danzon_eng

Waiting for  La Trilogie des contes immoraux (pour Europe) ©Mehmet Kerem Özel, April 7th 2024, Théâtre du Nord - Lille The stage floor is covered in thick cardboard, which has various cracks on its surface. It resembles the ready-made cut-and-fold paper houses for kids, but on a much larger scale.  A punk woman with distinctive hair, make-up, and clothing is sitting on the floor, leaning against the back wall of the stage. After the announcement and dimming of the theatre lights, she confidently walks around the cardboard, as if exploring the floor. She then retrieves a spear from a tall container behind the stage and uses it to remove and discard pieces of the cardboard. Her movements are deliberate and controlled. The show is about this woman constructing a structure using thick and heavy cardboard on the floor with the cut-fold-paste logic I mentioned. As an audience member, after a certain point, you can't help but identify with her. You'll feel joy when she overcomes...

A man risen from the ashes: Poussière  Poussière (Dust), on the programme of the Théâtre du Train Bleu, one of Festival Off Avignon's prestigious venues, is a 40-minute puppet show directed by Sophie Mayeux, who is also the founder of the Compagnie Infra company.  Performed in a 60-70-seat hall, Poussière takes place inside a transparent cylinder, a capsule, I assume made of plastic, about one metre in diameter and one and a half metres high, placed in the centre of the stage (set design: Ionah Mélin). In the prologue we witness the end of the world; it could be a nuclear war, a rebellion of nature or a volcanic eruption. Smoke, dust and ash envelop the cylinder; you can't see a thing. In the same way that Phia Ménard, whose work I love, controls the flow of air in her show L'après-midi d'un foehn , a choreography of smoke and dust is created by directing the flow of air inside the cylinder. Then the curtain goes down and when it rises again we see a post-apocalyptic ...