Submission
in three acts

Letter addressed to Alain Timar, director of the Théâtre des Halles
at the end of the second lockdown

Mr Timar

" We have received your invitation to the premiere of your latest show, and we thank you for it.
I was, however, very surprised to discover its title
L'Entrée en résistance !
No less.
Coming from an establishment that did strictly nothing to thwart the worst attack on fundamental freedoms of recent decades, that is rather comical! (To content oneself with saying “we don't make the laws”, and simply to adjust one's audience capacity, is not resistance but accompaniment!)
And the theme of the show
Violence at work.
No less
, Coming from an establishment that did strictly nothing to support and protect its employees against the worst attack on freedoms in the workplace of recent decades, that too is rather comical!

History is on the march and you are quite simply incapable of responding to it other than with worn-out software: “The collective is good, corporate management is bad!” You have never ceased to fight against “oppressions” that are well established and already judged by history. It is very comfortable to try to soothe this dissonance by programming this self-proclaimed “resistant” show, which will without fail content itself with playing or recombining a familiar tune.
Whereas what is unfolding before your eyes is far worse than the worst of corporate managements: there is no longer even any need for contrition, for servitude is included in the very terms of the employment contract, the intermittent-worker scheme proving to be a formidable tool of subjugation. (I get vaccinated so as not to lose my status. No need even for an obligation! The boss is absolved of all constraints. And above all I am quite incapable of seeing that I am trapped, because I “fought” for this status!).

Auxiliary agent

You are not the only one, you are not the worst, but the theatrical form as it is practised in Avignon confirms, after long years of doubt, that it was indeed running on empty.
(A gratuitous assertion? If only!
One need only leaf through the In/Off programmes and take a sample to find a conformism of acceptable provocations, gorged on recycling and ham acting.)
You have acquired a small status of local baronet, but it has to be said that a formidable failure concludes your 40 years of power: not only were you unable to change the world by your own yardstick, or to anticipate its changes, or even to entertain it (“how dreadful!”). But the fact remains that you were an auxiliary agent (quite involuntarily — therein lies the tragedy!) in the establishment of this “protector-oppressor state”.
Worn out and out of breath — but, in fact, from the very beginning! "