Valère Novarina; The Theater of the Ears

Translated from the French, Edited, and Introduced by Allen S. Weiss

Series No.: 186

ISBN: 978-0-940650-31-2, Pages: 188

Swiss Literature, Drama

"Everything that destroys or circumvents our linguistic habits is valorized: errors, slurs, babble, lapsus, agrammaticisms, malapropisms, aphasia, and whatever other effects—psychopathological or quotidian—loosen the tongue, worsen speech, fracture the word?"

From “Letter to the Actors”

The Theater of the Ears is a stunning manifesto for a new theater. English speakers can now discover Valère Novarina (1942–2026) through his essays on drama and performance. A major international playwright, he was also a director, stage designer, painter, and performance artist.

Translator Allen S. Weiss, in his Introduction, brilliantly traces Novarina’s roots to Antonin Artaud (1896–1948). Artaud’s complaints that “speech in the Western theater has been reduced to psychological effects,” that “actors in France no longer know how to do anything but speak,” are reflected in Novarina’s call for “articulatory cruelty, linguistic carnage.” Weiss argues that Novarina “represents the contemporary French language in its extreme state of mutation, distortion, and transformation.”