Michael Hirsch, with a few unruly locks on his head and the mischievous gaze of a pageboy, is an actor. At 33, he has two one-man shows to his name, performed from Paris to the highly regarded Avignon Festival, as well as a handful of roles in plays written by others. Michaël Hirsch plays characters with wit who know how to dress, especially when it comes to being elegant indoors, like the famous Isidore Beaupieu, superstar of the already much-acclaimed Je pionce donc je suis. While spending lockdown reading entire books live to his social- audience, including Stefan Zweig’s powerful Magellan, Michaël Hirsch told us over the phone what he loves about clothing. By the end of this read, you may well slip into a dressing gown (don’t look for one, we do not offer them!). It is the season for it.
How do clothes prove to be strategic elements when appearing on stage?
When I was at drama school, people often spoke to me about the famous Robert Hirsch. He was a dancer and an actor. The first thing he did before beginning work on a role was to find the things that would best suit it. Robert Hirsch believed that the way we feel the ground beneath us guides absolutely everything in our approach to a character. That is what we were told at drama school and, at the time, it made a great impression on me. This story resonated with me, and it still does today.
When I wear trainers on stage, I feel different; I am not the same as when I put on smart shoes. The feeling I have of myself is different. Shoes reveal my characters. More generally, clothes are like my character’s skin. As such, it is strategic and, better still, an essential part of my approach to acting. It is also my way of presenting myself to the world. I know that, in the eyes of the audience, it matters for what it tells them about one character compared with another.
In your latest show, Je pionce donc je suis, presented at the Lucernaire in Paris, you play twenty-two characters at once and hardly ever change suit. How did you approach this aspect of your work?
The idea was to find a suit that would allow me to play all these characters in one, like a chameleon. So I had to find something fairly neutral. It was one of the most difficult aspects when staging the show. I needed an outfit that looked like pyjamas. With my costume designer, we chose a simple t-shirt and chinos in a soft grey fabric, with light shoes that could resemble slippers.
(...) clothes are like my character’s skin. As such, it is strategic and, better still, an essential part of my approach to acting. It is also my way of presenting myself to the world.
The problem was that I had not at all realised how intense performing this show would be. At the end of the first performance, I was drenched. Drenched and grey. Let’s just say it showed. There were sweat marks all over my suit. We absolutely had to find another outfit before the second performance. So we switched to an all-black ensemble, with the jacket and trousers made to measure so they would fit me perfectly on stage.
Many cons take to the stage in a jacket and a t-shirt, as though this combination had become the profession’s standard uniform…
For stand-up performers, you need a kind of everyday suit, even an everyday garment. It is an aesthetic that must make it seem habitual, innate, as though you naturally arrived on stage from the bar next door and that were enough. As though there were no difference between the city and the stage. Many cons wear a jacket and a t-shirt to show the audience that they have made an effort, while also being cool and relaxed. That is how I was dressed for my first show.
In Je pionce donc je suis, a show that celebrates sleep and idleness, you present the dressing gown as “ceremonial attire”. Can one be lazy and elegant, in your view?
My character, Isidore Beaupieu, embodies something of my former life. He is a guy who works in a big company, gets up at dawn every morning to be tormented by a highly manipulative boss, putting up with it because that is life and there is no other way, he tells himself. Then one day, Isidore Beaupieu falls asleep in the middle of a meeting. He gives up.
At a time when we constantly feel as though we are racing against time, I feel that sleep and rest are almost revolutionary acts. As a result, the garment that goes with them is not something to take lightly. A dressing gown is serious business. I think it is a garment too often neglected and forgotten, yet truly wonderful. I am thinking of the kind of house robe seen on the shoulders of men such as Sacha Guitry, for example. In a dressing gown, you feel well dressed even in pyjamas. My ideal dressing gown is silk, with a slightly old-fashioned print reminiscent of an Hermès scarf pattern. It must have a drape that says I am an artist with my whole body.
Do you ever dress up in, let’s say, an eccentric way?
At the Avignon Festival, the aim is to do everything possible to get the audience to come and see our shows. Every year, I have a costume made to attract people’s attention in the street. Once, I walked around with a large polystyrene question mark fastened with Velcro to a t-shirt, my head passing through the curve of the thing. I was dressed entirely in turquoise blue. In a case like this, it is obvious that anything to do with ego is set aside.
At a time when we constantly feel as though we are racing against time, I feel that sleep and rest are almost revolutionary acts.
At the last festival, for the presentation of Je pionce donc je suis, I was in the street wearing a dressing gown and a backpack shaped like a pillow. It was a pillow with two straps and an opening to stuff things into. The ultimate slacker aesthetic, like a comic-book character in the style of Gaston Lagaffe. People were stunned, as one might be if waking after years in a coma to discover all these masked people in the street queuing to buy pasta because of a lockdown.
The Avignon Festival is the event that brings together each year everyone involved in theatre and the performing arts in France. Enough to find all sorts of distinctive looks there, isn’t it?
We must not forget that the Avignon Festival is a fair. With its share of fairground creatures. We are all fairground creatures in Avignon. There is the drama-school student. His name is Boris and he has long hair. He has read Chekhov all year and is convinced that Anya in The Cherry Orchard is the central character of his entire work. He wears velvet clothes, with a scarf to protect his vocal apparatus. Not far from Boris, you find the famous bola players, circus people who more or less fit the image one might have of intermittent entertainment workers. The comparison is quite simple: what distinguishes the intermittent entertainment worker from the crusty punk is the dog.
In Avignon, there are of course very serious actors. People who cannot bear, at least for the sake of their artistic soul, there being too many people in the city streets for the festival. Too painful for them. There, every sartorial fancy is imaginable. A roll neck jumper despite the month of August, for example. Then there are venue programmers. You notice them. For them, because it is summer, linen comes first. Linen everywhere. It has to hang loose. Birkenstocks on their feet and, often, a slight lack of deodorant, almost claimed as a badge of honour. These guys see six shows a day; they do not want to bother. They mark their territory.