The Sky is Not Yet Blue,
surrealist play in one act
by Émile Malespine
"Hello, Mr. Béhar? Max Bucaille here. You write in your Study on Dada and Surrealist Theater, published by Gallimard in 1967, that the passage from The Sky is Not Yet Blue given in Manomètre seems to you inspired by Tzara's dramaturgy. You seem to regret not having been able to read the play in its entirety. Come see me, I'll show it to you."
Indeed, I had tried, in vain, to get it from Jean Cathelin, whom I knew was connected to Malespine.
I didn't know Max Bucaille, but I wasn't unaware that he had been part of the Revolutionary Surrealism group. Pipe in mouth, constantly wiping his eyes because of the smoke, he welcomed me to his villa in Créteil, showed me the powerful oak roots he had just found, and immediately entrusted me with a copy of the complete text of the play I had come to seek, as well as other documents he didn't intend for the Copenhagen museum, to which he had bequeathed his collection of works related to Cobra, a movement of which he had also been a part. (See the "official" site about him: http://www.maxbucaille.com/)
This is how I was able to complete, in the Folio edition of my study (1979), the too brief analysis of this play, which aroused the curiosity of an Italian director more original than others. He staged it in Florence, in March 1991, with his company Chille de la balanza, not without having, simultaneously, published it in French (300 copies), from my typescript, thanks to the Primo Conti Foundation, with an introduction by Sergio Zoppi.
Here then is this "surrealist" work offered to all, with the contributions I mentioned, beyond the cloud handkerchiefs.
Henri BÉHAR