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Farewell to Valère Novarina, stage poet of the overflowing verb
“I paint what I have never seen, I write what I have not yet thought.” Valère Novarina
Valère Novarina, author, stage director and painter, died in Neuilly-sur-Seine on Friday, January 16, at the age of 83. With him, one of the most unique voices in contemporary theatre disappears: a prolific creator, with an overflowing imagination and an indomitable verb, who always resisted the reduction of language to a simple instrument of communication. Closer to Rabelaisian excesses than to Beckettian austerity, Novarina conceived of the word as a vibrant flow of emotions, images and actions, a polyphony of human dramas and delirious epics.
A central figure since the 1980s, he gathered around him a true community of performers—the so-called “Novarinians”—who gave shape to a demanding and exuberant language, capable of demanding breath, precision and total physical dedication from the actors. From Valérie Vinci to Dominique Pinon, from Daniel Znyk to Christian Paccoud or Claude Buchvald, many creators crossed his stages and today they remember him as a radical and generous master.
Born in Geneva in 1947, Novarina made his name with Le Drame de la vie (1986) and Discours aux animaux (1987), foundational works of a unique method where language becomes living matter. The Avignon Festival was key in his career, hosting pieces such as Vous qui habitez le temps , La Chair de l'homme , L'Origine rouge or L'Acte inconnu (2007), a true manifesto of a theatre where the verb explodes and overflows all convention.
Writer, painter and illustrator, Novarina dedicated his life to bringing language to a state of celebration and combat. Both in his theatrical texts and in the essays and unclassifiable works published mostly by POL, he proposed a performative literature, a living experience of the word that turned the audience into an accomplice of language. In Catalonia, Arts Santa Mònica dedicated the exhibition Teatre de dibuixos: 2,587 personages i 311 definições de Déu to him, testimony to the overflowing universe of an unrepeatable creator.
"One word changes and everything changes, like putting blue with red." Valère Novarina
