So one day, I call him and say,
'Peter, I found out you created that troupe looking into theatre art,
can I come and attend a session?' and he says, 'No, you can't attend.
If you want to come by, you need to take part'. And that’s how it began.
I started by coming to that group, which was going back to what sports people would call 'core skills',
such as the vocal and physical basis of communication,
which can be very difficult and very sophisticated sometimes.
After a year or two, we're in '71 or '72, that group started travelling.
I went with them a bit here and there. They gave premieres, I remember I went to Venice with them
and then in '73, Peter brought everyone together and said,
'Now's the time to stop with those three years of experimenting,
and to show, to get out of this and go out there'.
So at that time, miraculously, we found an amazing place, the theatre Bouffes du Nord in Paris,
through Micheline Rozan who had heard about it. It had been closed for 20 years after burning down.
Peter and I went to see it. We were spellbound by the place,
a beautiful and strange place, and Peter decided to settle there,
to stay in France, and start up a group. He picked 'Timon of Athens' for our first play,
a little known Shakespeare play, almost never performed in France, and he asked me,
'Are you interested in adapting it for the first time?' So this is how I started that 36-year experience.
Simply. And it still continues, in a way, as we still see each other.
Peter brought me into that theatre adventure.
I could not only have not done that without him, and wouldn't even have considered it.
What we did together, and in particular the 'Mahabharata', our experiences,
'The Conference of the Birds in Iran', any theatre I have learned and done, with him and because of him, I owe to him.
Obviously I was helping him, assisting him, I was the writer for his group,
the person in charge of the text, as he puts it himself.
When there is a play to be written, I write it, when there is a play to be translated, I translate it,
even when the play already exists, for instance, with Jarry's 'Ubu Roi' that we put on once,
I am in charge of working on the text with the actors, explaining what is going on,
so that writing role, along with working with Buñuel,
has been the greatest adventure in my life. It still is, like every time I go to the Bouffes du Nord,
my heart races, even if nowadays, we both are much older,
and we don't do much anymore there, and it has a new management,
but it still stays as something unforgettable and quite fundamental in our lives,
because Peter is someone who is not about theories, he is a practical man.
I mean, he is not someone who applies theories in one theatre after another,
he is someone who researches, explores, and as he often says,
he does not have any preconceived idea about what he wants to reach,
he looks for it with his actors and writer. So that's an amazing adventure.
To me, Peter is a real researcher, it is a...
'brook' in English means a stream of water, he is like that, a constant spring of clear water,
bouncing from one place to another, making it alive and wonderful.