and teachers. The broadcast radio voice of Pierre Mendès-France, the voice of Jean Vilar annoncing the death of Gérard Philipe in a speech of tightly-controlled emotion. The shrill, contrary voice of his mother. His brothers' voices, their notation sounding from far afield, like a reminder, a regret. The voices of the great French actor Michel Bouquet, the director and translator Antoine Vitez...

The voices of actors André Dussollier and Jacques Weber, Michael Lonsdale, Jean-Louis Barrault, Michel Vuillermoz… a procession of figures engaged in questioning and repartee, enjoying themselves hugely. Denis Podalydès explores the landscape of the voice – his own and other people's, sketching the history of one man and an entire generation in a show every bit as funny, sharp and impressive as his performances.
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Voix Off is published by Mercure de France (Traits et Portraits), 2008.