Ali , Mathurin Bolze , Hedi Thabet

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Mathurin Bolze & Hedi Thabet / Cie Mpta

Présentation

What about 2009?

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Acrobatics circus

Residence

10.11.12 october 08

Ali is a long silent meeting between Mathurin Bolze and Hedi Thabet, two extremely talented acrobats. It’s all about speed and dexterity - and what it means here - for these two bodies that approach balance in very different ways. An encounter of the third kind, aiming to fuse two bodies into one, with two heads, three legs, four arms and two crutches. A short play designed to laugh at our fears, play with the notion of strangeness, because there is a circus freak in each and everyone of us.

See synopsis (pdf in french/48kb)

On top of Ali, Mathurin Bolze will start his next production, Du goudron et des plumes, inspired by Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Residence at Les Subsistances for a production in autumn 2009.

Do you know what will be your production Du goudron et des plumes about in 2009?

Mathurin Bolze: I feel like trying new things, to examine new relations. Du goudron et des plumes will involve four or five performers and the reading of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. In particular the duo Lennie/Georges.

What got your interest in this relationship?

The disproportion between the characters?

MB: Not really, I would like to show the little differences of this small human group, five people on a stage which is a sort of suspended ground, a boat, a fragile raft, unfixed and potentially unstable. I feel like working on what we all have in common with Lennie and with Gorges. In particular, what makes these two get on while everything should make them want to follow their own path in life. It is the play between those two that seems to me very fertile, fast, full of humour and incomprehension.

The show is not an adaptation of the novel, so where does it come from?

MB: The starting point of our work is the question that Lennie asks: “What if you looked at the world through different eyes?” I feel like I am continuing this reflection. I also feel like exploring the relationship between the two, which is very close to the one between the traditional ringleader of French circuses (Mr Loyal) and the Auguste clown. While George tries to centre Lennie, to put him back on the right tracks, Lennie marvels at every single thing but destroys them, can’t control his strength, and doesn’t know how to deal with the world.

Isn’t this book also about violence and anxiety?

If we analyse Steinbeck’s words, everything happens in the dialogues, the writing is incredibly light. Violence is present but where exactly? That’s what I feel like conveying on stage. This is the story of a man who doesn’t feel his strength and who will end up killing a woman. The violence belongs to the men living in a ranch around a woman, it is the violence of 1929 America, in full economic meltdown, with legions of people on the roads. But Steinbeck says “when you get to know someone, you feel love more often than hate”. Lennie’s violence is not due to a mean streak: according to Lennie, there is no violent act, just his excessive size and a cry he wants to suppress. He shakes her to make her stop yelling. That’s how he describes it with mice, he is patting them but as they start nibbling at his fingers, he just squeezes them a bit. He doesn’t kill mice, he merely squeezes their nose a little. I feel like the type of violence that someone like Lennie can inflict or experience, and that society in general can inflict, is of this kind: noses are squeezed. We don’t know where this violence comes from, this pain on the nose, it is hard to define.

What will happen, practically speaking, in the stage?

MB: The book will not be present on stage, today it is like a launching pad, the base of my work. There will be acrobatics, acrobalance, but no trampoline. I would like to include a little handling of objects and a lot of sounds. The challenge is to recreate life and emotions in a different way.