“This is not another Me Too play,” insists veteran Australian playwright Wendy Beckett. “Think of it as a Remember Me Too play.”
The writer of more than 25 theatre plays is talking about Claudel, her latest drama combining history, dance (choreographed by the legendary Meryl Tankard), music and sculpture.
Playwright Wendy Beckett in rehearsals with dancers Dorothea Csutkai, Cloé Fournier and Kip Gamblin, who will be performing in Claudel at the Opera House. Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
The prodigiously talented and pioneering French sculptor Camille Claudel (1864-1943) was the student, mistress, and muse of Auguste Rodin, history’s most famous sculptor after Michelangelo.
She worked with Rodin on at least two of his masterpieces - The Kiss and The Gates of Hell - which could be the ironic title of a Claudel biography.
The sculptor has been depicted on film by two of France’s most talented actresses. Isabelle Adjani starred in the 1988 version and Juliette Binoche appeared in the 2015 release.
No pressure then on Imogen Sage, who plays Camille in Beckett’s stage version at the Sydney Opera House. Beckett originally wrote her play in French while living in Paris. French critics, familiar with the tragedy of the female sculptor’s ‘descent into madness’ after being spurned by her more famous lover, reviewed it favourably in 2018.
This English version has been more difficult to bring to the Australian stage. Claudel is well-known in Paris, unknown in Sydney and COVID-19 made it impossible to perform live theatre. Yet Beckett, her production company and partners (Victoria-based Tinderbox Productions) took the financial risk to bring Camille’s story to an Australian audience.
Rodin’s 1882 sculpture, Le Baiser.Credit: Alamy
“Dramas cost $200,000 plus to stage in Australia,” Beckett explains. “If they’re lucky, they break even. It’s not unusual for me to raise private money to finance a show. Theatre’s a tough game. It couldn’t survive on government funding - even before COVID.”
Beckett was prompted to write of Claudel, whose wonderful sculptures include The Waltz, The Wave, and Sakuntala? because she was “mortified by the injustice”: “She slept with a ‘married man’. Had multiple abortions. Believed he loved her.”
Rodin - common-law husband of seamstress Rose Beuret, who had been his partner long before he became famous - refused to leave the mother of his son.
Claudel’s strict Catholic family made it impossible for her to live an independent life after her supportive father died. “Her mother put her into a mental institution for 30 years,” Beckett says. “Her family refused to release her, though her doctors said she was walking in the gardens and having intelligent conversations.
“Claudel was a woman totally abandoned because of her ‘immorality’, though such immorality was commonplace among men of her era.”
Was Claudel driven to insanity by her jilting? “Camille saw she could be equal as a sculptor and colleague, but their relationship would never see the light of day.”
It came to a head in 1895 with Claudel’s masterpiece, The Age of Maturity, depicting a naked young woman pleading with an older man not to desert her for a gnarled harridan. Her Rodinesque sculpture left Parisian society in no doubt who the menage-de-trois depicted.
“Rodin was a good guy, a great art teacher, and he always acknowledged Camille’s genius as a sculptor. But Camille became too demanding for him,” Beckett argues. With her degree in psychology, Beckett read Claudel’s medical reports in both French and English.
“Did Camille have schizophrenia? No. She had a couple of mental breakdowns she recovered from,” Beckett says.
Claudel destroyed most of her work in her studio in 1912. “This play is Camille’s story,” Beckett says. “Yes, she descends into madness to a degree. But in the end, she says, essentially, to civilised society: ‘Look what you’ve done to me!’.”
Claudel at the Sydney Opera House runs from April 23 to May 9.