un mage en été a magus in summer

UN MAGE EN ÉTÉ
A MAGUS IN SUMMER
text
Olivier Cadiot
stage direction
Ludovic Lagarde
with
Laurent Poitrenaux
creation
for the 64 Avignon Festival
th
Photo Marthe Lemelle
CONTACTS
JEAN-MICHEL HOSSENLOPP | deputy director
+ 33 (0)6 16 74 57 80 - [email protected]
SOLENN RÉTO | production and tour manager
+ 33 (0)7 81 14 08 41 - [email protected]
Un mage en été
A Magus in Summer
text Olivier Cadiot
stage direction Ludovic Lagarde
stage design Antoine Vasseur
lights Sébastien Michaud
costumes Fanny Brouste
image design Cédric Scandella
dramaturgy Marion Stoufflet
computer musical production Ircam Grégory Beller
sound production David Bichindaritz
choreographies and movements Stéfany Ganachaud
video Jonathan Michel
creative code Brice Martin Graser
assistant to the stage direction Chloé Brugnon
assistante to the stage design Élodie Dauguet
with Laurent Poitrenaux
production La Comédie de Reims–Centre dramatique national
coproduction Festival d’Avignon, Ircam/Les Spectacles vivants-Centre
Pompidou, centre dramatique national Orléans / Loiret / Centre
La Comédie de Reims receives for this creation the support of ChampagneArdenne Region.
The text Un mage en été is published at the P.O.L Editions (2010)
duration 1 hour 30 minutes
This magus is on strike…
Since Le Colonel des Zouaves created in 1997, I have worked with Ludovic
Lagarde on several projects. However that play has remained central for us as
a source of inspiration and energy. This minimal experience, a book-monologue,
an acting solo, an enclosed playground, a space built around an original voice,
produced opposite effects. The monologue was polyphonic, the compressed
body became epic. The intricate work of the director, the lighting engineer, the
musician, the choreographer and the actor, allowed to hear an unusual literary
flow and to blend written words with performance. The book has to be forced
towards the stage. It’s a teamwork and we wanted to work again within this
concentration. Un mage en été – A Magus in Summer proposes to take up this
peculiar format again to create something different.
In Un nid pour quoi faire, a man, the Robinson who exists within all my books,
decides to get back into action and to tackle a new weird mission: to improve the
image of a tarnished royal court. In Un mage en été – A Magus in Summer, our hero
doesn’t move anymore. He shuts his doors and locks himself up in a basement,
a place at the same time ancient and modern, a studio-office-kitchen-workshop.
He doesn’t build tree houses anymore, his island is deep inside him, he becomes
the archaeologist of his daily life. This magus is on strike. And if the dynamic
of Colonel des Zouaves was work madness, this new Robinson tries to let go of
his perfectionist obsession and his digressive compulsion. Adorno encouraged us
to « Imagine Nietzsche playing golf »… and actually, why not? I thought: How
can an old magician like me go swimming? Layers to remove, flannel cardigans,
felt-lined fitted coat, detachable collars, and fob watch. Fflllllllll, sliding into the
water, a fat white bearded body sinking into mud like a hippopotamus.
He will paradoxically find this kind of relaxation by carefully diving into
technology. His crystal ball looks like today’s web as well as ancient fabrics. He
is a technical memory. Wood and copper, reinforced with titanium, thumbwheels
and voice command. A billion pixels. Little burning blue warning lights. We keep
everything in memory: depth of the negative, stereoscopic relief, huge vibration
of the black & white, sepia and charcoal crayon of ancient deceased’s prints. And
what about the oil autochrome print? Absolutely, answers the advertisement,
you will obtain 100% deep colours, fruits with a vibrant shine, orange peaches on
a China blue plate. Agfa? Fuji? Of course! And what about clearness? Absolute
focus everywhere. Super digital. Zero loss. We have it all. No nostalgia. We
improve without losing anything. Colours crushed in a mortar. Smell of the
spotlight, dust in a ray of light, smell of a pearled screen + increased reality, we
keep it all. The lost effect as well. The leaflet-that-knows-it-all assures that they
can even repair. Look. It’s like a strip of plaster, it repairs, a lint? Something
comes to cauterize the scenes. Crumbling fabric, stonewashed colours, scratch,
negative’s burns, fragments of departed ones. Put the dead and the living back
together at the right speed, promises the leaflet.
Until this last project, the successive Robinsons were all Fridays hired within
a plot and the only exit from these successive tragedies was the voice, and
everything would end with songs… for the spirits. But is it ok to be reduced
to a state of spiritual robot? Of course it’s good, of course it’s ok. But why? It’s
been the dream of everyone, at least the dream of our thinking; it’s always been
the dream of our thinking. A shouting robot. In Un mage en été – A Magus
in Summer, let’s hope that thinking ourselves as robots won’t prevent us from
having a body.
Olivier Cadiot
The Trio Cadiot-Lagarde-Poitrenaux
This text is a loop. It provokes memories and is obviously a return to the origins
of a trio formed at the end of the 90s. At the time writer Olivier Cadiot, stage
director Ludovic Lagarde and actor Laurent Poitrenaux create Le Colonel des
Zouaves. An incredible stage object where the voice, the words, the movements
and the attitudes of one motionless man count more than a thousand different
characters and any crazy race around the world. With Un mage en été – A Magus
in Summer, after three shows broadened to the collective, the trio CadiotLagarde-Poitrenaux returns to the solitary although crowded monologue.
The life of a magician whose crystal ball turns into a tool of visions and feelings
with instant efficiency: he lives what he can see. Water runs down his body,
nature surrounds him, knowledge is within reach; he grabs the world, visualizes
it, understands it. What he takes from it is precious: a kind of minimal survival
by free evocations, a Proust-like trip of crushed madeleine, a freeze-dried
infusion of extreme awareness. A show built around flashes of daily life, tales
of real facts. Laurent Poitrenaux’s changing voice and spread movements, the
contrasted light of Ludovic Lagarde’s vision, Olivier Cadiot’s patterned writing:
the data accumulation turns this magician into one of the most efficient tools of
perception. Like a machine with a body, or a mindful technique…
Antoine de Baecque
For the Avignon Festival
Biographies
Olivier Cadiot, writer
Olivier Cadiot was born in 1956 in Paris. In 1988, he publishes with the
Editions P.O.L a first book of poetry l’Art poétic’. In 1993, it’s the release of
the first volume of a series borderline novel: Futur, ancien, fugitif, followed by
Colonel des Zouaves in 1997, Retour définitif et durable de l’être aimé, Fairy
queen in 2002 and finally Un nid pour quoi faire in 2007 (Editions P.O.L).
For the theatre, he writes a first play for Ludovic Lagarde in 1993 Sœurs et
frères. Then it will be books that the director will adapt, from the monologue of
Colonel des Zouaves in 1997 to Fairy queen in 2004.
Olivier Cadiot is the author in association with the Comédie de Reims and
was the author in association with the Avignon Festival in 2010.
In March 2013, he adapts and translates Les Revenants by Henrik Ibsen with
the stage director Thomas Ostermeier, created at the Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne
and then performed at Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers. He publishes Providence
in 2015 and Histoire de la littérature récente in 2016.
Ludovic Lagarde, stage director
Ludovic Lagarde was born in 1962 in Paris. He realized his first stage
directions at the Comédie de Reims and at the Théâtre Granit in Belfort. His
first collaboration with Olivier Cadiot goes back to 1993, when he asked him
for a play, Sœurs et frères, created at the Théâtre Granit in Belfort. From 1997
onwards, he has adapted and directed the writer’s last books: Le Colonel des
Zouaves (1997), Retour définitif et durable de l’être aimé and Fairy Queen. In
2008, he directed the opera Roméo et Juliette by Pascal Dusapin at the Opéra
Comique and Massacre by Wolfgang Mitterer at the São João Theatre in Porto
and at the Strasbourg’s Musica festival.
Since January 2009, Ludovic Lagarde is director of the Comédie de Reims.
In March 2010, he creates there Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights by Gertrude
Stein with the musician Rodolphe Burger. For the Avignon Festival in 2010,
he creates Un nid pour quoi faire and Un mage en été by Olivier Cadiot. In
January 2012, Ludovic Lagarde shows a Georg Büchner trilogy – Woyzech, La
Mort de Danton, Léonce et Léna – at the Comédie de Reims, then performed in
January 3013 at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. In March 2013, he directs La
Voix Humaine by Jean Cocteau at the Grand Théâtre du Luxembourg and at the
Opéra-Comique.
He creates Lear is in Town for the 67th Avignon Festival, adapted from King
Lear by William Shakespeare, translated by Frédéric Boyer and Olivier Cadiot.
In 2014, he stages Le Regard du nageur, written and performed by Christèle
Tual, he directs Greek actors in Quai Ouest at the National Theater of Greece,
and he creates L’Avare by Molière at the Comédie de Reims. In 2015, he creates
La Baraque, by Aiat Fayez, in the frame of Reims Scènes d’Europe Festival. In
2016, he stages Marta by Wolfgang Mitterer at the Opéra de Lille and directs
Laurent Poitrenaux in Providence, by Olivier Cadiot.
Laurent Poitrenaux, actor
Laurent Poitrenaux has worked on stage with many directors, among them
Eric Vigner, Daniel Jeanneteau, Arthur Nauzyciel, François Berreur, Christian
Schiaretti, Thierry Bédard, Yves Beaunesne, Didier Galas…
Used to Ludovic Lagarde’s stage directions, he has played in almost all his
shows, especially in collaboration with Olivier Cadiot for Sœurs et frères, Le
Colonel des Zouaves, Retour définitif et durable de l’être aimé, Fairy queen, Un
nid pour quoi faire and Un mage en été.
He played Richard in Richard III directed by Ludovic Lagarde and created at
the Avignon Festival in 2007. Laurent Poitrenaux also creates with him a Georg
Büchner trilogy – Woyzeck, La Mort de Danton, Léonce et Léna – at the Comédie
de Reims, then performed in January 3013 at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris.
For the Avignon Festival 2011, he performed Jan Karski (Mon nom est une
fiction) directed by Arthur Nauzyciel, with whom he also created La Mouette by
Tchekhov in the Cour d’honneur of the Popes’ Palace in 2012.
In 2013, he collaborates again with Ludovic Lagarde for the creation Lear is in
Town, adapted from King Lear by William Shakespeare, translated by Frédéric
Boyer and Olivier Cadiot.
For the cinema, Laurent Poitrenaux acted within the direction of Claude
Mouriéras, Christian Vincent, Isabelle Czajka (La Vie domestique) and recently
with the fim director Agnès Jaoui for Au bout du conte. In 2014, he plays several
roles in Une femme, unreleased text by Philipe Minyana directed by Marcial
Di Fonzo Bo, he takes part in Daniel Jeanneteau’s most recent creation and
perform the lead role in L’Avare staged by Ludovic Lagarde. In 2016, he works
with Pascal Rambert in Argument and will collaborate again with Ludovic
Lagarde for his new creation Providence by Olivier Cadiot.
Photo Marthe Lemelle
Tour
creation July 21st to 27th 2010 | Avignon Festival
September 22nd to 27th 2010 | Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris
September 30th 2010 | Centre Georges Pompidou, Metz
January 25th and 26th | Monnot Theater, Beyrouth (Lebanon)
February 8th to 10th 2011 | Centre dramatique national de Lorient–CDDB
February 17th 2011 | Le Nouveau Relax, Chaumont
February 24th and 25th 2011 | Le Manège, La Roche-sur-Yon
March 8th to 12th 2011 | La Comédie de Reims–CDN
March 15th to 19th 2011 | Théâtre Les Ateliers, Lyon
March 23th to 25th 2011 | Centre dramatique national d’Orléans
March 31st to April 2nd 2011 | Théâtre des Deux Rives, Rouen
April 8th 2011 | Théâtre de La Madeleine, Troyes
April 12th to 17th 2011 | La Manufacture, Nancy
April 20th and 21st 2011 | Le Trident, Cherbourg
May 3rd 2011 | Le Salmanazar, Epernay
May 10th and 11th 2011 | Perspectives Festival, Sarrebrück (Germany)
June 25th and 26th 2011 | GREC Festival, Barcelona (Spain)
March 6th to 8th 2012 | L’Amphithéâtre, Pont-de-Claix
March 23th 2012 | Théâtre Liberté, Toulon
March 29th to 31th 2012 | Théâtre du Gymnase, Marseille
April 3th 2012| La Passerelle–Scène nationale de Gap
April 24th to 28th 2012 | Théâtre National de Toulouse
May 10th 2012 | L’Equinoxe–Scène Nationale de Châteauroux
May 15th 2012 | La Passerelle–Scène Nationale de Saint-Brieuc
May 24th to June 3rd 2012| Théâtre du Rond-Point, Paris
November 26th and 27th 2014|Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines
May 25th to 28th 2016 | Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne (Switzerland)
June 2016 | Festival delle Colline Torinesi (Italy)
Contacts
JEAN-MICHEL HOSSENLOPP | LA COMÉDIE DE REIMS
+ 33 (0)6 16 74 57 80 - [email protected]
SOLENN RÉTO | LA COMÉDIE DE REIMS
+ 33 (0)7 81 14 08 41 - [email protected]