Charles Chemin – on his collaboration with Robert Wilson and the performance Seven Solitudes, dedicated to the artist’s memory

French director, playwright, and artist Charles Chemin is a long-time collaborator and creative partner of director Robert Wilson. This March, at the National Kaunas Drama Theatre, he will complete Wilson’s unfinished production Seven Solitudes, based on texts by Oscar Miłosz, a staging that will serve both as a farewell and a continuation of the artistic vision.

Charles Chemin reflects on a lifelong creative partnership with Robert Wilson, the legacy of their work, the act of farewell, and the production Seven Solitudes, dedicated to the artist’s memory.

MAGAZINE THE WOMAN, Jolanta Garnytė

I would like to confirm the story of your acquaintance with Robert Wilson. It is said that your parents were friends with the artist, and that when he once called your home, he asked to “speak” with you, who were just a few months old. Your conversation reportedly took place entirely through sounds. Is that true?

Yes, that’s true. I was only a few weeks old when I first found myself in his arms. And when I was eight months old, Wilson called my parents’ home and asked to speak with me. Of course, I couldn’t talk yet, so he barked like a dog, and I barked back. We kept up this unusual dialogue until his death. It became our shared ritual, more than forty years of barking at one another whenever words felt insufficient or unable to carry something personal or emotional. This ritual became a beautiful, lifelong private joke — a sign of our bond and a unique way of communicating.

Your father is the French actor Philippe Chemin. What about your mother? Do you have any brothers or sisters? How did the environment you grew up in shape you?

My parents both worked in the performing arts: my father was an actor and director; and my mother, a costume designer. My younger sisters became a painter and an opera soloist. It’s easy to guess that we grew up in a deeply creative family environment. Our parents took us everywhere with them, to museums, theatres, and set and costume workshops. Witnessing firsthand the level of craft and skill that artistic creation requires, comparable to the work of any artisan, such as a baker or a blacksmith, was a decisive influence on our artistic development. From a very early age, we were included in their creative processes, whether by helping behind the scenes or even appearing on stage.

Your creative field is remarkably wide, ranging from dance and performance to dramaturgy and opera. You have collaborated with renowned artists such as Meg Harper, Robert Wilson, Lucinda Childs, Isabelle Huppert, Philip Glass, Jonathan Meese, André Gingras, Alexandra Lerman, Lynsey Peisinger, and many others. Your works have been presented at the Comédie-Française, Lincoln Centre in New York, the Avignon Festival, the Barbican Centre in London, and beyond. How do you manage to work across so many artistic disciplines? Who have been your greatest teachers and sources of inspiration?

All the artists I have had the opportunity to work with have been sources of inspiration, but the greatest influence, without question, has been Robert Wilson. Thirty-three years of collaboration with him constituted an extraordinarily intensive period of artistic growth, especially as my own path evolved from acting toward directing. Meg Harper, who danced for many years with the Merce Cunningham Company, gave me the most direct and practical lessons about the inexpressible power of movement and the almost magical sense of space that defines a great performer. In the end, everything comes down to the mystery of the silence between words and the tangible tension in space that connects actors and audiences.

I’d like to hear more about your creative collaboration with Robert Wilson. You appeared in his productions as a child, and since 2009, you have worked as his co-director, contributing to more than twenty productions. Among the most recent are Mary Said What She Said with the French actress Isabelle Huppert, PESSOA: I Was Sitting on My Patio, Albee’s Three Tall Women, and Jarry’s Ubu. When Robert Wilson himself performed in the solo piece Krapp’s Last Tape, he entrusted you with the directing. What does it mean to be Robert Wilson’s co-director, and what has this experience given you as an artist?

Yes, I appeared on stage with him from a very young age. It was the best school one could possibly imagine. The most powerful experience was Krapp’s Last Tape, because Wilson himself was on stage, as vulnerable and at the same time as powerful as any actor. During rehearsals, I was the one on stage so that he could direct me in the piece. Then, in a sense, I would redirect him, drawing on the feeling and intensity that came from my own experience as an actor working with him.

It became a kind of infinite directing loop, a continuous back-and-forth movement that we sustained while working together all over the world.

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As the premiere of Seven Solitudes, based on texts by Oscar Miłosz, approaches at the National Kaunas Drama Theatre, your creative journey takes on a special significance. You began this production together with Robert Wilson, and today, you have been entrusted with completing it and dedicating it to his memory. How do you feel taking on this responsibility, and to what extent does your deep knowledge of Wilson’s visual aesthetic serve as a source of strength and guidance?

The production will be dedicated not only to Robert Wilson, for it also reveals a deep parallel with his artistic stance. When I began working on the first draft of the text, I already knew he was ill, and at that point, the connections with Oscar Miłosz as an immortal poet became increasingly clear. Poets are, in a true sense, immortal—their vision of the world outlives them. Miłosz’s poetic language is extraordinarily beautiful, regardless of the form it takes, and his entire body of work moves toward infinity, beyond material human existence. It lifts the spirit toward the cosmos in search of a certain wholeness. It becomes especially easy to understand why such a creation reaches the highest level of inspiration when you are standing beside a departing companion. All the more so because this body of work also contains self-irony and laughter directed at human existence itself.

The full text can be found in the magazine. More about 7 SOLITUDES