Seventeen Vietnamese and French artists will perform the piece Saisons de riz (Seasons of Rice) in Ha Noi in November next year to celebrate the 40th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and Viet Nam.

The play was written and directed by Alain Destandau, director of the Monte-Charge Theatre, located in Pau, in the Aquitaine region of France. This is his biggest ever co-operation with Vietnamese artists, following the success of Cercles de Sable (Sand Circles) and Antigone. He talks with Bach Lien about the new project.

The name of the play Seasons of Rice, reminding people of the Vietnamese countryside. What stories do you want to tell the public through the play?

The play will tell four different stories that happen in a Vietnamese village through the four seasons of rice farming.

It will be about different people and their destinies. We will touch on a variety of themes: the strength of belief, the choice of the people, faithfulness to our sentiments, sacrifices, honour, fears, departure, meetings and the choices that we make every day in our life, while trying not to betray the principles we have always wanted to follow: firmness and loyalty.

To create sufficient ambience on the stage we will set up a typical Vietnamese rice field using real rice. I am currently working on the logistics of this.

Did writing the play take you a lot of time?

I spent 18 days this May writing the script in Viet Nam by the banks of Dai Lai Lake. The ministry of culture and the Viet Nam National Association of Theatre Artists invited me to go there to write the script. I really appreciated those days by the lake when I could have some contact with local people, in particular young lovely and curious Vietnamese children.

I am happy that I had the chance to write while surrounded by these poetic landscapes and local people.

How will the play be performed by artists who don't speak the same language?

As was the case in the two previous works Sand Circles and Antigone, Vietnamese artists will perform in Vietnamese and French artists in French. I believe there will be no difficulty for the public to understand the play.

The artists performing come from different universes: theatre, contemporary dance, classic drama tuong, traditional music. The costumes are once again designed by Minh Hanh.

We will begin to rehearse the play in September and October next year. It will be our biggest ever co-operation with Vietnamese artists and we hope the public will like it.

The play will also be performed at the Avignon Festival in France in 2014.

Seasons of Rice is the third project you have done with the artists of the Viet Nam National Tuong Theatre. Why do you like working with these artists?

The key to our success together is that we built true friendships with Vietnamese tuong artists. We appreciate each other and understand each other very well, despite our language differences and now we are like a big family. When my wife and I come to Viet Nam we eat in street restaurants and enjoy bia hoi [draught beer] with them. When the Vietnamese artists perform in France, they live in my house and we cook, eat and spend good moments together like members of a family.

When we play on the stage, we make the public forget our differences and share the pleasure of working together, taking advantage of the musicality of the both languages and enriching ourselves in the culture of others. — VNS