A Theater of Negociations

Overview & Synopsis

None of us wants to present him or herself as the author of a play we only witnessed. There is such an intricate rub of reality and fiction, prescription and creation, that a single narrative would not be enough. Just as the visions of the future that the DELEGATES were asked to agree on, and end up being numerous, juxtaposed one next to the other, the tale of Make It Work requires more than a consensus of OBSERVERS or a unique narrator. There would be no logic in smashing together the multiplicity of conclusions that we drew, and that we heard from the DELEGATES that were there. We have not been sensitive in the same way or with the same intensity to the different lights of the rooms, the shifts in the atmospheres, the general mood swinging from one hour to the next. The official text is online, the official story is online, but there are still many more stories that can be told. The Theater of Negotiations took the usual writing and acting procedure upside down. For several reasons: first, because the script that you are about to read has been written after the acting performance. Second, because the initial performance, the Make it Work simulation, was taking place before the real COP, being both more than a rewind and something else than a scenario. The week inside the Amandiers Theater was a play for us as OBSERVERS, as well as for the PUBLICS invited to listen to the conferences and to witness to the opening and closing ceremonies – because OBSERVERS and PUBLICS were also some of the protagonists with a delineated place, thought in advance by the collective authors of the simulation. The play was partly written and partly improvised. There have been a rebellion of some of the actors toward the initial script. Now that we have seen the group evolving inside the Theater, listened to hundreds of debates and conversations, we can write tales of it, and make you feel the intense stake disputed on this huge and multiple stage for six days. Yet we will not explain in advance to you reader, or spectator, the different roles and the tensions between the different actors. You will discover them throughout the week, as we did. And always keep in mind that they are not closed entities speaking with one voice. The real is always more complex than what we think. Margaux Le Donné, June 2015