La voix humaine: Experimenting with Improvised Monologue

As I first read through Cocteau’s libretto of La voix humaine, I was hooked. Entranced by the character of Elle and the truth she felt and expressed. Compelled to step into her shoes, to feel the emotions and conflicts that she was feeling, that I have felt, there universal truths of a complicated relationship, I began to envision telling this story to my English-speaking audience in Evanston, IL. The story felt important. 

The language was clearly part of Elle’s character, but finding printed translations or projected supertitles to be visually and aurally distracting, I decided to try something new. For my production of La voix humaine, I developed an improvised monologue to introduce my audience to Elle. I decided to delineate the real space (English) from the opera space of the stage (French) by performing my monologue from the house of the theater. I wanted the audience to engage with ideas, themes, places and characters from the opera that are part of their real world (like phones, traveling in France, situationships, etc) and to augment their investment in Elle from an abstract character to a friend, a woman who otherwise might seem distant, from an era past and a country far away, with an unlikely method of communication (singing) in a foreign language, who experiences many ideas and emotions similar to their own.

My production was somewhere between an opera and a recital, with minimal set, props and costume, retaining an abstract recital atmosphere while giving the audience a few theatrical points of reference. I determined what aspects of my production were real (the chemise, the phone and the coat) and what were abstract (the piano, the pianist, the chair, the stool on which the phone sat, and the stage space itself). The white chemise stipulated by Cocteau in the libretto portrayed both the character’s vulnerability and created a feeling of vulnerability for me as the performer. I wore a coat for the opera proper, as though Elle would leave to go to him at any moment, a detail I liked from the Ingrid Bergman film of Cocteau’s original play in translation. I used an old style phone with a long cord, which forced me to perform the gymnastics of cord-avoidance while moving around on the stage. 

I feel encouraged and inspired to continue combining improvisation, theatre and classical music to find the most expressive and true story-telling possible. I hope you enjoy the recording of this initial performance!

For your reference (obviously, I would recommend consulting this before, or even better after watching the recording), here my translation of the libretto: La voix humaine TRANSLATION