He is as happy as a kid, Didier Sandre, at the idea of participating in the Festival of correspondence in Grignan (Drôme) directed by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt.
The member of the Comédie-Française can't stop smiling: that's good, humor is the theme of this 26th edition.
On July 6, he will say the missives that Voltaire sent to Madame du Deffand (played by Lara Suyeux), adapted by Virginie Berling in a staging by Benjamin Guillard.
The Marquise lives in Paris while the man she admires is
"buried in the Alps and Mont Jura"
.
They talk a lot about their health.
LE FIGARO. - Have you ever been to this festival?
Didier SANDRE.
- Yes, it was to read letters between Mozart and his father Leopold.
There was a big storm, we had taken refuge in the village hall of Grignan which had become an oven with the heat.
The Sine Nomine Quartet couldn't play because the strings were getting loose.
It was epic!
Do you give a reading or an interpretation of the exchanges between the blind Madame du Deffand and the so-called blind but very clairvoyant Voltaire?
For me, reading is a work of interpretation.
I don't understand how anyone can be neutral.
We necessarily commit even if it's not as much as in a stage character because we don't have the costumes, the weeks of rehearsal or the staging.
The fact remains that we engage in a verb, a personality which we try to account for.
I don't pretend to play Voltaire, I try to present his sentence, his mood and the way he played with words and… people.
Voltaire is indeed quite a personality!
The game of seduction between him and Madame du Deffand is amusing.
They are no longer quite the age for little adventures or flirtations (Didier Sandre laughs)!
I find them very cute.
Despite the disadvantages of age, rheumatism, the women of that time were extraordinary.
I played
Madame de Sade
, by Yukio Mishima, directed by Sophie Lucachevsky.
I played the mother
(role which in 1987 earned her the prize of the National Union of Critics, Editor's note)
.
At the time, I had read the correspondence and memoirs of Madame du Châtelet, Madame du Deffand, Julie de Lespinasse and Madame d'Épinay.
These aristocrats could do anything: express themselves in a sustained way or show themselves to be very vulgar.
They were intellectuals of immense freedom.
Alas, the 19th century flattened all that.
Voltaire and Madame du Deffand talk a lot about illness and death.
Yes, they were very advanced in age, with a lot of embarrassment, physical degradation, there were no dental prostheses… They found their strength by continuing to perform intellectually and by feeding on letters.
Impossible loves too.
Mme du Deffand had an affair with Horace Walpole who was a notorious homosexual to whom she did not always speak well of Voltaire.
(
Laughs.
) They are contrasting, lively characters.
What Madame du Deffand says about the theater in relation to Diderot is interesting.
She seems to adore the emphatic, puffy style, she finds that Agrippina interpreted naturally as a fishmonger, it's not theatre.
However, after Molière and Diderot, the way of playing had to be more natural.
In the cinema, we don't know how we are filmed or if scenes will be cut.
In the theater, you are your own master
Didier Sander
The theme of the 26th edition of the festival is humor. Do you think there is a French laugh?
That of Voltaire is exceptional.
French humour, in the general understanding, is characterized by things that are a little heavier, which are not my style.
Me, I love English humor, Oscar Wilde.
I'm a fan of comedians like Blanche Gardin, Coluche or Fernand Raynaud.
Desproges is the pope!
When I was younger, I was a fan of the “Tribunal des flagrants delirious”.
Will you be seated behind a desk?
With the director, Benjamin Guillard, Molière of the best alone-on-stage with Marc Arnaud for
The Metamorphosis of the storks
, we wondered how to edit, improve and enrich the reading.
It will be very simple, you have to concentrate on the word, not to do sleeve effects or spaces.
It makes me happy to have the opportunity to escape from the Frenchman.
We are quickly in a jar in this big house.
Exactly, there, you play alternately Géronte in
Les Fourberies de Scapin
by Molière (until July 10) and the Master of Philosophy in
Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme
by the same Molière (until July 21).
I got used to the rhythm a bit.
One of the reasons why I joined the French is to live other experiences than those I had had in the public theater and the private theater.
It wasn't easy, but I understood that it could also be an extraordinary enrichment.
There were years when I chained
Cyrano de Bergerac
and
Roméo et Juliette
or
Les Fourberies de Scapin
and
Les Damnés
… It's a fine exercise, I had almost fifty years of intermittent performance before entering the Comedie Francaise.
I try to be always learning, to marvel, to progress, to be in search of new things.
Who makes proposals? Is it you or Éric Ruf, the general administrator?
We can offer things, but not that much.
We have more latitude for “singulis”, those alone on stage.
During the Covid, I did
La Messe là-bas
by Claudel, a somewhat off-putting, but remarkable text.
I will take it back to the Studio next season.
You can also do "attics", readings in the evening in the dome of the theater.
Otherwise the programming obeys parameters which are not necessarily those of the actors.
We can suggest to Eric Ruf to mount a Pirandello.
I would also love to play Corneille, who hasn't been shown at the Français for a long time.
Read alsoTheatrical plays to see this summer at festivals
In the cinema you are currently in
Les Passagers de la nuit
by Mikhaël Hers.
Yes, I really like this very impressionistic film.
I also loved working with Roman Polanski, I played Raoul de Boisdeffre, the army chief of general staff in
J'accuse
in 2019. But I really like the theater, meeting the public.
There was a time when I could have worked more in the cinema, but we are very manipulated there.
We don't know how we are filmed or if any scenes will be cut.
In
Les Passagers de la nuit
, I had a superb scene which disappeared during editing.
In the theatre, you are your own master, in a unique relationship.
When you are on stage, do you think of those you have worked with, Catherine Dasté, Michel Hermon, Bernard Sobel, Jorge Lavelli, Jean-Pierre Miquel, Jean-Pierre Vincent, Maurice Béjart, Giorgio Strehler, Patrice Chéreau, Luc Bondy or Anthony Vitez?
They are all in pictures in my dressing room.
I thank them, they are directors who wanted the actors to be artists too and not just good professionals.
It is an approach that has imprinted my way of being.
In total commitment.
Total commitment, your trademark?
I don't know how else to do it.
Sometimes I wish I could save a little more, but I can't.
Correspondence Festival, July 5 to 9,
grignanfestivaldelacorrespondance.com.