Theatre critics as all members of audiences, are longing for live theatre to reopen its doors. Nevertheless and meanwhile, critics reflect on the absence of the ”art form of presence” as writes Georges Banu, French theatre critic, well known in the world of theatre lovers.

Here a clipse from his article Resonance and Absence from on line journal artpress – with the writer’s permission. Read the whole article in artpress May-June.

Today, we embark on journeys to the shadow lands, those preserved spectacles, now resurrected. Invalid, because devoid of ay physical presence, either they reactive old adventures, or they reveal others, unknown, to be discovered. So I could see The Prince of Hamburg by Peter Stein or see Berenice by Klaus Michael Grüber, The Damned by Ivo van Hove or The Merchant of Venice by Andrei Serban…pages of a spectator’s life that I leave through in the solitude of a bedroom. Alfred de Musset spoke of ”theatre in an armchair” of which he was a supporter; here we are, like him, folded in on ourselves to ”dream of the theatre”. Refugees in the land of absence, we tread it in front of screens, waiting for the ”big return”.

(Translation to English by Cloé Baker.)