Avignon (AFP)

This is one of the most grandiose shows of the Avignon festival but also one of the most daring: an influential Chinese director dares to revisit "The Tea House" piece-monument of his country almost untouchable since the the 50's.

Meng Jinghui, a pioneer of contemporary Chinese theater, jostles the play written in 1957 by Lao She, a major figure in Chinese literature and one of the first victims of the Cultural Revolution.

Since the staged adulation of Jiao Juyin in 1958, no one has dared to reinvent it completely, except for a rehabilitation in 1999 and a "Teahouse 2.0" proposed in 2017 by the young and experimental Wang Chong.

It's a bit as if we had mounted only two versions of Molière's Miser.

- The Wheel of History -

"The staging of the master Jiao Juyin is excellent but it is a little dated," smiles 54-year-old Meng Jinghui, in an interview with AFP at the Opera Confluence in Avignon before the first Tuesday.

"Nobody dares to touch it and when it is given in Beijing it is still full," said this affable man, founder of the Meng Theater Studio and director of the Honeycomb Theater in Beijing and several festivals in Beijing. China.

A three-hour play with dozens of characters of different social classes, all gathered in the Yutai Tea House, a unique place of action spread over three eras and three generations: 1898 under imperial China, the Republic, and after the end of the Japanese occupation.

But the staging of Meng Jinghui will offer a completely crazy vision, with as a tea house a huge four-ton wheel in the middle of the stage that will turn 360 degrees, electro-rock music played live and "some scenes can hurt public awareness, "warns the festival.

"The wheel is History on the move, or a washing machine that cleans our brains," says scenographer Zhang Wu. "There are all facets of society, it's a fun but unusual device. for the actors, it gives possibilities of interpretation ".

A montage that took three days and a team of 60 people, 12,000 pieces of iron to assemble and five interpreters to communicate between Chinese and French technicians.

- "A little rebellious" -

"We must change, take a new look," says the director also director who says "a little rebellious".

To set up a new production "would be complicated in Beijing because one always thinks of the original one In Avignon, the public will be more open because it does not have this reference".

Falling into oblivion as many works after the Cultural Revolution and the "suicide" of Lao She in 1966, it is rediscovered from the 70s with the opening of China.

"Keep yourself from talking about state affairs!", Is one of the famous phrases of the play. But beyond politics, Meng Jinghui says he wants to focus on the relationship between the community and individualism.

"Lao She has a sweet look towards each individual, there are a lot of little people in the room and everyone has their own dreams, imagination, fantasies, they are very strong individualities," says Meng, who sees a "link very strong, very deep with today's Chinese society. "

According to him, contemporary Chinese theater is currently "very dynamic and is full of questions".

"Of course he has red lines, the artists are like children, they want to express themselves, there is always a relative freedom, sometimes it opens, sometimes it closes, but it will happen" smiled that affable man.

"You just have to adapt and not be naive by saying, as there are red lines, I can not make creations, we can always," he adds.

? 2019 AFP