Interview with Bart Cafmeyer Handelsonderwijs Burgerschool

Bart Cafmeyer is well reputed in Flanders as stage manager and actor in many theatre productions. In March 1999 his play "Van Guido en Gezelle" is premiered in De Spil in Roeselare. Besides, he also directed the poetic walk in the Klein Seminarie "Dien avond en die rooze", after a script by Raoul Boucquey.

• The promotion brochure for your text theatre says Michel Van der Plas, author of the biography "Mijnheer Gezelle", has been the source of inspiration for your dramatization "Van Guido en Gezelle".

Is that correct?

Yes, it is. When the book was published for the first time, I thought something had to be done with it. If you read the book, you see Gezelle walking around in Roeselare, the Klein Seminarie,… Then I was lucky to meet Michel Van der Plas himself. Af that time they were looking for someone who could recite the texts of the book in West-Flemish. I was allowed to adapt the book, and after a year or so, I had some eighty pages of text. I showed it to script-writer Stefan Vancraeynest, who said: "This is a wonderful view on Gezelle, but what you’ve made can’t be played. It’s a documentary and what people want is a performance." We worked it out together under the condition that he would direct the play.

• Are you still interested in a person like Guido Gezelle? What do you like most about the poet Guido Gezelle?

I’ve known Gezelle for a long time. I heard poems by him in secondary school, but I didn’t like them. Other poems however, I found so beautiful, so rich and sonorous…

The more you lose yourself in this man, the greater the experience is. It’s a dramatic figure, a man who really has been used by his environment. The bishop used him to convey his points of view. All Gezelle. wanted was to put his art at the service of his religion, his faith.

There’s so much to tell about Eugene van Oye and Gezelle and the eminent bond of friendship between them. A Platonic love in its purest sense, as a search for beauty in all that life has to offer.

Gezelle is a magnificent man to talk about without using stereotypes. He was not just a romanticist but an extremely fascinating man.

• We haven’t seen your theatre show yet, but you say it also offers a contemporary view on Gezelle.

Could you be a bit more specific?

One day he writes "Kerkhofblommen" after attending the funeral of one of his pupils. He held a speech at the memorial service which staggered the audience. Afterwards he decided to write down this experience and offer his pupils the poem as a sort of consolation. Offering comfort is not giving a tap on the shoulder, but offering a thing of beauty.

The search for beauty to fill your life is so important if you realise what pulp we meet through the media nowadays. Maybe this is the essence of Gezelle's message to us now: look for what life has to offer in plainness, in beauty, in fairness, in values.

 

This is also the way I have conceived my performance. I come on the stage holding Gezelle's bust, I put him on a socle and start arguing with him. I even scold at him. We thought: just imagine Gezelle coming back to the world, what would he tell us now? Sometimes, Gezelle is addressing the audience himself rather than I do.

• The first night of your play is in De Spil in Roeselare. Was it important for you to be premiered in Roeselare, and not in the other Gezelle-cities Kortrijk or Brugge?

Yes, it was. I have many ties with Roeselare, my friends live here.

I appear in Brugge on Whitsuntide, and in Kortrijk as well.

But, I found Roeselare the place by essence because Gezelle started his life here.. As a pupil in the Klein Seminarie he wrote all kinds of words, expressions that he heard on the street on small pieces of paper.

Then he came back as a teacher and was heavily opposed. Together with his pupils he layed out a garden, built a museum for stuffed birds… The door to his room was always open. Roeselare was the start of his life and is dramatically speaking the most interesting period.

Of course Brugge is important as well, but that is quite a different period. There he was the catholic journalist who lived on a war footing with the liberals.

Kortrijk is the period where he found the reconciliation with his life, peace and recognition.

I’m happy the start is in Roeselare.

• A last question: in March we and our classmates wil attend your representation. What advice can you give us to enjoy Guido Gezelle as much as you do?

Youngsters should recognize themselves in his search for beauty, for purity.

But also in his search for language. Together with the dean Leonard-Lodewijk de Bo he redacted a sort of

West-Flemish dictionary, way ahead of his time. We as well are learning to play with our West-Flemish language again, the way Gezelle taught us.

I think this commemoration shoul be the start to give our language the value it deserves.