Looking oh so natural,
the supernatural
is all around us"
Jules Supervielle

synopsis

"Sailors who dream upon the high seas, with your elbows propped on the handrail, be fearful lest you dwell too long in the darkness of the night on a beloved face. For if you do, you risk giving birth, in places that are essentially deserted, to a being gifted with every human sensibility, who can neither live nor die nor love, and yet suffers as though he lived and loved and was always on the point of death, a being infinitely disinherited in the watery solitudes, like that child of the Ocean, born one day in the mind of Charles Lievens, of Steenvoorde, a deck-hand of the four-master Fearless, who had lost his twelve-year old daughter during one of his voyages, and one night, at a place of 55 degrees latitude North and 35 degrees longitude West, thought of her for a long time, with terrible intensity, to the great misfortune of that child."

Thus ends the short story called "The child of the open sea" by Jules Supervielle. This short story is the starting point for a new show which is currently under reflection. The show will not simply be a straight interpretation of the story. As I was moved by the story of the girl and her extreme isolation, I would like to make a theatre for her shadows, but above all suggest to her that they are tinted with light and colour. The transparency of glass and translucent water mist will give the quality of screens for our shadow puppet theatres. Small stages, silhouettes and light boxes will be handled from a distance by means of thin wires. A lightship, in the centre of our set, will appear and disappear. A dancer, a puppeteer and a stage manager will be visible on the set to make the overall scene lively.

story

A child lives in a strange, floating, liquid village lost in the middle of the ocean. Every morning, the girl opens the window shutters, tries to start the old clock, lights the fire in three or four houses so that smoke rises from the chimneys, pushes up the metal screens of the shops and generally tries to make the deserted village seem lifelike. Daily life is never boring, it appears in black and white, then gradually takes on colour: the décors, like collages, are superimposed; some layers are scratched or are falling as if worn out by the years; the things time has secretly guarded burst forth or reveal themselves. The child rebuilds the tableau of her life, and brings it to life thanks to the incursions of her dreams into reality.

the Players

In progress

coproductions

TJP CDN d'Alsace et de Strasbourg, Bonlieu Scène Nationale d'Annecy, Théâtre de Villefranche sur Saône... In progress

schedule

creation scheduled for the beginning of 2013