By Gilles Pastor
In 2007, I am in Salvador, Brasil, within the framework of the « Villa Medicis hors les murs » programme. I thefore have to vote by proxy for the French presidential elections.
In march 2007, I left Chirac’s France; in june 2007, I come back in Sarkozy’s.
In a book market, I found Marguerite Duras et François Mitterrand, entretiens (Marguerite Duras and François Mitterrand, discussions).
In this book, discussion is like an act, a time the Head of State allows himself with an intellectual. They mention their common experience in the Resistance, they confront their views on Reagan’s America, Khadafi’s Africa, the future of the Left. I felt the need to stage these discussions in the France I came back to.
From 2010, the year we first performed Marguerite and François, until 2012, date of the next presidential elections, this text will strike like a chord. It will echo today's French politics and the state of the world . Duras and Mitterrand’s voices, their silences, their affection and their disagreements are especially striking on stage, a testimony of heroic and literary times.
By Stéphane Patrice
A man and a woman discuss wartime memories, resistance, talk about politics and cover the whole world, evoke America and Africa, skim over Asia. A novelist trades her view of the world with a friend, the president. Their words are friendly, affectionate, serious, generous, radical and, sometimes, funny.
Stage director Gilles Pastor wanted to pay tribute to this exceptionnal friendship, and decided to adapt these discussions for the stage. Marguerite and François are played by an artist and a politician : Marief Guittier and Patrice Béghain.
Marguerite Duras and François Mitterrand are surrounded by the 20th century : only two years passed between their births, at the beginning of WWI (1914 for Duras, 1916 for Mitterrand), both died in 1996, within two months of each other.
