Ep. 50 - The Negotiation (L’Addition)

Gabrielle Martin chats with Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutas (Bert and Nasi) who are presenting L’Addition at the 2025 PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. L’Addition, directed by Tim Etchells, will be performed at the Alliance Française Vancouver on January 25 and 26 in association with Here & Now, and supported by the consulat général de France à Vancouver.

Show Notes

Gabrielle, Bert and Nasi discuss: 

• How did you come to know each other and begin your collaboration?
• What were the shifts and evolution of your work over the period of creating six shows together?
• What does it mean to work with a political message?
• What does it mean to occupy space and be in this world?
• In your “Less Workshop”, you discuss using space for political and artistic negotiation. Do these ideas define your work?
• What has it meant to create work in the UK over the past 12 years of austerity?
• How do we prioritize simplicity when dealing with complex matters? How do we inject feelings into facts?
• What did it mean to work with Tim Etchells?
• What are the different ways to lead a creative process?
• What can people expect from the show or from the next work of yours?

About Bert and Nasi

Bert and Nasi are a contemporary performance duo that met in 2015 and have since created an entire repertoire of shows in the midst of a period of national and international austerity. Their work, in turn, is stripped back and minimalist, whilst dealing with complex ideas and emotions. Their shows lie somewhere between performance, dance and theatre but if you had to pin them down on it, they'd probably say it's theatre. 

Together they have performed their shows on the international stages of PuSh Festival (Canada), Festival de Otoño (Spain), Sarajevo Mess (Bosnia), Adelaide International Festival (Australia), InTeatro (Italy), Avignon Festival (France) as well as MiTsp (Brazil).

In 2020, Bert and Nasi received the Forced Entertainment Award in memory of Huw Chadbourn, which celebrates the work of contemporary artists reinventing theatre and performance in new ways and for new audiences.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

Bert joined the conversation from Paris, while Nasi was in Marseille.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Credits

PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi.

Show Transcript

 00:02

Hello and welcome to Push Play, a Push Festival podcast featuring conversations with artists who are pushing boundaries and playing with form. I'm Gabrielle Martin, Push's director of programming, and today's episode highlights doing less and injecting feelings into facts.

 

 00:17

I'm speaking with Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutas, performers and two of the creators of La Disson. A seemingly commonplace interaction between two men in a restaurant fractures into an absurdist kaleidoscope of shifting angles that reflect the comically nonsensical nature of life.

 

 00:35

La Disson will be presented at the Push Festival January 25 and 26, 2025. Bert and Nasi are a contemporary performance duo that met in 2015 and have since created an entire repertoire of shows in the midst of a period of national and international austerity.

 

 00:52

Their work, in turn, is stripped back and minimalist, though it deals with complex ideas and emotions. Tim Echols is the director of La Disson and is an artist and writer based in the UK, whose work shifts between performance, visual art, and fiction.

 

 01:06

Echols has worked in a wide variety of contexts, notably as the leader of the world-renowned Sheffield-based performance group, Forest Entertainment. Here's my conversation with Bert and Nasi. I do want to just start by acknowledging that I am joining this conversation from the traditional ancestral and unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, the Musqueam Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh.

 

 01:33

I'm a settler here, and part of my responsibility as a settler is to continue to educate myself on the state of reconciliation, the history of genocide and colonization, and to continue to engage in decolonization efforts.

 

 01:54

There's always more we can do, but I really lean on the Yellowhead Institute here. which is an incredible resource of policies and reports, just tracking things like Canada's progress with regard to, for example, the truth and reconciliation calls to action.

 

 02:12

So I'm just gonna reference one of the more recent reports, a decade of disappointment, reconciliation in the system of a crown. And again, really just kind of reflecting on the 10 years since the 94 calls to action.

 

 02:28

And this report, I think it's really powerful. It talks about how reconciliation is not just about apologizing for past wrongs, at which Canada is quite adept. It's about ending current wrongs that are happening today and preventing future wrongs, both of which Canada fails to do, and that the legacy calls to action happen to be those with the least progress.

 

 02:51

And these are these four calls to action that, basically provide annual funding comparison metrics between indigenous and non-indigenous populations on and off reserve populations. And the logic of these calls is to clearly identify Canada's unwillingness to adequately invest resources to support indigenous communities over whom it has exerted control for the last 160 plus years.

 

 03:18

And I just really, this is a plug for Yellowhead and that's a report to check out. And it's just definitely frames things in such a powerful and honest way. Bert and Nasi, where are you joining the call today from?

 

 03:34

So I'm actually in Paris because we went to see with Nasi, but Nasi is already in Marseille, but we went to see our friends, Forced Entertainment, perform in Paris, their latest show for their 40th anniversary called Signal to Noise.

 

 03:55

I don't know if you already saw it. I haven't seen it, but I've been following. It's exciting. Yeah. Read about it. It's a great show and there's a lot of moments when you laugh, but there's also a hot moment when you kind of despair what's happening on stage as well, because it echoes brilliantly with a lot of foreign political contexts.

 

 04:21

And yeah, it's pretty and sure it's really good. And are these, Forced Entertainment, have you been long time friends or is this really a relationship that's grown from the work on La Descien? We've known them for a while now, not 40 years.

 

 04:41

We weren't there at the beginning. Actually, yeah, we're a bit younger, but we have been working with them since 2020 actually, because we won an award. that they gave out to people, and we were one of the people they gave an award to, and that started a kind of mentoring relationship.

 

 05:07

They kind of fell during COVID. So it was kind of like a, yeah, kind of weird time. But also it was cool to like, we started meeting them online and kind of, they started mentoring us. We started working with Tim and Eileen, who is the company producer.

 

 05:28

And yeah, it kind of started from there, really, like, we got to know them a bit more. And obviously beforehand, we were like big fans of their work. So it was super cool to like, chat to them about stuff, you know, stuff to do with making work.

 

 05:47

Sorry, I'm in Marseille. And Bert, you're not usually based in Paris, are you? No, I'm also based in Marseille, same as we live five months. down from each other. Yeah, we live five minutes from each other, yeah.

 

 05:58

Quite unusual that you're catching us at a moment when we're actually very far apart, which is not often the case, because we tour and do most of the things together, so. Push has had the pleasure of hosting you before.

 

 06:13

Push presented Palmyra in 2019. And this is, Palmyra is an exploration of revenge, the politics of destruction, and what we consider to be barbaric, inviting people to step back from the news. It looks at what lies beneath and beyond civilization.

 

 06:30

So since then you've created six shows. Can you talk about the evolution or shifts within your work over this period? When we came and we did Palmyra at Push, it was a really nice experience. And that show was, we loved doing that show.

 

 06:49

But yeah, there's definitely been like, I think, yes, six shows later. I guess like with this show, with La Duchamp, I think we're kind of, we're playing with similar stuff. There's stuff that kind of relates to those two shows, but in terms of the dynamic, in terms of the kind of, sometimes the intensity of both those shows.

 

 07:13

But I'd say that in our work, we kind of stepped back from overtly political material and using that as like a springboard into making. I think we kind of, I don't know, in the brushstrokes we started to do in making work, it became a bit like thicker and a bit like, you know, incorporating like lots of things.

 

 07:40

Like we feel our work is still political, just like any person who like occupies a space with other people can be a political act and can be a political thing. But yeah, I suppose. like we we moved a little bit towards we started to explore different kind of ways of of occupying a space and making and making work.

 

 08:07

That's fascinating to me and is that like that was just about needing more kind of uh points of reference or needing different research trajectories or you know wanting to move away from you know how sometimes work with a political message can be didactic or I'm just curious to hear you speak more about that shift and what like inspired that.

 

 08:32

Yeah I think I think also like Palmyra like resonated very strongly so for us it was really a show about Palmyra and Syria and what was going on in the Middle East but actually a lot of because of its open-ended nature uh in the sense that we never spoke about you know We never said these words on stage, so it was all to do with actions and how people were kind of perceiving what we were doing to each other on stage and stuff.

 

 09:00

People kind of projected a lot of meaning onto the show. And Amira, for example, we we ended up presenting in loads of different contexts in different festivals and different countries. And in the case of Canada, for example, it really kind of spoke about the indigenous indigenous experience.

 

 09:19

And in Brazil, the same. And in Northern Ireland, it was also about that kind of colonized experience. So it was it kind of like started kind of like speaking louder than we'd anticipated. And I think that's that that was kind of the success of the show.

 

 09:40

And then, like, the more we kind of like carried on, the more like, actually, like, maybe we don't have to say what the show is about. Maybe we don't need to kind of place it, even though, like, you know, the title is there and that's it.

 

 09:54

But maybe actually just kind of putting two people on stage and and and considering other things about what those two people are doing on stage and their relationship and the nature of collaboration and working with one another and working with the audience and all of these things can kind of like lend itself to be political.

 

 10:15

But it was more the question. It was more the kind of like, let's see where that that takes us and let's see where that takes people as well. And it kind of ended up being more of an exploration in the latest kind of like shows as well of like something that's a bit more existential as well and a bit more kind of metaphysical maybe and about what it is to kind of occupy a space with the audience.

 

 10:39

Also, like, what is it to kind of like be in this world and think like this? I also think like in a very blunt sort of way, those first three shows, we made Eurohouse, Palmyra and one they were like intense we did like some pretty weird nasty shit to each other in those shows and then we toured them a lot and then but kind of like in a very simple way i think when we came to make the end which was like a dance movement piece that we made we kind of wanted to make something a bit like together and kind of really being together in exploring something a bit more metaphysical and also a bit more personal so that really contributed in terms of like moving away from these kind of like kind of very like head-to-head this conflict vibe that we kind of we still like kind of love but we kind of like just kind of stepped back a little bit from that from that vibe for a few years but this show I think we're very much back in that vibe and so it's and we're happy to be to be there as well.

 

 11:58

I have a question about a workshop that you offer so and we're hoping that we'll be able to host it here while you're in Vancouver and the workshop's titled Less Workshop in which you explore ideas around disagreement, frustration, hatred and reconciliation, particularly as these to contemporary society and using the stage as a space for artistic and political negotiation.

 

 12:23

And so we've already been speaking about this to some extent but my question tied to that was would you say that these ideas define your work and can you speak more to artistic and political negotiation?

 

 12:36

I think it was a workshop that we started developing when we were making these kind of first of all it took us quite a lot of time to try and articulate those ideas in a space with the students and with other people so we still feel quite attached to these ideas and also we feel like actually we've got something to kind of offer in that sense that actually seeing how we can kind of portray the political just with kind of people and in relation to an audience this is something that we feel we can do.

 

 13:16

In the later part of what we do it's a little bit more tricky because a lot of it rests on on us and our collaboration and us both and it's a bit more personal so this is something that in a way like we feel a little bit less inclined to kind of go down because it's like well this is kind of this is the road we're on as as makers and as collaborators but probably that those students that will be with us in the space will have a very different way of making work and will have a very different kind of road for their for their own work and their own collaboration.

 

 13:51

So that's why we're kind of at the moment we're still sticking to this because we feel at least that that is something that Probably people can use and and and can understand Something maybe that's kind of like relatively new or something that they can use to create Yeah political work with a bit of with a bit of distance maybe there's from the beginning we've always had I Mean we don't have much set in our shows historically and Normally,

 

 14:25

it's just like very much just two of us in a space Maybe with a laptop maybe with a table or some chairs and We just explore stuff through that. So I guess those were like the founding principles that we Started making work with kind of through necessity because in the UK for the past like 12 years I uh we had uh you know the Tory government uh arts funding was cut like which is so common nowadays like seems all across the world um and so we kind of found this form um sort of out of necessity and then and then kind of fell in love with this form like and and and actually enjoyed it and and kind of we were very passionate about about really bringing something into a room with not much means and like really creating an experience with an audience in a room yeah that's kind of carried on being a real like principle that we have when we think about work and when we think about what it means to perform live work to an audience um it's really great to hear examples of of what defines your work the aesthetics the form uh and also your practice you've shared that your practice revolves around questions such as how do we prioritize simplicity when talking about very complex matters and how do you inject feeling into facts and also how can we do less which you've spoken to but with regard to the first two can you can you offer us some more similar examples as to how you're answering or how you have answered these questions we just like the the the surprise that when you really prioritize simplicity in a space and you just focus on like like you being like the audience being in a room with you when you when you make and when you perform sometimes it unlocks something that is that is more impressive than if you kind of bring some sort of like high budget thing into into it or you kind of have this big image like the simplicity of just like this this moment that you're sharing with in a space with some people that's the thing that really like we we like that's the thing that gets us going sort of you know and that's no shade i'm like these big budget productions,

 

 16:52

but we like that simplicity, we like that. Hopefully everybody can see La Decine because La Decine is an answer to that question as well. It's just like how riveting a work can be with such simple substance in terms of like, you know, text, set, all of these things.

 

 17:20

And how the intensity that's created and also the references to, you know, bigger themes of, you know, the directionlessness of our modern world. Or there's many things that you can also like apply and relate to within it and read into it.

 

 17:38

And it's, yeah, it's a great example of that extremely minimal form, yeah. But some people listening will not have seen the work. or they'll listen to this after having seen the work. So it's great to hear from you a little bit more.

 

 17:52

I'm just thinking, I'm just going back to the how do you inject feeling into facts? And I imagine that when you're even working with more political work in the past, that bringing it to the personal or finding that emotional language on stage is key to make it relatable.

 

 18:09

That's what I read into that question. Is that kind of some point? It really started also for us, again, from that very first show that we started developing together in Greece, which was about what was going on there and the whole austerity going on in there and the feelings that we could sense when we were there.

 

 18:38

And we started opening the room to people who were following the process and initially it was kind of like we were using information about the debt and about what's going on with the European Union and stuff like this.

 

 18:53

And it felt very actually quite cold. And it felt like also kind of basically saying what a lot of people knew or didn't know, but actually like it was like this kind of overload of information that didn't really create feelings.

 

 19:10

And then we shifted and then we kind of like, we've got this, but we also have another version which was kind of without words, where basically we were playing games and I was humiliating Nasi on stage and asking him to do things that was very uncomfortable to see and to witness in a room.

 

 19:32

And that was it, that was just like two kids basically just bullying each other on stage with the complicity of the audience watching it and having to kind of take part somehow. And that for them, the reaction.

 

 19:48

reaction was like a very, very stark reaction compared to the first showing that we've done. Because it was, they said, that's it. That's what we're feeling. That's what we're experiencing when we're at the moment and you're showing it and you're making me see it, but not in kind of like in through information, but through feelings.

 

 20:12

And that feels like quite different kind of show actually. And that's when we carried on. That's when we kind of stuck. So maybe there is something there that actually opens it for a lot of people. La Decion was directed by Tim Etchells, produced by Forest Entertainment and commissioned by Festival d'Avignon.

 

 20:33

Usually you direct your own work. What was that collaboration like and how does it make La Decion similar to or different from the rest of your body of work? It was an amazing experience. It was super, super cool.

 

 20:48

I'm working with Tim. I mean, he's been doing this for a long time and we've been such fans of Four Stents that it was just amazing to have the experience of him, of making a show with him. And seeing like his instincts in a room and how he kind of leads a process was really special for both of us.

 

 21:13

There were many moments where we were like, this is really cool. We're going to remember this experience. And I think what was nice was that I think with us two and him, we really found each other on the same page very quickly and very easily.

 

 21:34

And I think all of us were sort of surprised about that. Like the show felt like a real organic collaboration where like our worlds that are not too dissimilar anyway, like really kind of, there's a nice balance in the show.

 

 21:52

And I think people are aware of our work and who saw Palmyra when we were last time in Vancouver and who are also aware of Four Stents and also his solo stuff. I think people have said that they can really see that kind of that balance between the two, between all of us and kind of making something that's quite new and quite fresh.

 

 22:19

Yeah, it was great. It was cool. And we're very proud of the show that came out. There's something really magical about this experience of, like I said, the opening of the podcast is that we went to see them last night in Paris.

 

 22:34

They're celebrating their 40th anniversary and they're showing work that is still kind of really pushing boundaries after 40 years. and then being able to kind of like be privy to this and learn from people who've done it for a really long time, have been touring for a really long time where we can share like the difficulties of it or the kind of experience of doing that sort of work or wanting to go towards that sort of work as well,

 

 23:09

is a, yeah, is a really great experience for us, I think. And Nasi talked about how, you know, just how Tim leads a process, just being in the room with him and how that was different. Like, how is that different?

 

 23:27

How is it different from how you lead a process? It wasn't like crazy, crazy different, but for sure, like he's, we're kind of like all in it together, but then you have someone who's just on the outside and not only just someone, you've got Tim Echols on the outside, so he's just directing you in, in a...

 

 23:47

in the best possible way, like kind of guiding kind of like if he sees something working, he'll like tell you to lean into it a little bit more. And, and he's so deaf that like, kind of guiding an improvisation or sending it in a way if he sees like there might be a bit of joy somewhere in the room.

 

 24:05

I'm talking about like when we're improvising and stuff, trying to find material. And it was just a it's just a real pleasure to have that. And normally, when we're by ourselves, it's, yeah, we, we, we're like, searching in the moment, but we don't have that person on the outside.

 

 24:25

So normally, we stop and we chat a lot, which we also do with Tim. But but yeah, I guess it's just it's just a, it's a great thing to have, to have that. Also, the level of detail he goes into in terms of looking at stuff and looking at improvisations and re recreating kind of improvisations is something that was really new for us and something that yeah, we, we learned a lot from doing how to not only have things that are fluid and kind of live,

 

 25:03

but then also really kind of like focusing on the minuscule details of a moment, which he and forced dense, forced entertainment, I really have a lot of experience and kind of like really kind of to the to the to the very small detail kind of like recreating these very funny, very cool moments.

 

 25:24

And if people see La Decion, what could they expect? If they're then going to go see the next Bert and Nasi work, what could they expect to, to be a through line or something that they might see in that other work of yours, that next work of yours, both of you on stage, for one.

 

 25:43

But no, no, I think it's also like the I think what people recognize in the show and the work is really this kind of direct address and direct way we have of addressing an audience and of looking at people in the eyes and really making them feel like they're part of this thing with us, part of this problem that we're kind of setting out for people in the room.

 

 26:11

And so that's I think something that we're very keen to develop from the start, but that we're still really like passionate about is this sense of like, what is it to develop work where you make the audience feel like this is for me, like this is, like I'm here with them because they're looking at me and they want me to be part of this thing.

 

 26:39

Whether I want it or not, because sometimes people don't want it, we're gonna kind of like really drag them to it. somehow, some way or another. Not through interaction, because we don't ask people to talk.

 

 26:52

But the way that we deliver it, I think there's no way that you wouldn't feel included somehow. So that's the hope and that's the through line, I think, throughout everything we've done since the beginning.

 

 27:11

Thank you so much. Thank you. I am thrilled to experience this work live here with our public and to have you back with us here. Yeah, thank you so much for your time. Thanks. Looking forward to being back.

 

 27:26

Yeah, that's gonna be great. That was Gabriel Martin in conversation with Burt and Nasi. They will join Push for its 20th festival with their work La Decion being presented on January 25th and 26th at Alliance Française Vancouver in association with Here and Now.

 

 27:45

My name is Ben Charland and I produce this podcast alongside the wonderful Tricia Knowles original music by Joseph Hirabayashi. New episodes of Push Play are released every Tuesday and Friday wherever you get your podcasts.

 

 27:59

For more information on the 2025 festival and to discover the full lineup of more than 20 works of theatre, dance, music and multimedia performances visit pushfestival.ca and on the next Push Play. I'm kind of always been wary of artistic figures kind of emphasizing that this is the way to do this.

 

 28:23

This is how. That to me makes absolutely no sense.