REDEFINING ….

This week in New York, Diana and I are launching new books published by a European Publisher…

''Diana Soviero, 55 years of career in images 1964-2019''This book retraces the gigantic career of Diana, in over 280 pictures from productions all over the world and her new career as a voice teacher;

 ''Cyrano'', a new book by Bernard Uzan, about the creation of David Dichiera opera.

 ''Le Ciel Eclate'' and ''The Shattered Sky'', SECOND REVISED EDITION, by Bernard Uzan. Novels of tragedy and redemption.

This year I also wrote a libretto for a new Opera in Germany  with opening in the spring 2021 and I am working now on another novel.

                                                                                                            The past year has been very busy in trying to find new ways to redefine myself….  Quitting abruptly the opera world was not and still is not easy after 40 years devoted to it, producing , designing, directing etc...

What was going to happen to me? Will I be able to go on ? Should I register to a club for old men and play cards, should I join a French association and talk for hours about the past, and the achievements of our life and sometimes about the failures when we feel confident with new acquaintances? Or may be should I join a golf club, but I do not play golf, maybe miniature golf?

I wrote many times in different posts or in articles about acting:  “When we are on stage we do not need to act and we can completely be ourselves since we are protected by the character…”                                                                                      

Yes the character protects us and we are totally free to  let our private emotions, our deep buried traumas express themselves, and  this  is valid for actors, singers, conductors, directors.          

As a director, the understanding  of the music and the text is always influenced  by  all the experiences of our life, by who we are, what we know … We feel the music and understand the text with all of our knowledge, all our experiences , all our life past and present , and the result is an interpretation.

Actually, this is valid FOR ALL ARTISTS, their art is the best way to express who they are , what they want , what they dream , what they miss, what they understand well, what they are successful in , etc….

Artists ,ALL artists are very often seen and described as difficult people! Only the practice of their art gives them some peace, some moments of pure reflection and most of the time some balance in their difficult approach to life…. I have met many artists, painters, musicians, writers who were two people or even more than 2,  they are one personality when practicing their art and another personality when they are not…

So, how to survive when your art is taken away from you? How can we  confront the perpetual obstacles of the world when the most important part of us is taken away?? How can we continue to have a life? How can we really function???                                                                                                                         

 Life has to be a perpetual redefinition,  an attempt to approach  all possible ways to find some kind of peace.
Does that explain my need to write more than ever?
Am I finding some kind of balance  in this approach ?
And more serenity despite  the loss of the practice of my art and even if I really cannot forget, may I find a way to deal with it …. 

Yes, artist have to find new ways to express themselves in  the different paths of life….The retired people from their art have to find new art forms in order to continue to function  and to be themselves or at least to be close to who they really are …
I always felt very sorry about artists who could not really express themselves in their art form because of bad timing, bad luck or lack of total dedication… 

Their life is miserable, I imagine spending a life not able to really express who I really am!!!!! And consequently become and be a very  difficult person to be with!!!

So, Let’s go for it>>>>

I recently went back to acting , going to auditions for movies and television.

Except for Mozart in the jungle, I had not been to an audition since 1972…

Result of these auditions: I was hired for 4 movies or series … Not for an important role of course, I do not even know if I can be seen in the movie…                                                                                   

Two are already done , and I had an incredible joy! I found a new peace with myself, I was happy to do it, to participate, to be in it…                                                                                                                                          

 I felt rejuvenated, by just exploring corners of myself hidden for years. Even if what I was doing was totally irrelevant with my training as an actor: I studied Stanislavsky and Diderot, and was a product of Shakespeare, Moliere, Racine , Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Beckett, Sartre, Pinter, Pirandello, etc…
To be a small role or an extra in a tv Serie does not demand a knowledge of an acting method, but I still used what I had learned for so many years, and found such a calm in my soul because I was able to be totally myself, behind the mask of a background Character…                                                                   
Nobody, not even the director, I am not even sure I met him or even saw him, asked me to be somebody specific, so I had to invent all of it by myself, and create situations and use my experiences in the given scene.  By using my buried experiences, I relieved so much pain inside me…

And I met young actors full of desires to make it, asking the old man ( me) questions about the business and acting and life…What a treat to talk to these young artists…I left the place with a lighter heart and some kind of peace invading me….I was again the young actor leaving the “Theater of  the Wooden Sword “where I met for the first time my  Acting teacher Tania Balachova…

 I will do it again any time, if they want me.

Yes, we artists , we have to find other ways to express ourselves and to find a new balance when one chapter of life  is ending, by choice or by other peoples’ desires to see us volatilized …

Writing gives me also this possible peace and working on the new edition of Shattered sky and on Cyrano was an incredible relief to my deep pain and memories and anxiety to have lost my way of expressing my MOI.                                                                                                                                                      

With Cyrano , I was again with my dear friends who died in the past years and reminiscing all the wonderful creating time we had together and I was able to be myself totally with no fear of other people judgement about my ways of functioning.  

Cyrano, how many joys you brought to me, David and Mark you are with me all the time and part of who I am today…   Life is a perpetual struggle to find a balance between reality and dreams , but artistic adventures make them go together….But some of us need to practice it… We need to be in that situation where art, dreams, and reality find one totality…                                                                                                                                                                        

With the  revised edition of Shattered Sky, I let my imagination and my deep buried Bernard under the cover of the name of Julien act and go from one adventure to the other… The biggest comment I always had about Shattered Sky was always “ Is it true? What you are saying in the book , is it true? Did all this really happen?   Is it autobiographical?”  With the revised edition , I continued to function the way I always did , as an actor, or a director … Just let my deep Moi create, mix reality and realities of the subconscious, mix reality and dreams and fantasies, after all dreams are part of reality.  
Yes everything in Shattered Sky is true because it comes from my deepest desires to be…. 

Another great example I have is Diana Soviero…While she had a great career as a singer, to stop singing could have been a big problem with her as a human being , since singing was a way to be totally herself through the interpretation of characters . Diana found another way, she teaches voice with the soul and the giving as a total human being she had as a singer associated to an incredible technic…. All this is a definition of a real artist…                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      


Finding again the balance in life, having the courage to confront new challenges thanks to  an art form is an incredible gift of life, and we should be thankful to Nature to have given us these opportunities…