Ivo van Hove in an exclusive interview for the Dialog-Wrocław Festival and Didaskalia
“In theatre, I want to x-ray people, I want to look inside them, see their bones, check how their hearts beat,” says Ivo van Hove in an interview with Paweł Schreiber.
Ivo van Hove is today one of the most important European directors; his production of Roman Chronicles was enthusiastically received by the audience and the critics during the 5th Dialog-Wrocław Festival. This year it will be an Ivo van Hove production that will open the 6th Dialog Festival. The Russians! is a surprising adaptation of two plays by Chekhov in which Platonov meets Ivanov in a world far removed from the reality of late 19th century Russia. The Dialog-Wrocław Festival is a co-producer of the production.
Shortly after the premiere of The Russians! Ivo van Hove gave an exclusive interview to Paweł Schreiber. The interview is part of the collaboration between Dialog-Wrocław Festival and Gazeta Teatralna Didaskalia. Here are selected fragments of the interview which will be published in its entirety in the October edition of Didaskalia.
Paweł Schreiber: In Western Europe, Chekhov is regarded either as alien or exotic. Does he have to be translated or explained for the needs of the West somehow?
Ivo van Hove: So far I’ve directed Chekhov only once (Three Sisters). I’ve always thought, what for? Everybody does Chekhov, but not in any interesting way. In the Netherlands, we’ve had a long tradition of staging Chekhov, a tradition which I personally don’t like. This tradition presents Chekhov as a terrible bore. The protagonists sit there in their beautiful costumes and say, “I’m so bored with life”. I’ve always thought that it’s a wrong way of staging Chekhov. In my opinion Chekhov’s protagonists are people who are, in fact, angry, frustrated, are trying to answer the question, “what has gone wrong in my life?”. They haven’t given up; they are in crisis. My production is just an emanation of a six-hour crisis which concerns all individuals. [...]
It seems to me that society in the Netherlands and in the entire Western Europe has changed dramatically over the last ten-twelve years, as a result of which Chekhov really speaks to us again. People today are like, for instance, Platonov, who is very frustrated, who feels he has lost, but blames everybody else, not himself, for that loss. Like Platonov, we are all looking for a scapegoat today. In Platonov and Ivanov it was the Jews, for us it’s obviously the Muslims. [...]
Paweł Schreiber: Your production shows that Chekhov is not a gentle writer but a very violent one. Violence in his case can be not only verbal but also physical.
Ivo van Hove: I always knew that my Chekhov would be like that. [...] I’ve discovered a new English translation by Laurence Senelick. Much more violent than others. Dutch translations usually try to beautify Chekhov, but the Russian original is by no means smooth, it’s rough. I always knew that Chekhov’s works were full of metaphorical cruelty and I always wanted to do such a cruel Chekhovian production. [...]
Paweł Schreiber: Yours is not a realistic theatre, though undoubtedly we can notice a lot of psychological work in your productions.
Ivo van Hove: For me, theatre is always associated with psychology, though I try to make it theatrical, to give it a physical shape. [...] the body always expresses something. The fact that we speak with our whole body is something we cannot forget in the theatre. For me, psychology in itself is not interesting; it’s more a means rather than an end. Sometimes I say that in theatre, I want to x-ray people, I want to look inside them, see their bones, check how their hearts beat.
More in the October edition of Didaskalia.