Métamorphoses Magic Show

cabaret/conference based  on Ovid’s Metamorphoses, with additional texts by Michel Serres, Albert Jacquard and Pascal Quignard.

« Nothing / not the thoughts of mortals / nor the shining stars / nor the everlasting night / can understand the strange metamorphorsis.”  Pascal Quignard

« All the earth is covered with water / Dolphins swim in the trees / Birds cannot find a branch to perch on / Everything dies / Everything, except for a man and a woman in a little boat / Deucalion and Pyrrah. / The water subsides / There they are just the two of them on the blasted plain /  Alone / They would like to make the world live again / They really would like to, but they are not so young. / So they go and see the oracle / And the oracle says / “take your grandmother’s bones / and throw them behind you.” / What does that mean? / They took the oracle’s words / and turn them around inside themselves / “Our grandmother is the earth, and her bones are  the stones” / So they take a few  stones and throw them over their shoulders / and walk forwards. / The stones in the mud begin to change / and something starts to appear, like an unfinished statue / and then… / like a man, like a woman. / Since then, we are a hard race / and something is missing.”

Devised and adapted by : Kate France and Sylvie Reteuna with the collaboration of Marc Mérigot / Director : Sylvie Reteuna / Performers : Kate France and Marc Mérigot / Design and costumes ; Pierre-André Weitz / Music and sound design : Eric Sterenfeld (except « When I see Mommy I feel like a Mummy  » Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band) / Lighting and technical director: Jean-Claude Fonkenel / Video: excerpts from the film Genesis by Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou / Sound and stage manager: Pierre-Yves Aplincourt / Construction of the set and props: Florent Gallier, Bertrand Killy and Fabienne Killy / Costumes made by: Nathalie Bègue / Administration: Christine Tournecuillert – Conduite accompagné

Coproduction: La Sibylle (production déléguée), Le Théâtre Bretigny, Scène conventionnée du Val d’Orge, Le Grand Bleu, Etablissement national de production et de diffusion artistique à Lille, Le Vivat, scène conventionnée danse et théâtre d’Armentières / With the participation of: Centre André Malraux, Hazebrouk, Théâtre de Chelles / With the support of: Région Nord Pas-de-Calais /  DRAC Nord Pas-de-Calais / Ministère de la culture et de la Communication / thanks to T2G, Théâtre de Gennevilliers and Théâtre de la Bastille for rehearsal spaces.

Tour dates: 14th to 18th November 2011 creation at Scène conventionnée du Val d’Orge, Le Grand Bleu, Etablissement national de production et de diffusion artistique à Lille / 6th December 2011, Vivat, scène conventionnée danse et théâtre d’Armentières / 20th January 2012, Centre André Malraux, Hazebrouk in the Festival Poil à gratter / 30th March 2012, Théâtre de Bretigny / 2nd and 4th April 2012, Théâtre de Chelles.

click to see excerpt

click to see film made to accompany the performance

photos © Christian Mathieu

Blanche Neige

by Robert Walser, directed by Sylvie Reteuna

 

« Feelings are darts which wound me. What can one do with feelings, apart from letting them wriggle and die like fish in the sands of language? I’ll be finished too as soon as I stop writing, and I’m glad about that. Good night »… Robert Walser

« Walser’s Snow White starts where the Grimm brothers fairy tale ends, just before “they lived happily ever after”…  to endlessly question the story of love and hate which is the story of humanity. It is an early work, but in it we find the themes which were at the heart of the writings and life of Robert Walser…  Robert Walser was a German speaking Swiss writer, who died on Christmas day in 1956 while on a solitary walk in the snow, at the age of 78 and after 23 years confinement in the Herisau asylum. Fifty years earlier, Walser had described the death of a poet in the snow in his novel the Tanner children, that is to say, apart from a few details, his own death. »  Sylvie Reteuna

Text : Robert Walser / Directed by : Sylvie Reteuna / Translation and adaptation : Nicolas Luçon / Designer : Pierre-André Weitz / Light designer : Jean-Claude Fonkenel / Music : Eric Sterenfeld / Video : Kate France /  Stage manager : Pierre-yves Aplincourt / Assistant : Elise Lahouassa / Lighting assistant : Pierre Godard / Set construction : Bertrand Killy / Costumes : Sophie Hampe / Administration : Christine Tournecuillert – Conduite accompagné / performed by: Aurélia Arto, Olav Benevsedt, Claude Degliame, Eram Sobhani and with the participation of Marc Mérigot

Coproduction : La Sibylle  / le Vivat, scène conventionnée danse et théâtre d’Armentières / Le Bateau Feu, scène nationale de Dunkerque / l’Hippodrome, scène nationale de Douai / a la Rose des Vents, scène nationale Lille Métropole / with financial support from la Région Nord Pas-de-Calais , l’ADAMI,  la DRAC Nord Pas-de-Calais / Ministère de la culture et de la communication / The company’s residence at le Vivat was funded by  the “dispositif d’aide à la résidence de la région Nord Pas-de-Calais”.

First performed from 2nd to 4th April 2009 at le Vivat, Armentières / toured to:  Théâtre de la Bastille in the festival TRANS 09, organised by Jean-Michel Rabeux and Clara Rousseau, Théâtre de l’Etoile du Nord à Paris in the festival « On n’arrête pas le théâtre “, l’Hippodrome, scène nationale de Douai, Bateau Feu, scène nationale de Dunkerque, la Rose des Vents, scène nationale Lille Métropole, l’Espace Jules Verne de Brétigny, scène conventionnée du Val d’Orge.

photos © Sebastien Charlet

l’Appartement

exhibition and performance

« When we look at works of Art Brut in a gallery or a museum, we tend to forget that they represent at attempt by their creators to express a total vision, a vision which doesn’t differentiate between sound, language and image, an attempt to excape annihilation. So we have decided to put these paintings and texts together in one space, in order to explore the necessity which is the heart and the origin of these works, and to make this necessity resonate in the bodies of the actors and spectators.
Why an appartment? To create an intimate space, and a sense of privacy: these works were not made to be exhibited, and often were the fruit of years of loneliness and isolation.  Inside the appartment, we can get close to the works and the actors, hear noises from the neighbouring rooms, and glimpse  fleeting appearances  from the corner of an eye...
Between four worlds, a universe.
Maybe we shoudn’t be in the apartment at all, there is a sort of voyeurism hovering around the bed, the fridge, the breadcrumbs…  but that can’t stop us from being fascinated by this wild beauty.”

Bruno Decharme, Kate France, Sylvie Reteuna

Devised by: Bruno Decharme, Kate France, Sylvie Reteuna / With: François Daujon, Georges Edmont, Kate France, Valérie Szmiglieski, Valérie Vincent and the participation of Magdalena Matthieu and Marc Mérigot / Music and Sound Design : Éric Sterenfeld / Design Paul Fayard assisted by François Pinel and Emmanuel Rodrigès / Video : Kate France

Production: Rencontres de la Villette with abcd, la Cie de L’Oiseau-Mouche and la Cie La Sibylle / Production déléguée La Sibylle / Administration for La Sibylle Mélanie Hanscotte (Filage)

L’Appartement was performed 17th – 26th April 2008 in the 8th edition of les Rencontres de la Villette.