La Rose et la hache

Parisian audiences had to wait until 1977 to discover (thanks to the Autumn Festival) theater man Carmelo Bene in flesh and blood doing his pseudo-narcissistic performances. His film work was already appreciated by some fans. Among them was a group from Grenoble, including Georges Lavaudant and Ariel Garcia Valdès, whose Théâtre Partisan had been thriving at the National Dramatic Center in the Alps for three years. One year after his first visit to France, Bene published a new play that was immediately translated and published by the Editions de Minuit under the title of Superpositions, with important commentary by Gilles Deleuze.
This play, Richard III, or, The Terrifying Night of a Man of War, is obviously inspired by Shakespeare, an author who has always provided Bene with inspiration. Entire pages of Richard III are filled with almost literal borrowing, but describing it as an adaptation would be a total misunderstanding of the nature and importance of the treatment of the source text.
Bene's work, more than being a production, is a unique critical essay. Through his work on the Shakespearean stage and words, Bene dismantles the dramatic structure in order to test the play's components and rebuild its heroes. The royal body that Richard builds for himself is deformed, improvised using bandages, fake bumps, artificial members and an assortment of orthopedic gear. In this "surgically precise theater," Bene's bistoury even operates on aesthetics, the links between Power and Performance.
Early on, Georges Lavaudant decides to recreate Bene's construction. Not to perform the score, but to explore it in his own austere and baroque way. The Rose and the Axe was conceived, planned and rehearsed in less than three weeks, then performed 17 times. The lucky audiences had no idea that they had witnessed the birth of the part that Ariel Garcia Valdès would interpret in the Cour d'Honneur of the Palais des Papes, a mythical performance. Twenty years later, as a tribute to Carmelo Bene, Lavaudant wanted to reinvent a show inspired by him. For this occasion, on several nights only, Ariel Garcia Valdès will again become the unforgettable "Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later Richard III".