Theatre (english version)

 

– How is it that we’ve decided to use images for our exchanges for some time now?
– It may have been necessary. The image acts like a stage where something unfolds — something that makes our work...
– ...less abstract!
– Exactly... You know, people talk a lot about identity these days. Everyone wants to know who they are, where they come from, what group they belong to.
– Who’s the author of these drawings?
– But I often tell myself: what matters is not so much where we come from, but where we pass through. Because we never come from just one place. As my colleague Daniel Sibony says, we move from one place to another, and it’s there, in that passage, that something is created. That’s what I call the in-between.
The in-between is not a void. It’s not a vague hesitation between two positions. It’s a living, vibrating space — a space of play. You know, when you build a door, you always leave a bit of play in it; otherwise, it jams.
Well, life is the same: if you remove all play, if everything sticks together, everything gets stuck — nothing passes through anymore.
– What do you mean by... play?
– Play is what allows life to circulate.
Because that’s where invention happens: between words, between languages, between people.
That’s where we discover that we’re not solid blocks of identity, but a play of distances, a passage of life.
Look at theatre: the actor plays a role, but doesn’t become it. There remains a space between him and the character, and it’s precisely there that art resides, that the truth of play emerges.
If he were completely his character, he’d go mad; if he were totally detached, he’d be cold, mechanical.
Play is that in-between between actor and role — and life is the same: we are always somewhere between what we are and what we play.
And then, you know, there’s love.
Love, too, is an in-between. It’s not fusion, fusion is the death of play.
Nor is it total separation, because then there’s no bond at all.
It’s that movement between two beings who seek to remain distinct while still joining one another.
Love is a play of stretched distances, a pulse: I touch you without taking you; you reach me without possessing me.
It’s fragile, it’s risky, but it’s alive.
The in-between is also the place of desire.
Desire is born of distance, not possession.
And desire is what sets us in motion, what urges us to cross.
So, when we try to fill every gap, to predict everything, to fix everything, we kill play, we kill desire, we make ourselves unplayable.
I like that word, unplayable. There are unplayable lives, unplayable couples, unplayable politics.
– Why?
– Why? Because the play has been closed.
Because we’ve wanted there to be only one meaning, one truth, one way.
But life isn’t a demonstration.
It’s a movement of distances, a series of passes.
You see, in football we talk about a pass: it’s what keeps the ball moving, what connects without sticking.
In psychoanalysis, there’s also the pass: the moment when something passes from symptom to speech, from lived experience to thought.
And in life, there’s that pass too, that moment when we can play differently, when we leave one frame to invent another.
That moment is rare, but it’s where life truly happens.
So, being in the in-between isn’t being lost. It’s being in motion.
It’s knowing that what holds things together isn’t rigidity, but tension.
That one can be oneself, but in play, not as a block.
It’s an ethics of passage: not clinging to one side, not rejecting the other, but playing the distance that connects them.
The in-between, that’s where things speak, where they desire, where they create.
That’s where the human is made.
And perhaps the most beautiful gesture today is to give the world back its play, to make life playable again.
That, perhaps, is the true theatre of existence: a stage stretched between two edges, where we learn to pass through, to take risks, to play.