The Father (M. Jarrell) - Musical Theater

Le Père [The Father] – Michael Jarrell

For 3 singers, 6 percussionists, one actor Stage direction : André Wilms

Le père is a biographical essay, a witnessing, story of a life that begins under the Nazi régime and ends in the first years of socialism. It is based on a spécial text by Heiner MüIler. Cast in the form of a biography that may be true or fictional, it achieves a restrained and economic tone, of an objectivizing distance, but also of extrême intensity.

The interiority of this text sustains itself because the text acts as a ‘blotter’ for a series of extremely violent situations. The death of the father. The waking of a child, witness to the arrest of his father in the middle of the night. The discovery of a prisoner : his father. . .

This is the violence that the music must express. . . it must be omniprésent in order to permit, in the dénouement, intimacy, and the delay of expression. Otherwise, in contrast to the readers of a book, the audience members would only be witnesses of effects and not of the causes.

The music must also have other functions, such as, at certain moments, to express the omniprésence of the father and also express the landscape of moments in the story : the Second World War, and later, the Cold War.

In one sense, music will be the Other that is apprehended in the exterior, in oppositions to the interior of the son.