Je ne vois pas la femme cachée dans la forêt

I can’t see… 

The field has eyes, the forest, ears. There is nothing to see, to discover, to reveal, in a forest: The aim is rather to listen, but to listen with your eyes. 

A dancer crosses the stage, stops, and starts to recite… in silence. 

(The awaited words become a promise bustling with meaning. Feelings are then free to take all the time they need, to seize time.) 

An actor’s voice is added and, at last, we can understand. We can see. Clearly. The tension has fallen. And with it, freedom:  words add nothing. Words only explain themselves. We already know them, are familiar with them. The verbal circuit introduces a new space.  It erases and dissipates the possible interlude. Grasping the words with your gaze fertilizes the gesture and dissolves the scene. We leave, for an instant, the forest… 

I don’t want to see. 

… The hidden woman… 

“The forest is the ultimate place of intimacy All holy places begin with the “holy wood”: it is the archetype of female intimacy that becomes a world.” 

The forest is a woman. It condenses her, contains her:  more exactly, it hides her. All the dancers look for the woman, while they discover and give life to the forest: we would say they were all women. 

“There is a deliberate fleeing of the object invoked with insistence, to better betray it. To leave it hidden.” 

(The evocation, the search, become familiar to us: invited to play the game of the “hidden meaning”, we don’t know whether it’s better to keep the secret or try to discover the ploy.) 

“Then, just like in fairy tales and countless legends, a gaze emerges from the depths: the enormous and majestic image of the Woman for us to gaze on. The forest runs the risk of vanishing, of being taken over and “tamed”, potted. 

Has the woman been broken? 

… in the forest. 

“While I was on watch on the hill, I looked towards Birman and I thought I saw the forest move” the messenger said to Macbeth. 

And the actors continue to give the forest life, to carry it, living, on themselves. No longer camouflaged in its foliage, but interpreting its shapes and movement. The dancers become, in turn, flowers, bushes, animals. Dance flows in the opposite direction to theatre, the forest is the place where you lose your way. 

(Once you are well and truly lost, your anxiety is quelled, and a pleasant feeling of belonging sweeps over you.) 

The forest is the successive appearance of microscopic cosmogonies, the choreography of quick, light fairy tales. Each time, an unknown obstacle or a mysterious situation can be resolved by playing. Provided it remains hidden inside. Accomplices… of the forest.  
Bruna Filippi (translated in English – source : site mathildemonnier.com)