Desert Island Duffel

All this year, the French-American company Theatre de la Jeune Lune has been celebrating a quarter-century of existence by restaging and revisiting works from previous seasons, culminating with a return to the Georges Bizet opera Carmen, running through August 15 and directed by co-founder Dominique Serrand. Given Jeune Lune’s reputation as one of the most imaginative theaters in the country, we knew that Serrand would certainly have intriguing responses to our desert-island quiz. And he didn’t disappoint. In fact, Serrand seemed to have a whole marooned-chic lifestyle mapped out and ready to go: “The food would be terrific,” he told us. French cuisine? “On a desert island? Oh, no, it would be fusion!” But he did admit he’d miss living among the rest of humanity. “You have to leave people behind [in this game]—that’s the trouble I have.” So we suggested that, instead of five objects, he could take any five actors in the world along to stage plays on the island with him—an offer he refused with a laugh, noting that “I’d make a lot of enemies that way,” since he’d inevitably have to leave out some friends. But in the end, he even devised an elegant solution to that problem.
1. “For my first choice, I’d take either Plato, Descartes, or de Toqueville’s essays and reflections on democracy.
2. “Foure’s Reqiuem. A most celebrated piece of music. I don’t know that I would actually choose to hear the music; I might just want to bring the score, and read it and try to remember in my mind.
3. “I would bring a big knife. A nice thing to carry around. I don’t mean it as a weapon, but as a tool.
4. “If I could, and I don’t know if this is too much of a sci-fi version of an object, I would take Camille Claudel’s hands. That would be a nice thing to have. She was Rodin’s girlfriend, and a lot of people think he stole some work from her. She had formidably muscular hands.
5. “And last, I would take several puppets in one box. It could be Saddam Hussein, George Bush, different puppets. People I could play with. I could bring the whole collection. We would make a new play every day, and pretend it was true!”