On October 30, 2020, France officially entered its second confinement. Nora Hamzawi was soon going to deliver an unusual show, thought for a single performance… solo on the radio. This monologue on life during confinement, entitled Imaginary audience, she played it at the end of November, in a France Inter studio. The text has just been published by Actes Sud. The opportunity to (re) dive into the hilarious prose of the actress. In about sixty pages, she multiplies the anecdotes, talks about her anxieties and describes absurd situations, thus putting into words what many of us have felt.
“I am experiencing this whole pandemic as a huge heartache. It’s been since March 17, 2020 that I am in love, she writes. Those excruciating breakups, the ones where the guy has to leave you for you to realize how great you were before, how lucky you were. Except that nobody dumped me, that we all have the same ex and that this ex is the life before … In the meantime, we have a kind of toxic relationship with the government which has become a bit our narcissistic pervert. It’s tiring. “One year after the start of the second confinement, 20 minutes look in the retro with Nora Hamzawi.
My first question is not rhetorical: How are you?
(Astonished) How am I? It is true that this is a question that has gained much more weight over the past two years. Before, we could just answer “How are you” or “How are you?” “. There I’m fine while being superstitious and suspicious, that is, I say I’m fine while touching wood.
In “Imaginary Public”, you talk about the relationship to time which has been completely disrupted. The second confinement began a year ago. Does that seem far to you? Or, for you, was it yesterday?
It’s very weird. I still have the impression that it was yesterday, that we were marked by that, that it is not something that is behind us, if only because the coronavirus still exists. We are right in the middle of this with this third dose of vaccine that is coming… For me, it was yesterday in a sort of surrealist bubble, a parenthesis detached from the rest of the memories and in another relation to time.
Was writing “Imaginary audience” a way to cope?
At the time I wrote it, I was not on stage, the theaters were closed, we were all confined… As far as I’m concerned, I was more in a communion thing than centered on my own anxieties because what was happening was so disturbing and new. I did not have the immediate desire to write. Little by little, I became aware of loneliness, the relationship with the public, the fact of being on stage, which I had never theorized until then. I wondered what this need to make people laugh, to play down, meant. I realized how important the urge to laugh was and how quite incapable of it I was at the time.
But, in the end, you wrote …
I tried. It was a fairly new exercise because I often say that I write about what I have healed from. I never really do a sketch on the news, because the immediacy worries me, I don’t have the necessary perspective to be self-deprecating or to make humor. There I wanted to try the exercise because we were all in a sort of bubble, of loneliness, while feeling in the same situation for each other. The urgency to try to make it something creative, to laugh about it, was to try not to suffer too much from the situation and to tell ourselves that we could come out with something positive.
Did you get a lot of public feedback after this radio show?
Yes, by the way, before Imaginary audience, Vanity Fair offered to do a podcast [Les Confinades, mis en ligne au printemps 2020] to make something over this period. I was reluctant at first to laugh about it, to talk about myself. I did an episode and I saw the reactions of people who thanked me, told me that it did them good to have this mirror effect at a time when everyone felt alone with themselves. It encouraged me to continue. After Imaginary audience, that was pretty crazy. I didn’t know what it would be like to play a show alone, in the studio, live, without an audience, without anything and at the same time, it was so in keeping with what we were going through. I had reactions that touched me. People told me that laughing made them feel good. It was indeed hyperimportant for the mental health of all of us.
“Imaginary Audience” is very funny. Nevertheless, between the lines, he says a lot about the psychological suffering that the French population has experienced …
We worried about others. We saw the situation by being at home, protected, by touching wood, by telling ourselves that we were fine, that our loved ones were fine and we tried to be satisfied with that. There was no room, at least as far as I was concerned, to complain, although we have never been so alone. It was a very bizarre moment with a total inability to project, which is the basis for escaping his anxieties. For me, the possibility of having good mental health is linked to the ability to dream, to project oneself, to imagine oneself in a social world. Our dreams had become tiny, we were just hoping for a return to normal. There are times when we were delighted to be able to travel more than so many kilometers… There is something that has deeply damaged us in the way we live. When we see the success of the series In therapy… Before the Covid, seeing a shrink was perceived as something quite bourgeois. There, we realized that the shrinks were overwhelmed and that many people needed help.
Has culture been considered “non-essential” damaged you as an artist?
No. Frankly, I am not offended. I am not in the affect or in the ego when it comes to government decisions. There are things that I find absurd, choices that seem random to me, terms that seem ill-chosen to me, but, as an artist, it didn’t affect me whether I am essential or not. Besides, I deeply believe that I am absolutely not essential (laughs) and I always thought so before we used that word. On the other hand, it is essential to talk, to laugh, to be able to escape whatever the means: the culture, the social life, the food … There was a rather sad thing in the fact of saying that the only one escape ability was a Netflix series.
In “Imaginary Audience”, you say that you are “afraid of going back on stage, (…) fear of joy, fear of stage fright, (…) fear of seeing everyone all at once”. You ended up resuming the performances of “Nouveau Spectacle” *. How did it happen?
It happened with a lot of guilt. I only waited for that and, once it was possible, I got scared. I went there being nervous about not liking it anymore because you quickly get used to doing without what you no longer have – I think it’s also a survival instinct. There was something like when you really want to go to a party and you end up saying, “No, I’m at home as well.” Something between depression and laziness, which makes us wonder if it’s worth it, if we’re really going to have a good time. Fortunately, from the first few times on stage, it was wonderful, because there is a communion. We are all together and, suddenly, something happens because we have all lived, on different scales, this moment of loneliness, of irrationality, when we were losing our footing. I got the feeling that the laughs were more loaded with something, that there was an even stronger relationship to the audience. It was quite beautiful.
As you were saying just now, we are not done with the coronavirus. The vaccination, the health pass, the antivax… Could this inspire you a new spectacle or, as you said, you do not have the necessary hindsight yet?
In general, I like to talk less about the facts themselves than about the feelings and emotions they provoke in us. I believe that’s what I tried to do subconsciously in Imaginary audience which speaks more of loneliness, of routine, of irrationality, than of the Covid. There, the situation does not make me want to write a show on it. After, maybe in a year … When we write, we always do it while being connected to the world in which we are, so no doubt that this will have left marks in my perception of myself, in my social life, in my relationship, and that I will talk about that, but without it being linked to the pandemic.
You are currently shooting under the direction of Olivier Assayas. What can you reveal about it?
I can’t say much. This is a series for HBO, adapted from the film Irma Vep. Alicia Vikander plays the main character. We’re filming until the end of November.
*Nora Hamzawi plays her one-on-stage New Show until December 4 at the République in Paris. She will also be on stage at the Casino de Paris on January 25 and 26, 2022.