گاي بنعناع is a speculative journey through North African temporality, collapsing the experiences of three generations of artists from the same family in the fantasy of an utopian café, where book swapping met, cruising, music listening and mint tea drinking in the shishas’ fog.
gay bi na3na3 گاي بنعناع (gay à la menthe)) is the speculative soundtrack of what would have played on the record player at Tami’s (my grandfather) café. The music is built with samples of Moroccan music sourced from cassette tapes and records inherited from my father Mohamed. The samples are sent to a magical decolonial sequencer that generates new beats, or retro-predicts an imaginary intellectual queer arab playlist. I spat some bars over the instrumental tracks, sometimes talked or slammed, sometimes rapped.
Queer Time est une performance où Phoenix parle dans un micro de la difficulté de se présenter, de changements physiques, de changement de perspective, de dissonance, de queerness, d’arabité et de temps non-linéaire.
Queer Time is a performance in which Phoenix speaks into a microphone about the difficulty of presenting oneself, physical changes, shifting perspectives, dissonance, queerness, Arabness and non-linear time.
In Nanterre, where Atala is getting ready to perform its plays that twist the codes of stand-up comedy, Atala has designed a video game for artists in search of ideas. For all those exhausted artists struggling to sell their projects and searching in vain for the sesame to stardom. Salvation could come from a small arcade installed at the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers (1) on which a video game coaches you on how to sell your work and find inspiration.
The hero is an artist who starts the game with zero ideas and 100 dollars. It’s up to him to decide how to spend them: buying coffee for programmers, for example…” smiles the designer of this game currently under development. Atala, who introduces us to the most ingenious algorithm invented to find successful, 100% up-to-the-minute pitches. The algorithm randomly combines a “pop” format with a “classy” theme. This might result, for example, in ‘a soccer game about Greek philosophy’, or ‘a talk show about communication theory’.” Or, for example, a video game on the production process production processes in 2017. Class and pop: an unstoppable recipe, a magnet for journalists… Atala is an absolute fan of the American series Seinfeld, the sitcom about “nothing” created in the late 90s. So it’s hardly surprising that he’s also an actor with the experimental tandem Grand Magasin (the French Seinfeld?), masters of the comedy of emptiness, inadequacy and inefficiency. But it was in the United States that he honed his eye for pop culture. First in Los Angeles, where he took a course in sitcom scriptwriting – “my colleague was a former ER nurse”. And in New York, playing the role of spectat X] in the bleachers of TV late shows: “The performance of the audience, who learn to sense when and at what volume to laugh, is almost a readymade of experimental theater.” This quasi-anthropological study has given rise to a number of plays in the form of instructions for use, rich in absurd data, such as Stand-up Comédie, a sometimes funny comedy, its sequel today, Stand-up Comédie 2, a comedy with even more people, or SITuation COMédie, an experimental sitcom also steeped in self-parody rather than sarcasm. sarcasm. This is undoubtedly the singular charm of this artist: to know how to underline conventions without overhanging them. And, at the same time, to apply and divert “recipes”, because there are always some, whether we admit it or not. (1) Le jeu vidéo Contemporary Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers (92) then at Gaité lyrique (75003) in autumn.
Atala turns the tables on the great laugh factory by trying its hand at different forms of stage and small-screen entertainment, from stand-up to sitcom.
By Carole Bailly published on March 2, 2017
You presented Talk Show, then Stand-up comedy and Stand-up comedy 2, and finally you directed the sitcom Situation comédie. Why are you interested in these different forms of typically American entertainment? At one point I was so interested in these forms of popular culture that I had to say I watched Friends and Seinfeld over and over again because I was documenting for my work, otherwise it wasn’t justifiable! You’ve already made a film about the making of a film, and now you’re making a sitcom about sitcoms.
What appeals to you about this new format? The sitcom format is one of the ways we’ve found to make theater in the age of television. What I like about the formula of a TV series, whether it’s a comedy or a drama, is that it’s a beautiful poem about life. You have goals, you encounter obstacles and you vaguely try to come up with plans to overcome them. It usually doesn’t work, and then you discover something else by chance that takes you somewhere else. I also like to explore the rules of a format in order to understand its codes and not be in a state of manipulation but an active spectator.
Why is it so hard to make quality sitcoms in France? One of the reasons we’re not as good at audiovisuals is that we spend less time on them, and we also consider that as soon as we make popular stuff it’s not as good, we discredit the public who watch these things. I talk about this in Stand-up 2: the quality of what we show is really proportional to the time we spend working on it. I was once at the set of The Big Bang Theory and it’s really beautiful the way the audience is responsible for the outcome of the play. The writers use the audience’s laughter to tell whether a joke is successful or not. If the joke flops, they stop the whole thing and rewrite the scene until it gets a laugh. Just like in live performance.
You’d think that comedy would be easier to write than drama. Yes, but comedy is a very difficult exercise. In fact, it’s a very serious art form. In France, we tend to think that doing sad things is a guarantee of depth. On the contrary, I think you can go deep into thought, philosophize and reach deep truths by making people laugh. It’s not sub-art, it’s no less profound, no less poetic, and it has the same artistic power.
How do you make people laugh? There are techniques and formulas we learn in the United States. For example, you have to put the funniest word at the end of the sentence. The problem with this system is that laughter also comes from an element of surprise, of novelty for the spectator, and if you use a technique too much, it no longer works. Sometimes, in a show, people say things in English or in a foreign language, and there’s a word or a turn of phrase that everyone knows. People laugh, not because it’s really funny, but because it’s a way for them to say “I’ve understood what you’ve just said. And that’s a real function of laughter.
What sitcoms inspire you? One of my secret sources is Seinfeld, which I’ve watched so many times that I can’t admit it anymore – it’s downright shameful! If I were an exhibition curator one day, I’d make a room where I’d show all the Seinfeld seasons on a loop! I drew a lot of my inspiration for Situation Comedy. I think there’s a certain beauty in the fact that this series has become mainstream, even though some episodes are completely experimental.
In Stand-up 2, you shed even more light on the difficulties behind making a show. You even explain to the audience that you’ve reached a “creative impasse”.
There’s still this sort of myth about art: inspiration would magically arrive one evening, when in reality we have techniques to make it work.The video-game prototype I show in Stand-up 1 about an artist who wants to produce his show is simply a story about my personal trials and tribulations. The only benefit for me is that it gives me something to say in my stand-ups. And rejection, which is one of the central themes of Stand-up 2, is part of an artist’s daily life. Even when it works …. A producer to whom I’d sent excerpts from my sitcom called me back three days later in a rather deep voice to tell me that she’d hated the tone, the way I pretended to act badly and the actors’ shabby clothes. So it was pretty violent. But anyway, without knowing it, she gave me a great slogan for my sitcom!
The United States has been a great inspiration for you. But your very first voyage of initiation was your three months in Japan. Yes, Japan shaped a lot of my thinking. What do we look at and what don’t we look at? What does convention tell me about where I should look? Travel highlights how we’re conditioned to look at certain things and not others. In Japan, there’s this notion of borrowed landscape: the tree in the distance is as important as the garden you’re in. Since it’s visible, it’s part of this borrowed landscape. My latest work at the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers will be called Paysage emprunté.I’m going to show people my favorite lamp, or my favorite walk, which I’ve borrowed from the sets at Les Amandiers.Anything I see can become part of the landscape and therefore part of the show.
Dans la Grande Salle du niveau – 1 du Centre Pompidou réduite d’un bon tiers, gradins officiels plongés dans le noir, gradins officieux tenant place et tête à la scène habituelle, Phoenix Atala débarque dans un pantalon et une chemise ultra serrés, nœud papillon noué autour de la gorge, air impassible. Attitude et tenue qu’il avait déjà adoptées pour un précédent spectacle, ou alors non, il ne sait plus trop, mais le public s’en souvient peut-être. Cette fois, il l’annonce, l’occasion sera spéciale : son nouveau spectacle parlera de l’ancien, de celui en train de se faire, et du prochain, ou alors non. Décodage du manuel anti-manuel mais ultra-factuel de la « Stand-up Comédie ».
Il tourne le dos à un paperboard déjà pré-rempli et à un écran géant, pour l’instant vierge mais qui se chargera bientôt de petits bonhommes grouillants à faciès et silhouettes identiques, futur lieu de toute forme d’expérimentations, via des schémas animés, exemples à l’appui infléchi. Il tient dans ses mains une tablette graphique qu’il ne quittera pas pour le bon déroulement de sa démonstration. Une « stand-up comédie » à l’héritage anglo-saxon affiché, dont il prendra très vite soin de faire dévier chaque angle.
La déconstruction puise ses forces et ses fragilités dans « La Bible de la comédie » dénichée d’un clic dans la supposée plus grande librairie du monde. Des ressorts comiques que Phoenix Atala aura tôt fait de prendre à rebrousse-poil et presque sans en avoir l’air. Piochant un par un les points d’une prétendue maîtrise de toute stand-up comedy, il prétend vouloir « se soustraire à l’obligation somme toute conventionnelle de faire rire » en « proposant à la place d’entamer une réflexion sur le spectacle, la recherche d’idées et l’efficacité ». Autrement dit : il se livre à contre-sens à une dissection en bonne et due forme d’un codex qu’il exploite tout en désaxant.
Set-up Comédie
Au privilège de tout ce qu’il ne faudrait a priori surtout pas faire pour éviter un spectacle raté, Phoenix Atala s’amuse à briser les attentes et à tordre le cou aux idées avant même qu’elles ne soient envoyées. C’est qu’il partirait presque vaincu sans avoir eu à se battre, avançant en tentatives pour cerner les horizons et prenant le risque de sonder son public pour vérifier si la blague fonctionne (il entoure sur son paperboard la vraie bonne idée ou la fausse mauvaise idée) ou si elle tombe à plat (il rature la fausse bonne idée ou la vraie mauvaise idée, c’est selon, mais force est de constater que cela revient finalement au même, si l’on prend le temps de la réflexion).
En apparence donc, le risque comique paraît mesuré : le public est d’emblée averti qu’il n’est pas venu là pour rire, et d’ailleurs, le spectacle a bien failli ne pas avoir eu lieu, à considérer sa genèse – pas de salle pour accueillir les répétitions, drame familial en pleine préparation, problèmes divers et variés d’une quotidienneté repoussant toujours plus loin les prémices du divertissement.
Phoenix Atala affectionne les mots balourds qui commencent par « b » et les labiales réputées étouffer les rires ; il confesse un penchant pour la bérézina ; il calcule tout, même les blagues d’un régionalisme cloisonnant ou celles de mauvais goût, selon la règle de trois, quitte à s’embourber ; il n’a enfin aucun talent pour les imitations de voix. Mais à embobiner ainsi les ficelles dans le mauvais sens, et parfois même dans le non-sens, à digresser, à s’adosser aux failles personnelles censées desservir tout pseudo-potentiel comique, il démontre avec brio que, parfois, le tour de force repose très précisément sur des détours de force.
Stand-up Comédie De et avec Phoenix Atala,
assisté de Ronan Letourneur
Consultants : Pascale Murtin et François Hiffler (Grand Magasin)
In the Grande Salle on level – 1 of the Centre Pompidou, reduced in size by a good third, official stands plunged into darkness, unofficial stands taking the place and head of the usual stage, Phoenix Atala arrives in ultra-tight pants and shirt, bow tie tied around his throat, looking impassive. Attitude and attire he’d already adopted for a previous show, or not, he’s not sure, but the audience may remember. This time, he announces, the occasion will be special: his new show will be about the old one, the one in the making, and the next one, or maybe not. Decoding the anti-manual but ultra-factual “Stand-up Comedy” manual.
He turns his back on a pre-filled flipchart and a giant screen, currently blank but soon to be filled with swarming little people with identical faces and silhouettes, the future site of all forms of experimentation, via animated diagrams, inflected supporting examples. He holds in his hands a graphic tablet, which he will not leave for the duration of his demonstration. A “stand-up comedy” with a distinctly Anglo-Saxon heritage, from which he is quick to deflect every angle.
The deconstruction draws its strengths and weaknesses from “The Comedy Bible”, unearthed at the click of a button in the world’s supposedly biggest bookshop. Phoenix Atala is quick to take the comic springs by the scruff of the neck, almost without appearing to do so. Picking off one by one the points of a supposed mastery of all stand-up comedy, he claims to want to “escape the all-too-conventional obligation to make people laugh” by “proposing instead to engage in a reflection on spectacle, the search for ideas and efficiency”. In other words, he goes against the grain in a proper dissection of a codex that he exploits while at the same time misaligning.
Comedy set-up
Phoenix Atala has a lot of fun shattering expectations and turning ideas on their head before they even get off the ground. It’s as if he’d leave defeated without having had to fight, moving forward in attempts to define horizons and taking the risk of sounding out his audience to check whether the joke works (he circles the really good idea or the really bad idea on his flip chart) or falls flat (he crosses out the really good idea or the really bad idea, depending on the situation, but it all comes down to the same thing in the end, if you take the time to think about it).
On the face of it, then, the comic risk seems measured: the audience is warned from the outset that it has not come here to laugh, and indeed, the show very nearly didn’t take place, considering its genesis – no hall to host rehearsals, family drama in full preparation, various and sundry problems of a daily life pushing back ever further the beginnings of entertainment.
Phoenix Atala is fond of clumsy words beginning with “b” and labials reputed to stifle laughter; he confesses a penchant for the bérézina; he calculates everything, even cloyingly regional or tasteless jokes, according to the rule of three, even if it means getting bogged down; and he has no talent for voice imitations. But by twisting the strings in the wrong direction, and sometimes even into nonsense, digressing, leaning on personal flaws supposed to serve any pseudo-comic potential, he brilliantly demonstrates that, sometimes, the tour de force lies precisely in detours of force.
Stand-up Comedy By and starring Phoenix Atala,
assisted by Ronan Letourneur
Consultants : Pascale Murtin and François Hiffler (Grand Magasin)
by GRAND MAGASIN at the Théâtre de la Cité Internationale
17 bd Jourdan 75014. Until 30 October.
Grand Magasin maintain a rather ambiguous rapport with technology. Founded in 1982 by Pascale Murtin and François Hiffler, the company has always shown more interest in what doesn’t work than what does. The title of their last show, dating back to 2003, and directly copied from a computer screen, clearly demonstrates this difficulty: 0 task(s) out of 7 have been carried out successfully.
Binary. That said, the subtleties of binary language have a friend in Grand Magasin, who would willingly recuperate Musset’s proverb, which was also the title of a play: The door must be either open or closed. An assertion that the troupe would instantly follow up with: “Or, maybe not.” A quick visit to their website (www.grandmagasin.net) shows the extent of what’s at stake. In an elevator shaft, a little sign has been photographed:
In the event that you have stopped between two floors:
– Press button “A”
– In the event that there is no reply
– Press button “B”
Well-behaved clown-musicians, Pascale Murtin and François Hiffler, joined by Phoenix Atala, are not troublemakers but they know how to sow the seeds of doubt. The result isn’t any less devastating. In Les Déplacements du problème, their show currently on at the Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, they explain how the show will work: “Three demonstrators present a series of devices whose acoustic effects will disturb the presentation itself. They will have to do it over a few times.”
The devices in question clearly exist: they were supplied by the Ircam (Institute for the Research and Coordination of Acoustics/Music), which participated in the new project. The goal of the show: “To use devices that emit sound in order to artificially multiply the obstacles to listening and comprehension.” Which more or less amounts to learning the science behind scenes we witness everyday without capturing its generaI meaning. Who has never tried to have a conversation in a train while your neighbour is yelling in his cellphone, when you enter a tunnel, the employee in the bar-car is having problems with his speaker and a baby is screaming? Among the Ircam’s devices, there is a series of microphones, including the “relativizing microphone,” which punctuates all of your sentences with your own recorded voice (“I’ll have to check”, “Unless there’s been a mistake”, “Or not”, “At least, that’s what I understood”… ).
“Absorbing rug”. In the same order of ideas, you’ll find the “contradicting mic” and the “negative echo mic”. But there is also the “absorbing rug” which muffles all sounds the second you step on it. And, let’s not forget the classics: vacuum cleaner, jackhammer, etc. You could lose yourself in it if it weren’t for the rope of the absurd Grand Magasin has generously tossed out to you.