Fewer Emergencies in Paris: Interpreting the ‘Blank’

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Notes

1. ‘I believe very much in the power of words’, said Crimp in an interview with Marie Louchard, OC-TV, January 2008, <http://www.oc-tv.net/face-au-murmartin-crimp-hubert-colas.htm> [URL no longer active].

2. Stefanie Carp and Stephan Wetzel, ‘Nach der Probe: Ein Gespräch zwischen Martin Crimp, Luc Bondy und dem Theater’, Programme for Auf dem Land at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, 31 August 2001, trans. by Penny Black, cited in Aleks Sierz, The Theatre of Martin Crimp (London: Methuen, 2006), p. 113.

3. Press pack [Author’s translation], Face au mur <http://www.colline.fr/fr/spectacle/face-au-mur> [accessed 3 January 2014].

4. Ibid.

5. Interview with Elisabeth Angel-Perez, 30 September 2008, Press pack of Face au mur. Angel-Perez asked Crimp what he thought the role of theatre was, and he answered: ‘Pour moi, c’est un test de langage: les acteurs et le public créent ensemble une sorte d’accélérateur de particules pour examiner les entrailles des mots. Il n’y a aucun autre endroit où il est possible d’obtenir une telle concentration collective’ (‘to me, it is a language test: the actors and the audience create a kind of particle accelerator to examine the entrails of words. Nowhere else is it possible to get such collective concentration’).

6. Ensemble Modern and Martin Crimp, ‘Into the Little Hill: A Work for Stage by George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’, Ensemble Modern Newsletter, 23 (October 2006) <http://www.ensemble-modern.com/en/press/press_archive/interviews/2006/557> [accessed 3 January 2014].

7. John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment (London: Penguin, 1992).

8. Aleks Sierz, ‘An Invented Reality’, New Statesman, 5 September 2005, <http://www.newstatesman.com/node/151457> [accessed 3 January 2014].

9. Polly Toynbee, Hard Work: Life in Low-Pay Britain (London: Bloomsbury, 2003).

10. Martin Crimp, Fewer Emergencies (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), p. 28.

11. Crimp first used these precise stage directions for his play The City (2008).

12. James Macdonald cited in Sierz, The Theatre of Martin Crimp, p. 108.

13. B. D. Lewin, ‘Sleep, the Mouth, and the Dream Screen’, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 15, n°1 (1946), 419–34 (p. 420).

14. Crimp, Fewer Emergencies, pp. 16–17.

15. Ibid.

16. Crimp, cited in Sierz, The Theatre of Martin Crimp, p. 161.

17. Elisabeth Angel-Perez, ‘Le Traitement et Atteintes à sa vie de Martin Crimp: Tricotage du texte et autoengendrement’, Écritures Contemporaines, 5 (2002), 99–110 (p. 105).

18. Vicky Angelaki, The Plays of Martin Crimp: Making Theatre Strange (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 147–48.

19. Ibid., pp. 9–17.

20. Crimp, Fewer Emergencies, p. 31.

21. Ibid.

22. Press pack, Face au mur.

23. ‘Nach der Probe’, cited in Sierz, The Theatre of Martin Crimp, p. 113.

24. Interview with Angel-Perez, Press pack, Face au mur: ‘Les pièces sont en fait fédérées par des images d’enfance: dans chacune d’entre elles, les enfants sont témoins d’événements qu’ils ne comprennent pas et sont considérés avec méfiance et hostilité par les protagonistes adultes. Le regard de l’enfant est quelque chose que les adultes trouvent insupportable’ (‘the plays are linked by images of childhood: in each of them, the children are witnessing events they don’t understand and they are considered with defiance and hostility by the adults. The way the child looks at the world is unbearable for the adults’).

25. Ibid. ‘Je pense véritablement que l’ “identité” moderne consiste en partie à vivre dans nos têtes (un peu comme quand on est enfermé dans une voiture qui ne s’arrête pas)’ (‘I really think that our modern “identity” consists partly in living inside our head – it’s a bit like when you’re locked inside a car that doesn’t stop’).

26. Crimp, Fewer Emergencies, p. 43.

27. Hubert Colas cited in Face au mur Theatre Programme, 2008.

28. About this production, he used the expression: ‘mettre à distance toute notion d’incarnation’ (‘to put all notion of embodiment at bay’) in a post-show talk at La Maison des Métallos, Paris, 14 April 2008.

29. Press pack, Face au mur.