Paris-based team packs a punch in Vancouver with Stallone
Actor Clotilde Hesme won France’s highest theatre award for her role in the high-energy play that draws inspiration from Rocky III
Stallone. Photo by Huma Rosentalski
Théâtre la Seizième presents Stallone on September 13 and 14 at 7:30 pm at Newmont Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre in French with English surtitles
STENDAHL SYNDROME IS a rare condition in which the presence of a beautiful piece of art or architecture can be so awe-inspiring that it triggers physical and mental symptoms ranging from chest pains to loss of consciousness. “Sometimes, this experience can be so overwhelming it can bring someone to the edge of existence,” neuroscientist Leonardo Palacios-Sánchez once wrote of the phenomenon. It’s also a term that Paris-based actor Clotilde Hesme uses to describe her character’s response to seeing Rocky films in Stallone, a play from France’s Le CENTQUATRE-PARIS that’s about to have its Vancouver premiere.
The show is based on a short story of the same name by screenwriter Emmanuèle Bernheim that was commissioned by Le Monde and published in the French newspaper in 2001. Steeped in 1980s nostalgia, it tells the tale of Lise, a medical secretary living a humdrum life, who has an epiphany after she watches Rocky III. (The film is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year.) Inspired by the Italian Stallion, Lise decides in an instant to upend her life, leaving her job, boyfriend, and family to pursue her dream of becoming a doctor. She seizes control of her fate by following the example of the veteran boxing champ who takes on the challenge of one more shot in the ring—and she develops a deep fondness for actor Sylvester Stallone along the way.
“Seeing Rocky III creates a shock in Lise, a painful ecstasy,” Hesme tells Stir in French. “It is the Stendhal syndrome with a popular work. Emmanuèle Bernheim's story overwhelmed me. It echoed in me, and reshaped my relationship to…my work.
“Stallone says ‘It's like I'm talking through Rocky,’” Hesme adds. “I could say that it is as if I was speaking through Lise.”
Directed by Fabien Gorgeart, Stallone has just two performers: Hesme and musician-actor Pascal Sangla, a pianist who deconstructs and distorts the hit “Eye of the Tiger” throughout the hourlong show. He sits at a black table behind a keyboard and computer while Hesme is in a white square that delineates a boxing ring and a movie screen. Constantly blurring the boundaries of her role, Hesme is both the main character and the narrator. Every now and then, people from Lise’s daily life show up, characters interpreted and improvised by Sangla.
“Reading the [short story “Stallone”] really had the effect of a revelation, a vertigo,” Hesme says. “I immediately wanted to share this reading experience. I had the very strong intuition of being able to bring this character to life on stage while leaving her in the third person.
“I felt from the beginning a great closeness, a great intimacy with this character and this story of the life of a woman who fights, who frees herself from male figures who are not always benevolent around her,” she says. “It's impossible to choose in the show if the devotion to Stallone is beautiful or ridiculous.”
For Hesme—who won a Molière award for her performance earlier this year, the national award being France’s highest honour for theatre—the role is as physically and emotionally demanding as Rocky Balboa’s boxing matches. The script is complete with a gut punch that no one sees coming.
“Fabien always imagined me as an action-movie heroine, and Lise…is in perpetual motion,” Hesme says. “She fights, like Rocky.
“Theatre for me is like boxing,” Hesme adds. “It's an act of faith, a moment of truth.”
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