In Terre-Ville, we follow a girl from early childhood to the moment she enters university. She is three and a half, then four, five, six, seven, and eventually reaches adolescence. How can a character move through so many different ages on stage without attempting to represent each stage of her growth realistically?
This question arose at the very beginning of rehearsals.
One possibility would have been to cast several performers of different ages. But this would have brought considerable practical difficulties, both in terms of production and in organising rehearsals and performances, particularly when working with children. More importantly, I was concerned that such an approach might reduce the character’s journey to a succession of visible stages, simplifying her psychological development and diminishing its dramaturgical complexity. I therefore decided not to represent her growth realistically, but to look for a theatrical device that would allow the character to exist across different periods of time without relying on a mimetic representation.
I was looking for something else. A way for the daughter to remain present throughout the years without necessarily being seen.
The answer emerged from the rehearsal process itself.
From the very first stage of rehearsals, I asked the young actress playing the daughter to be present in every scene, even when she had no lines. What mattered to me was that she should be there, watching her mother, witnessing everything that happened before her.
At first, this was not yet a staging device. It was, above all, a dramaturgical necessity.
The daughter watches her mother. The mother, in turn, exists through her daughter’s gaze. Each exists through the other’s gaze. Even when no words are exchanged, something is happening between them.
Their gaze is itself a theatrical act.
As rehearsals progressed, this idea gradually took on a more concrete form.
I gave the young actress a camera, and we installed a screen in the rehearsal room so that we could see the images she was filming live.
What appeared on the screen was not simply another image of the stage. It was the daughter’s gaze upon her mother.
A framed, directed, subjective gaze.
The camera was not intended to record objectively what was happening on stage. It showed what the daughter saw, what she chose to look at, what caught her attention.
Through these images, the mother appeared differently. She was no longer simply the character the audience observed on stage. She also became the mother as seen by her daughter.
Gradually, this live-video device became a central element of the staging.
Throughout the first part of the performance, from early childhood to adolescence, the audience does not see the actress playing the daughter directly. She remains in a separate space representing her bedroom.
Yet she is constantly present.
Her presence is conveyed through her gaze, transmitted in real time onto a screen integrated into the stage.
The audience thus sees two things simultaneously: the mother physically present on stage, and that same mother as she appears through her daughter’s eyes.
These two perspectives coexist without merging.
This device allowed me to find another way of making the daughter’s character present on stage, without having to illustrate the successive stages of her growth.
The daughter is not simply someone we watch growing up. She is also the one who watches.
And this gaze, which accompanies her mother through the years, becomes a presence in its own right.
It is no longer simply a question of representing an action, but of representing a perception.