Alain Ollivier's 'Piétiner la scène' on Theatre and Voice

Alain Ollivier's book 'Piétiner la scène' (Éditions Verticales) collects interviews and notes that argue for the primacy of the body and voice in theatre. Ollivier, an actor-director, asserts that theatre is 'light where language unties itself' and that the ear is the essential organ of theatre. He emphasizes that voice concentrates identity and 'testifies to the general feeling of existence'. Ollivier was an early interpreter of Pierre Guyotat's writing, which he found seismic. The book covers texts by Lessing, Hölderlin, Kateb Yacine, Jean Genet, and Nelson Rodrigues, and includes memories such as his father's back seen in death, used for the ghost in Antoine Vitez's 'Hamlet'. Georges Banu writes that the book reveals Ollivier's 'literary sensibility that resides in the ear'.