From Histoire et société
By Danielle Bleitrach
October 18, 2023
It's with great emotion that I learn of Richard Martin's death. There was a time, when I was a regional councillor and a specialist in cultural issues, when I was very friendly with him, and the memory remains imbued with emotion. Was it possible to have any other relationship with Richard than the one where cultural adventure mingled with the strength and embrace of friendship? His grip and vitality were such that a simple greeting left you shaken, and a vibrant embrace spoke of eternal commitment. Richard's every encounter, no matter how chance, seemed to draw you into a cause, a show. At his side, you were the protagonist of the event, you climbed onto the stage... It all seemed eternal.
He was a fantastic actor. I remember this show in which he kept making negative remarks about the staging and acting of a Brecht play: Maitre Puntilla et son valet Mati. At the end, he applauded wildly, and I said to him: "But you didn't like it. He replied: "It's the culmination of so much effort, we acrobats need the applause to keep going". He liked to think of himself as a saltimbanque, overwhelmed by fantasies and images, letting them wash over him; the artist was a kind of emotional athlete. He used to explain to me: "When you start a production, you have to remove all the tapestries you've accumulated; you have to tear them off like layers of wallpaper to rediscover childhood, to learn, to discover total innocence, and it is at this price, that of childhood, that you will be a mountebank, a public entertainer, which will also make you become a citizen of the city.
You may or may not have liked the comedia del arte aspect, but the fact remains that it was in harmony with Marseille, a city where everyone comes from somewhere else. This poor and sumptuous city, all dressed up in flamboyant rags, the Toursky, a local poet, such was the name of this Mediterranean circus with its agora...
When the news of his death surprised me in this time of mass graves, the title came to me spontaneously, thinking of this great white building and of him its animator, director and builder: le bateau ivre à cause de Rimbaud. At the helm, Captain Nemo - because of those great outcasts à la Jules Verne, thinking of the great universals of Freemasonry. Captain Nemo embarks on a round-the-world voyage of the deep, discovering sunken treasures, Atlantis and ancient shipwrecks, venturing to Pacific islands and South Pole ice floes, hunting in underwater forests and battling giant squid. Such was the Toursky, which led us into a multitude of fictions, but under Richard's leadership it was also a war machine for the vigilante, and sometimes Richard, who had fallen prey to a few local cabals claiming to limit his right to guide the ship, would be shaken by intense anger, leading him to go on hunger strike in a nacelle, a sort of hune above his ship, and he would thunder: "I am the right, I am justice! I am the oppressed, and this is the oppressor! It's through him that everything I've loved, everything I've seen perish! All that I hate is here!"
Richard the warm-hearted, the storyteller became the imprecator, and Marseille paraded under his gondola...
One could criticize the management of his structure, disagree with the performances, but no one could reproach him for not being faithful to the spirit of decentralization: to make the Theater the meeting place between creation and the civic animation of the most proletarianized strata. This may be seen as excessive power granted to one personality, but it is often better than the role of administrators, and people who see culture as a troupe of courtiers involved in your election campaigns, but completely cut off from any ambition to be "elite for all", to win audiences through the work of artists.
He may have wandered politically, so loyal was friendship to him, but he never gave up on his commitment to creation and democratization.
One could criticize his management, and even his choice of shows, but the only trouble was that his critics were less able to judge him than he was... He still had that passion which they were totally lacking and which attracted the popular public like a magnet...
Like his friend Léo Ferré, he was an anarchist, but he opened this venue to all that was progressive in the city of Marseille, It's for this reason that the experience of this theater in Marseille's poorest arrondissement deserves to be recounted, beyond the political stakes, on the side of the poets and tightrope walkers who unite all the shows to make us want to sing, dance and appropriate the right to dignity, whoever we may be.
Dear Richard, I thought you would live forever... and I still don't know what stopped the strength that animated you...
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Toursky loses its founder
From Théâtre Toursky International
by Michel Barbe
November 15, 2023
Richard Martin left us on Monday, October 16, 2023. He was 80 years old.
Comedian-acrobat, anarchist-libertarian in the shadow of the poets Léo Ferré and Axel Toursky, Richard Martin created ex nihilo , over the years, an astonishing militant theater with doors open to all the winds of free artistic creation and resistance to universal clerical obscurantism.
Tenant of dilapidated premises planted in the middle of the proletarian cultural desert of the famous abandoned “Northern Quarters” of Marseille, his war cry against intellectual poverty awakened the city at the cost of a fierce fight to help its theater survive.
Three times, ultimately winning in a landslide, he did not hesitate to put his life in danger by going on hunger strike, to say NO! to recurring budget cuts. His recent and last strike against a severe budget cut pitted him against the Printemps Marseille municipality . Interrupted at the last minute, his dangerous strike found an acceptable temporary outcome...
It was in 2003, in the general fight for peace against the war in Iraq...and in the Middle East, that a living and solid friendship was sealed between us. Contributing to establishing together a large Marseille Collective, comprising more than 256 signatories in solidarity with the 16,000 intellectuals, researchers and artists in the USA, he marched under the banner NOT IN OUR NAME! in the united demonstration of January 18…and participated in the delegation to the US consulate.
I remember a heroic and vindictive rise in numbers at the DRAC headquarters in Aix-en-Provence – which received us – to demand a late payment!
Its theater, already a victim with its loyal staff of the war of the mysterious Covid 19, was hit hard by the other war, the one launched against Ukraine by Putin! Suddenly, the political injunction to cancel his fabulous 26th Russian Festival, unique in France and in the world, fell on him like lightning... What a financial disaster and cultural friendships accumulated and abandoned with our Russian friends!
Today, Richard leaves to his activist wife, our dear Françoise, supported by the powerful Committee of Friends of Richard Martin, the difficult task of ensuring the future of his magnificent theater. Good luck to Toursky!
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From Théâtre Toursky's facebook
by Richard's wife, Françoise Delvalée Martin
October 21, 2023
My god, my god, let me just a little longer my lover...
My love my pretty love my sweet love
I love you, you love me, we love each other... Coming back home... Healing, healing... confidence , security ... , I kept whispering these words in your ear as you stood at the gates of hell... and it managed to shut them down several times.
I fought, fought, fought... in hospitals, when you were in pain and no one understood your pain
We all endured the pain. Including the hundreds of visitors, those you didn't dare say you needed rest, generous all the way, despite the suffering.
But as you were getting back in shape and we were full of projects again, a doctor, a madman, the killer of our hopes, an inhuman. ", came to tell you, in my absence, that "no, you were not going to heal and yes, you were going to die."
He also intercepted me shouting in his office: "Yes Françoise, Richard is going to die... yeah he's going to die ... y'all don't want to hear it. Richard got you covered.... because he loves you. "
I answered him that he did not even begin to comprehend the strength of our love.
Now I understood why you had cried when you saw me entering your room and your gaze turned into despair.
I asked him what right he thought he was investing to come and take our hope away. "In the face of hope, there lies despair" I cried to him.
I also asked him if he was thinking about death? And that I hated him as much as I hate death that just took me in a year my father, my mother. And now you. You who didn't want to die and said to me, "I will never leave you." That I was your only reason to live and fight. "
You you my beautiful love my so beautiful love
We loved at first sight. Crazy raids. Passionately in love.
And this love, no one has ever managed to take it away from us, to feel it... to ruin it.
On the contrary. Despite all the hits, it never went down. Not for one second.
Today I'm ravaged by grief and this impression of emptiness, even though my heart is full of you.
Miss you, miss everything about you.
Your look on me, so soft, so tender, so burning. I miss your voice your so beautiful voice when you told me I'm beautiful when you told me love words or everyday words. When you called me baby or my love
I couldn’t disappear for an hour without you calling at least 10 people to see where I was and when I was coming home.
I miss your hands on my skin, hips or boobs.
How am I supposed to live without you?
How ?
Answer me back. How ?
Oh misery, how could you leave me and let death take you?
I curse this doctor who took our hope away. And this disease. So today I'm left alone, despair.
You told me baby I love you so much you are and always have been my everything. I will never leave you. Wherever I am, I'd be beside you. Constantly. Always. Everywhere. I would be nested by your shoulder "
I'm looking for you right now because not seeing you physically anymore is moral torture.
I deal as I can. I know you didn't want this heartbreak to carry me down. And if I know many people cry for you because everyone misses you, no one better than me can measure your absence. You told me that "you were proud that I am your wife"... and that you liked the idea of me, even though you knew that this word should bother you philosophically. But you kept repeating passionately "My wife", "My wife".
Yes I have been fully, in love.
We were lovers, soul sisters.
Shared all your struggles for the last 26 years. All your joys, sorrows and revolts.
You are irreplaceable in my life, as I was in yours. As you will be in this city, in this profession, in this world.
You were a symbol of a free man. Rebel, brotherly, generous. A total entertainer. You're gonna become a myth, a legend.
I'm on the edge of the cliff and feel beneath my feet the earth crumble.
I promised you to live. You gave me your theater, your work. You even wrote it in a will so I wouldn't forget it. You have always given me confidence not blind but full and whole because you always knew that I will defend you like a lioness. Until death do us part. Faithful to everything .
I promise you that I will watch over your theater and that I will continue your work as you asked me to. You know I ain't scared of no fight. But it's not the fights that gets me excited even though I can be a warrior. These are the values of love, loyalty and brotherhood that carry me most. As they carried you.
So yes, I will work for Toursky to remain Toursky, remain that flame that like a beacon, illuminates this city and the world.
A city and a world that, without you, will never be quite the same.
Without everyone fully realizing it yet, your death and disappearance will be like a maximum fullness earthquake.
Everyone today will claim to be your friend...
We won't forget for some the hurt they did to you, that they did to us... we will not forget anything... but we will choose the field of reconciliation, love and peace.
Me, when you fade in the flames and your body turns to ashes, a part of my soul will go too. I will never be the same again. But I promise you that I will keep my promise: the one to keep my faith in you, in your theater and my rage to live.
I don't know how I'll rise from the ashes. But I still promise you, "I will never forget you. And I will love you forever. Until our bodies are reunited someday.
And here we'll love again.. relentlessly and for eternity. "
Like my mother and father before you, you now know the mystery of the afterlife. Is there nothing after or is there on the contrary another dimension, a parallel world?
I can't say goodbye to you.
I love you my beautiful love. Angel of mine. You were my angel in life, now you will become my guardian angel.
My archangel Richard.
And if I had to pass a message, just one: "I wish everyone, woman or man, to love and be loved the way we love ourselves."
Your wife, Françoise Delvalée Martin-
Comments
Another heart-breaking piece from his wife
anon (not verified) Wed, 11/29/2023 - 09:22
(From Facebook)
I’m reading the comments about your disappearance, looking at the pictures people post of you .. touch the screen your face i know by heart... everyone talks about missing you, your absence, their sadness... they are all grieving you
some more than others...
Everybody write , comment ,,, You belong to them We have fallen apart. Our intimacy is no longer ours. You don't even belong to yourself anymore Fortunately, some of them are rare, always the same insensitive: the bitter, the courteous, the jealous, the envious, the malicious, the haters - those who have always been and we scoffed at - rewrite history, your history, and even even until our history. I even got insult message telling me chimera about them with you and your life upside down...
And I try to focus on everything nothing... to avoid implication.
I'm holding on with all that I can. I make efforts, work, go to parties, answer phones, thank people who kiss me, watch a movie on TV, walk in the forest with our dogs, Liberty and Rayana, smile, listen to music, make a fire in the fireplace, burn incense... convince me that I should ... doing all of this.
But anger runs deep inside me...
Grief seems to take many phases... denial, anger, and others I can't remember.
I don't know if this is true and what phase I'm in.
And idgaf about this grief i dont want I refuse to mourn you.
Trying, trying, trying to concentrate.
I want to lace the sheets on the empty bed, smash the windows in the house, smash the closed door so they don't let you in and take you to shelter. I know you lost your keys. This house is so joyful that today, in my eyes, sweats with sorrow, of your absence.
Where are you? Answer me ? Where are you hiding? You assured me that you wouldn't leave me - that you would fight to live, that you would always be there, nestled in the hollow of my shoulder, even if death took it.
Every cell in my body, skin, being, is filled with you... You, you, you... and yet i feel empty... lost , lost ...
Every object in the house is filled with your smell... and I want to break them down to remove your essence. The slightest drop of you... to breathe it in, lick it like a thirsty one.
Our cats are peacefully sleeping, stretching or washing their noses and quietly staring at me as if nothing happened. No drama... they dont look bothered or worried.. and i dont get it ...
How can everything look the same when EVERYTHING is different? Everything is fake. An insult to reason. If others are already struggling with your absence, then I will.. how am i supposed to live without you?
How am i going to do it?
I hate you ... to scream about it.
Where the hell are you ? Ain't no way you not texting me back I'm looking for you like a blind man... Am I in another dimension?
I have a feeling every second that you’re going to appear, you’re going look at me and scream at me, mad, that you’re also looking for me everywhere and worried about me because I’m not answering your phone anymore.
Where are your morning drawings and love letters? Or your messages telling me you love me and you can't live without me? That you miss me. You would write to me all the time... even when you left the house for a few hours...
Is this death ?
You are not here anymore
So so you weren't lying when you told me you couldn't live without me.
It wasn't a simple formula.
Nothing is trivial between us. Everything is emotion, love, tenderness, passion, explosion.
You didn't die in my arms. I would not have supported it. I think I'd lose my mind and go kill the killer of our hopes. I would have snatched her breath to blow it to you.
my God please forgive me
(Continued…)
anon (not verified) Wed, 11/29/2023 - 09:24
In reply to Another heart-breaking piece from his wife by anon (not verified)
(Continued…)
I ran away. It's been four months that I've been by your side not understanding this descent to hell and fighting with you. Healing healing... These last 12 damn days of agony I can't stand it... I was enraged when i heard whispered that you wouldn't leave if i stayed by your side. So I'm out.... Who knows, yes who can understand what I went through during this voluntary absence where I knew I was going to be called to announce your departure? And when I saw the number that showed up... i knew before i answered that you were gone. I listened politely to the words, what people say in these circumstances. After hanging up I screamed your name and called my mom for help But she is not here either. She who, like you, also promised me never to leave me! To always be by my side...
I'm choking on sorrow.
I curse you my beautiful love. Threatens you to go far away from yourself, to love someone else... and let him hold me in his arms.... I'll tell him then words of love.. the ones that are meant for you and you don't hear anymore...
So react you who loves me so beautifully jealous and possessive... react... come back. Come back to me. Coming back to home. And put me at ease. Ease my sorrow. Ease my missing you. Calm my anger down.
Listening to gluck dance of the wounded minds.. and i feel this missing will never end. That the streets of Marseille or the world will always be empty because I won't come across you again... that drops of ocean water will never taste the same on my lips... that every landscape will no longer have the same intensity, beauty or poetry, that the words of Leo will no longer come out of your mouth... and that I'll listen to the Poet sobbing in despair.
Everything seems the same... when nothing is. Patrick, our neighbor friend, has the same head, Jo, his wife, too... they smile at me and talk to me just like before, even though I can clearly see in their eyes a little sparkle of this absence... the walls of Toursky are still standing... the audience is here... babies are still being born, humans make love, war or business, dolphins swim merrily and some swim carrying their baby on their backs, leaves fall from trees, traffic jams are still so many, Israel and Hamas kill each other more beautifully, policies repeat endlessly the same sentences, animals are slaughtered, women and children beaten, others laugh dance, listen to music, party, get married, dream of their future or regret their past and present, people always shop and cashiers are behind them counters. Sometimes they look at me and are surprised to see tears rolling down my cheeks. I just can't help it.. they yell at any time without shouting station.
So I'm sentenced to life without you... and watch the earth keep rotating itself.
Where will all this pain go?
And the dead, seeing us suffer so much from their absence, will they one day come out of their plague and come back to life to finally soothe us and give us hope, enable us to laugh out loud again and cry for joy?
"What if the dead rise?" ", as Leo said.
You who are new among them, can you suggest to them, with your conviction anchored in the body, that they can rebel and not accept their fate? And if they don't listen to you, you can show them the way and decide yours.
You can start a new fight and start a death strike.
Down here, everybody will support you dearly. We'll all be part of your support committee.
I'm waiting for you as we wait for the messiah.
Come back to me.
Françoise Martin Delvalée
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