Richard Martin interrupts himself regularly, his eyes closed, to recharge his legendary ardor before resting again, as far away as possible, on a silence. “I feel like I’m breathing backwards…” he breathes. This Friday afternoon, the actor feels too tired to leave his bed, installed in a room upstairs at the Toursky, the theater he founded more than half a century ago in the very popular 3rd arrondissement of Marseille, and which he has since directed. Another bed, draped in red, sits in the hall of the establishment next to a table piled with copies of his “open letter to the Marseillaises and Marseillais” written ten days ago, on February 7, when he began his hunger strike. His anger: a reduction in municipal subsidies of 80,000 euros, already effective in 2022 and renewed this season, questions around the occupation of premises, property of the City. And uncertainties about the future of Toursky and especially the succession of its director, 79 years old.
This is not the first time that Richard Martin has decided to go on a hunger strike. In 1981 as in 2009, he protested against the drastic cut in state subsidies. The last time, in 2019, he denounced the drop in aid granted to the theater by the City then managed by Jean-Claude Gaudin (LR). At the time, the current municipal deputy for Culture, Jean-Marc Coppola (PCF), gave him his support. “He was a brotherassure Richard Martin, but this betrayal broke everything.”
“There are rules, it is not in the name of friendship that I will endorse anythingfirmly dismisses Jean-Marc Coppola. In 2019, if I had known what I know today…” What the elected official says he has discovered since his arrival in 2020 with the left-wing majority of Printemps Marseille is that Richard Martin occupies the 700-seat theater “without right or title since 2014”. The occupancy agreement for the premises, signed in the 1980s under the municipality of Vigouroux, has not been signed since. “Imagine that something happens! It is not because he created this theater that it gives him rights outside the law.
A budget of 2 million euros including “75% of public funds”
The 80,000 euros less allocated to the theater – out of a municipal envelope of 950,000 euros – are justified by a desire to “rebalance subsidies and help structures ousted for years by the City”. “Everyone accepted this effort, except him. I don’t see why there would be preferential treatment for the Toursky.”further defends the deputy, recalling that the company Richard Martin, which has an overall budget of 2 million euros, benefits from “75% public funds” if we add the aid of the Drac, the region and the department.
After weeks of vain attempts at conciliation, this Thursday again, the assistant for Culture and the actor met in the theater. The City renewed its proposal: have the company sign a one-year temporary occupancy agreement. In return, it undertakes to bring the building into conformity, the safety commission having given an unfavorable opinion. “It’s been three years since this work has been voted on, why not have done it before?”gets carried away Richard Martin, who denies being a “squatter”. If he has not signed the occupancy agreement since 2014, it is because he refused to accept the drastic increase in rent which was then imposed on him – 10,000 euros against 283 euros annually until then: “The agreement was tacitly renewed, the 283 euros, I continued to pay them, I am not an inhabitant without a title.” And to sweep away with the same anger the other arguments, aligned, according to him, to hide a “political score settling” : the current majority would not have forgiven him for having presented himself, he“anar” of the left claimed, on the lists of the dissident right-wing candidate Bruno Gilles for the 2020 municipal elections. A commitment which had surprised even some of his relatives.
Richard Martin is keen to pick up his story where it began, when the 30-year-old actor, forged at the boulevard theater before moving to the left bank, decided to leave the capital to settle in Marseille in the early 1970s. At the time, Gaston Defferre authorized him to take over, via a long lease, a disused shed which had once housed the Daily Theater in Saint-Maura, on the outskirts of the town centre. The day he enters there for the first time, he is told that the southern poet Axel Toursky has been killed in a car accident. He decided to give his name to the theater which, over the years, he made his “Left Bank” Marseille in the heart of one of the districts “the poorest in Europe”. “A place of poetic resistance” where the big names of the scene invite themselves, trained by Léo Ferré, whose traveling companion he was. Richard Martin still recounts the theâtrobus crisscrossing the neighboring cities, Barbara Hendricks invited for the 30th anniversary of the Toursky, popular universities, the creation of a Russian festival, the group of yellow vests in residence to rehearse a play… Le monde à Saint- Maura and Saint-Maura all over the world: “I carried my adventure around all the countries, he thunders. And after fifty-three years, I have to say how much I owe you?
If he passionately rewinds the path accomplished, it is because beyond the questions of management, it is that of his succession at the head of the theater that the municipality has put on the table. “They say I don’t create enough anymore, but the Saint Petersburg theater asked me to come, I refused because of the war. Who is the mountebank to whom we offer this! Le Toursky after him, he thought of it on his own, he assures, even puts forward several names, including that of the choreographer Julien Derouault. “But why don’t they accompany a guy who won’t bother them for long, who has brought their reputation to the world? They think I have nothing more to say? I may be a has-been, but not in poetry.
Stars and a national petition
In his «résistance»Richard Martin received the support of several national personalities, such as Clémentine Célarié, Benjamin Biolay and Philippe Caubère: “It is not for him to pledge allegiance to political power, but to this power to serve him, to support him and to give him thanks for this workwrote the latter. We do not chase Peter Brook or Ariane Mnouchkine out of his place. We are waiting for them to leave, hoping that it will be as late as possible. This Friday evening, in addition to an online petition which had collected more than 1,700 signatures on February 18, his supporters were organizing an evening at Toursky before another, scheduled for this Saturday.
“I do not deny what he has done for fifty years, I simply spoke of transmission, that means being present and transmitting”, corrects Jean-Marc Coppola, hurt as much as exceeded by the escalation of events. Also determined: “That he comes to put his life in danger is a serious and disproportionate act. But I will not give in to this blackmail. Richard Martin’s supporters accuse him of “technocrat”the elected Communist responds “general interest” : “That’s what guides me, those are my values. We have tried everything in terms of mediation, but this is the first time in my political and militant commitment that I have come up against a wall. A man has fallen into the sea, they hand him a buoy and he refuses it. I do not know what to do…” Difficult all the same, for the majority on the left, not to attempt a final conciliation. Like this proposal for a round table with the other institutions concerned, canceled at the end of January in the midst of rising tensions but still possible. Richard Martin did not completely refuse it. “It would be an emergency door for me, to suspend my hunger strikeconfesses the artist, sitting on his bed. Because it’s true that I can’t take it anymore, I’m tired.