Dandan Liang/梁丹丹

《Clôture de l’amour /Love’s End》

Introduction

《爱的开端》

“Language is escaping, repeatedly and again, from itself. I use a particular kind of language in this play, I distill the violence of a human being confronted with a situation of separation – a feeling that almost all of us, encounter sooner or later.” 

Premiered in June 2016″Festival Croisements” & “The 7th Nanluoguxiang Performing Arts Festival”.

2012 Syndicat de la Critique d’Art Award (League of Film Critics) for the best French script.

2012 “Prize for Dramatic Literature”, Center of the National Theatre of France.

Love’s End was Stanislas Nordey who wanted Rambert to write a play for him to perform, and Rembert, at the time, was trying to write a play about “separation”, which is about the violent differences between men and women of his age. The play was written especially for Nordey because not only did he have his own way of delivering his lines with clarity and precision (in French), but he also had a unique talent for conveying his words through his entire body by breathing. Love’s End was also made by Rambert especially for Audrey Bonnet. For the first half hour, the character she plays says nothing onstage, just watching Nordey’s explain, through the movements of his hands, lips, and chest, why he’s leaving her. After that, Audrey took a deep breath and was ready to respond. She was a warrior and did not need to move a sword or a gun to catch the blunt, dirty, caustic elements of her opponent’s words straight away, and then to test whether they were true or false, whether the love that was there had fallen apart, like she would observe the freshness of a dead fish.

Once staged, the play has been translated into more than 10 languages for stage performances. As the lines poignantly and accurately depict the psychological movements of the two parties in love as they slip from the climax of love into the desperation of a breakup, it makes the actors’ bodies on stage present lines of beauty that have the appearance of a moving sculpture. The pure white stage space allows the audience to open their vision and listen to the last call of love.

Theater review:

“In the face of Love’s End, each audience’s perceptions are at once individual and private, but also similar and empathetic …… As Aalto, the progenitor of modern theater, expected, the discourse no longer overrides the other theatrical elements with its content, but is equally empowered with the acting, choreography, and so on, and the theater truly becomes a ‘holistic art’”. 

——Muliang Xi Beijing Daily

“China at the present time cannot write such a play in any case; we are still stuck on the portrayal of the conflict of the plot, whereas the European dramatic literature represented by Pascal has landed from philosophical discourse to an awe-inspiring and accurate representation of universal emotions.” 

——Jide Li Script Magazine chief editor

Production Team:

Written and Directed by：Pascal Rambert

Producer ：Dandan Liang

Performed by ： Sifan Shao、Le Mi

Script Translator ： Lingzhi Zhou， Yucheng Sun

Chinese Stage Script Translator and Assistant Director：Sifan Shao

Stage Manager：Zhicheng Sun

Lighting Design：Pascal Rambert 、Jean Francis Basnard

Head Crown Production：Xiaoyun Wang

Publicity Coordinator：Yang Zeng、Pang Xie、Chang Qi

Subtitle Coordinator：Lavender Zhao

Subtitle Operator：Wanying Zhang

Graphic Designer：Jiang Wang