Interview with Silvia Costa

You may have seen her work with Boesmans' Julie or Sivan Eldar's Like Flesh. Director Silvia Costa answers some of our questions on the occasion of the world premiere of Marko Nikodijević and Benjamin Britten's I Didn't Know Where To Put All My Tears / Curlew River (29 March to 3 April 2026).

How do the two works — I Didn't Know Where To Put All My Tears and Curlew River — relate to each other in terms of dramaturgy?

Silvia Costa: In Britten's play, all the roles are played by men. This choice stems, of course, from his fascination with Japanese Noh theatre, which is part of a deeply masculine tradition: women are not allowed on stage. All the roles are therefore played by men. I wanted to use this constraint as a dramaturgical starting point, to give it new meaning, a new perspective. That is why I asked Marko Nikodijević to compose a piece for a female choir. The idea was to make the audience understand that there is a woman's life behind the figure of The Madwoman: a woman who has lived through this story, this loss, this suffering. The female community then becomes a threshold, almost a test: if men want to embody these roles, they must also go through what the women have gone through. It is the women who, in a way, create the roles, pass them on to the men, and give them their own costumes. I make this moment visible through a simple change of clothes during an instrumental interlude that gives each male character in Curlew River a female counterpart. We take up the elements of the libretto, but with a complete shift in perspective: it is the women who give their clothes to the monks so that they in turn can live the experience that they have lived before.

So you wrote the libretto for this first part?

S.C.: I wrote the text that will serve as the basis for Marko's composition. Together, we talked about collage, about fragments. I provided him with a kind of language, almost a ballad, an open song. It is now up to him to decide what will be sung by the choir, what will be attributed to the female figure, The Madwoman. I worked from a central idea: that of community. This notion is essential. Above all, I gave him an image that opens the show. But I don't yet know how this image will develop: I'm waiting for the music. There is a starting image, but it remains deliberately open.

Is the text directly related to Britten's opera?

S.C.: Yes. It was an almost political way of recounting the origin of this river. This river does not really exist: it springs from somewhere. It springs from a gesture. I imagined women digging the earth with their hands, shedding their tears, and giving birth to this place. It's a kind of mythology of origin, a symbolic cradle to welcome the mother's lament. There is also a form of reappropriation of this figure: in the original work, she is doubly dispossessed of her history because she is a woman and mad. It is important to remember that historically, many women were labelled ‘mad’ simply because they expressed their emotions. When a man decides to embody The Madwoman, it is not a question of narrative psychology, but of state. Everything is conveyed through emotion. Unlike Noh theatre, where emotion is masked and stylised, here I ask for maximum expression.

This river becomes both a boundary and a transition between the two works. There is also a very strong geographical element. How does this combine with the reference to Noh theatre, given that Britten is not seeking to imitate it but rather refers to a ‘church parable’?

S.C.: Britten draws on Noh theatre for its stylisation of emotions, which contrasts sharply with traditional Western expression. I, in turn, draw inspiration from Japanese aesthetics, particularly in the set design and costumes. So there will be very clear Eastern references. On the other hand, I don't hear any direct Orientalism in Britten's music. I perceive it more as a ritual, almost ecclesiastical. The starting space evokes a church, with pews, but these pews are decorated with elements from the East. The river we are talking about connects two worlds: it unites the auditorium and the stage with a bridge. The bridge is a very important element in Zen gardens. Another source of inspiration comes from Japanese paintings of mountains and clouds: the mountains are interrupted, giving way to emptiness, to clouds. This absence is essential. It has greatly influenced the design of the space. The stage hides and reveals itself, to show a movement that is above all spiritual. In Noh theatre, there is also a very special relationship with reality and the afterlife: a space conducive to the appearance of ghosts. The question of ghosts is obviously central to Japanese culture, where the existence of other worlds is deeply integrated. In our show, the ghost is the child. We decided not to represent it physically: it is evoked by a voice, by an object.

Excerpt from an interview conducted by David Verdier.