The audience will be invited to join us around the piano in an original scenic disposition in which the stage and the auditorium are one, and where the boundaries of a traditional stage setting fade away. I thus wish to allow the audience to intimately approach the emotion of this repertory. The musicians will be able to move among the members of the audience with their instruments and the soloist will also mingle with the spectators, thus creating new musical and theatrical spatial constellations. In order to go one step further in our desire to break down the boundaries of the traditional concert experience, a part of the audience will be invited to sit or stretch out on cushions of different sizes and shapes around the piano. The audience will be able to plunge into a ‘waking dream’ in which they are carried off by the music, by their dreams or by their memories. I have chosen comfortable soft cushions for the staging that are conducive to dreaming. The shapes evoke mineral or rock formations or perhaps smooth, flat stones (the stones’ apparent stillness might make us wonder what kind of journey they had made to get there) or maybe a bundle of belongings that is ready to be carried off or ready to be unbundled; whether it be light or heavy, it calls up happy or nostalgic memories that are all the same rooted in reality. These memories will be revealed or shared through the artists’ inner feelings about their origins or by the intense engagement of the soloist, Gaëlle Méchaly, a modern woman for whom the theatrical experience can not be separated from her most intimate personal story. The audience has an important role to play in the performance, and is a very special witness to the sincere emotions of the performers.
Our setting will by marked out by lights of various shapes and colours.
The architectural specificities of each venue will be studied and taken into consideration for each performance, thus lending originality to each space.
The ‘light beacons’ and cushions are each autonomous objects or sculptures within the theatrical space that can thus be adapted to any venue, without the need for any specific theatre equipment.
Exhibit*:
Our installation can be used as an exhibit, for educational programmes or original meetings before or after the performance.
Guest artists:
In keeping with an effort to share the universal aspect of Sephardic songs and to carry this tradition beyond its original borders, Thierry Pécou will invite an artist or a musician or will commission a work from a composer who is from the country where we perform. He will invite them to participate in a musical joust with the other artists (the timeframe will be defined for each concert as a sort of ‘open time reservoir’) or alternatively perform a work that has been written specifically for this production.
by Stephan Grögler
Stephan Grögler : Conception, set designing and stage direction
Contact :
contact@operact.eu
dmartin@ensemblevariances.com
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