Description

It follows the rise of a petty, buffoonish, and despicable leader who, episode by episode, goes from a pathetic thug to a dictator.<div> Imagine Bertolt Brecht in 1941, when he wrote this play, very quickly, on the run after the Reichstag fire, in exile in Finland, en route to the United States. He lacked the form and the words to express the inexpressible. He invented a language and a plot, tableaux and chronicles, like a serial, half Shakespearean drama, half new gangster genre film. We follow the rise of a petty, buffoonish, and despicable boss, a cauliflower magnate among other things, who corrupts, kills, lies, traffics, and crushes everything in his path. From episode to episode, he goes from pathetic thug to dictator. There's a lot of laughter, which helps us better understand what isn't being said.</div><div><br></div><div> So yes, Arturo Ui is a bit like Hitler, or perhaps it's the other way around. Robert Cantarella offers here a new version of this iconic play, freely translated by the poet Stéphane Bouquet.</div><div><br></div><div> Trained at the Fine Arts school in Marseille, then with Antoine Vitez at the Théâtre National de Chaillot, Robert Cantarella founded several companies including Compagnie R&C, with the aim of introducing new theatrical writings and rediscovering plays from the repertoire, notably: Jean-Luc Lagarce, Noëlle Renaude, Stéphane Bouquet, Alban Lefranc, Christophe Honoré, Liliane Giraudon, Philippe Minyana...</div><div><br></div><div> He was director of the National Drama Centre of Dijon, then co-director of the 104 in Paris, he is also a performer in Faire le Gilles based on the courses of Gilles Deleuze.</div><div><br></div><div> In 2024 he published Les Carrossiers with Al Dante publishers. In 2025, he directed a film about Liliane Giraudon and a text by Stéphane Bouquet: 6h plus tard.</div><div> Since 1993 he has been in charge of the Master's program in theatre at La Manufacture in Lausanne.</div><div><br></div>