Mariette Navarro

Mariette Navarro, born in 1980, is an author and dramatic adviser. She studied modern literature and theatre studies at the University of Lyons before attending the École Supérieure d’Art Dramatique des Théâtre National de Strasbourg.

Her writing and her theatre work are closely intertwined and some of her texts emerge directly from rehearsals, for example, »Le bal d’Emma« (2013; tr.: Emma’s Ball) or »Elle brûle« (2013, tr.: She’s Burning), completed in collaboration with the director Carolina Guiela and her Compagnie des Hommes Approximatifs. In 2012, she wrote »Prodiges®« (2011; tr.: Wonder®) for the director Matthieu Roy and the Compagnie du Veilleur, which was also released as a book in the same year. In book form, Navarro has so far published »Alors Carcasse« (2011; tr.: Skeleton) and »Nous les vagues« (2013; tr.: We Waves), neither of which can be allocated to any particular literary genre. At the heart of »Alors Carcasse« is a human, but neither male nor female figure, in an existential decision-making situation. While the book focuses on an individual, »Nous les vagues« deals with the »we«. The text begins with »Okay, let’s become visible, even more visible, that’s what we have to do …« and, in what follows, it invokes and explores the possibilities of a collective uprising. Over the five acts of the text, the individual speaking roles first of all swell to ever greater lengths before ultimately shrinking again, and the author leaves open whether it is a script for an increasing number of voices or – and this is an interpretation offered by the different writing styles – the monologue of a man sitting at his beloved one’s deathbed. Despite its underlying pessimistic tone, the text ends with a reference to spring. Starting in Algeria in 2009, »Nous les vagues« possibly picks up on the first signs of what was later to become the Arab Spring. The text was written as part of an exhibition scholarship in cooperation with the Auberge des Aftis (Jijel, Algerien) and the Noir sur blanc collective: Chrysalide Algier – Gertrude II Lyon – Perséphone Sétif. In 2010, the author was awarded a grant by the Centre National du Théâtre for the text. Its translation was commissioned by the Atelier Européen de la Traduction as part of a multilingual project funded by the French Ministry of Culture in a project looking for a European »we«.

Navarro has been a member of the reading group of the Théâtre national de la Colline in Paris since 2010 and, since 2014, she has been working for the Comédie de Béthune, Centre Dramatique National du Nord. She received working grants from the Centre des auteurs dramatiques in Montreal in 2007 and 2011). »Alors Carcasse« was awarded the Robert Walser Prize for a first book in 2012. Mariette Navarro lives in Paris.

Alors Carcasse

Cheyne

Devesset, 2011

Nous les vagues

Quartett

Fontenay-sous-bois, 2011

Prodiges®

Quartett

Fontenay-sous-Bois, 2012

Wir Wellen

Matthes & Seitz

Berlin, 2014

[Ü: Leopold von Verschuer]