Transatlantic Readings or the body of the language
Frédérique Bruyas
Crédits photo : Gaston Tavel Readings for both adult and young audiences
Based on passages from French and American authors (in French and English)
“The writers I like to read out loud don’t try to explain the world, but to express it. Their precision, exactitude, and mastery of the language keep them from any illusion one might have about being able to provide a straight description of the world. The text, a literary artifact, is to be read like a map where the real is brought to life on another stage. The text is the written account of the displacement of the real onto the mind’s eye, retaining its outline, its path, and its itinerary. The words are the shadows of the real, the measurable distances from the real.”
Frédérique Bruyas
Photo credit: Gaston Tavel
The Performer
Since early in her career, Frédérique Bruyas has collaborated with Yasmina Khadra, the National Orchestra Ile-de-France, the poet Salah Al Hamdani, the musician Ahmed Mukhtar, the dancer Eric Larrondo, Nicolas Hocquenghem and Jacques Rebotier . . . all of whom help enhance her work on language, which she treats as something almost palpable, on equal terms with music and images.
In 2001, she performed with the poetry aloud group (les) souffleurs [Prompters]. In 2004, she founded the DVD label Vouïr with musician and the video artist Wall°ich and filmmaker Nicolas Bilder and co-directed the collection Ceux-Qui-Pensent-Tout-Seuls, a workdevoted to particularly remarkable poetic writings.
Today she has become especially interested in the “reading/concert” format and has been pursuing artistic research within her own company, working toward other concepts: polyphonic readings, bilingual readings, readings and digital arts.
Her initial training both as actress and musician stood her in good stead and allowed her to listen closely to works of literature. The contemporary writing of someone like Jacques Rebotier was one thing that affected the direction her work took early on. She feels that the voice in its capacity as an instrument should serve the written text in order to get at the meat of what is being said. Consequently, she has come to understand each text—whether classical or contemporary—as being, regardless of the repertory, a musical score, as it were, but with words instead of notes.
In 1998 she became involved with a French company of spoken-arts performers La Voie des Livres. She performed in numerous libraries and other venues for oral interpretation of literary works and participated in several national events, including Lire en Fête [Reading Festival], Le Printemps des Poêtes [Springtime of Poets] and Les Journées du Patrimoine [Heritage Days].
Having an interest in all kinds of books, she is just as happy to read for her listeners a kids’ book as she is to read classics, contemporary fiction, or poetry.
At the same time she includes within her performance schedule numerous seminars that teach methods of reading aloud to instructors, librarians and actors in France and in a few other French-speaking countries, including Lebanon, French Guinea, Morocco, and Canada.
The programs
Presentations last about an hour and fifteen minutes.
Frédérique Bruyas has several proposed starting points and methods of proceeding, built around the works of various authors.
“Lectures Transatlantiques”: a bilingual reading built around works by American authors. Frédérique Bruyas underscores the originality of works of various American authors such as Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Jack London, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Sam Shepard, Jim Harrison and Rick Moody, authors who retain their imaginative qualities and the force of their writing in French thanks to the remarkable quality of the translations.
Frédérique Bruyas also proposes a bilingual reading accompanied by digital art of twelve poems from Emily Dickinson “Cahiers cousus”. Using the original translations done by Christophe Marchand-Kiss, Frédérique Bruyas makes French and English resonate in these various poems, echoing electronic music and accompanied by a video projection.
“Parcours Libre” consists of improvised readings of various classics of French literature as well as contemporary poems that have brought about a metamorphosis in the French language. In the first part Frédérique Bruyas is concerned with the classics, from both novelists and poets (Gustave Flaubert, Victor Hugo, Stendhal, Charles Baudelaire, Marguerite Yourcenar, Arthur Rimbaud . . .) who speak in a timeless language. In the second part, she gets into the body of the language, taking up each word and really biting into it. This carnal rather than courtly approach to language is revealed through looking at the work of several contemporary authors, including Jacques Rebotier, Ghérasim Luca, Christophe Tarkos, Jacques Roubaud, Georges Aperghis, Suzanne Doppelt, Bernard Heidsieck, Danièle Collobert and Valère Novarina.
“Lectures Transmômes” is a staging of selections to be read aloud from kids’ books, where both text and illustration express the incredible vitality of children’s books being written today. Frédérique Bruyas has chosen short pieces from Anaïs Vaugelade, Tomi Ungerer, Grégoire Solotareff, Sheena Knowles, Leo Lionni, Alan Mets and Bernard Friot. Readings appropriate for ages 5 and up.
Training Session for Reading Aloud
Frédérique Bruyas also offers some training workshops called “Reading Aloud” which are designed for students of French and French-language instructors.
Training for students starting from age 16.
The task of acquiring the specific techniques of reading aloud is based on appreciating the visual aspects of a text, as well as its sound and sense. Frédérique Bruyas will develop a number of goals for the participants to attain:
- Mastering the vocal gesture in its totality, which includes controlling vocal registers, timbre, and modes of articulation.
- Deciphering what is written on the page through an understanding of the page makeup or design, the typography, and the punctuation;
- Devising a personal notation for extra punctuation, guidelines written above particular lines, caesuras, and musical codes that complements the text and can facilitate reading aloud;
- Approaching the problem of how to match up a voice to a text destined to be read aloud.
Link to the artist’s web site: http://www.bruyas.net
Links to audio clips of Frédérique Bruyas:
www.myspace.com/bruyas
http://www.bruyas.net/textes/audio.htm
http://www.bruyas.net/textes/video.htm
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