« Petit Frère »

First Production - Performance - Dance / Theatre

Thursday 27, Friday 28 & Saturday 29 September 2007 at 8:30pm

An acrobat, a dancer and some original writing create a spectacular form somewhere between theatre, improvisation and performance art. A man and a woman, brother and sister, around a car, between life and death, directed by David Bobée, a sensitive young man with a promising directing talent. “What to do with our little brothers?” he asks. “What do we need to protect them from?” “What not to protect them from?” It will be about life and love, it will be violent and tender all at the same time. It will have to be very lively, with people dancing and moving a lot...

David Bobée’s shows use many things such as video, circus, dance, visual arts, as well as the writings of his friend Ronan Chéneau. He now continues his partnership with Séverine Ragaigne and Alexandre Leclerc, the dancers of his show Cannibales which will be performed at the Intranquilles Festival 2008 together with a production called Warm.

See synopsis In French (.pdf / 48 ko)

Is Petit Frère (Little Brother) the story of a little brother?
Not really, it is more about our relationship to our little brothers, the love, protection, meanness, playfulness. The basic idea is that the little brother must get hurt, and that the big brother must protect him. The little brother should always be close to dying... But I don’t yet know where this will lead us. We work in such a way as to progress together, with the lighting, the sounds, the writing, the performers. Each and everyone brings their own expertise, their own suggestions, and we search, we discover, we organise that way. It will be a 45-minute or one-hour show, joyful, playful, created on the spot during 10 days on stage and voluntarily unfinished. A show that is not completed but that is steeped in energy. An ongoing project, which is great.

Writing plays a huge role in your work. Can you tell us more?
I was studying cinema and drama when I created my first show. Ronan Chénaud saw it and he came to see me, we talked, became friends, and he told me he was a writer. What he wrote sounded like the stories I felt like telling: fragmented, deconstructed and totally anchored in reality. I think this is the reason why I feel so close to his writing: he chooses an angle on the present, detects things that are not usually food for thought and shows them under that angle. These things help him project his thoughts. You could call it societal or political. The writing is just a material like any other, which is neither the centre or the reason to be on stage. Ronan often writes on the edge of the stage, during rehearsals, for the actors. He often says he “throws texts around” and his writing seems indeed to have that kind of energy.

Some spectators call your theatre generational, is that accurate?
I think that rather than being a generation-specific type of theatre, it is a volatile theatre of topical thoughts. However, to talk about today requires a certain honesty about the role we play, so yes, the generation I belong to has a different view of the present than the previous generation or the next. This doesn’t mean the dialogue has to stop.

A theatre of thoughts?
I think I’m into theatre and shows because I try to understand, to grasp the world, to share a field of thoughts. I have no theories on the state of the world, only feelings. Theatre is a way to not take the world as it is, to try and have a diagonal view on what we experience. Today, there is a close connection between the private and political worlds, which is essential. And real political decisions, rather than words, take place in the flesh. Thought, in our theatre, happens as much through a physical commitment as an intellectual one. We need areas of resistance, of recreation of ideology. Everything we do - living, eating, travelling - is now political, and we must accept our contradictions. We are part of the system, the goal is not to tear oneself away from it but to start imagining, to resist in another way, from the inside.

Is it enough to distance oneself from the world to grasp it?
I need to go through this private, individual realm, which is inevitably full of doubts, before I can go on to something else. And I need to communicate this to other people and other generations. The reactions of teenagers to the show are actually surprising. Maybe it is because shows allow them to see themselves outside of organised thoughts. I want to hand back personal responsibility to people. And I want to communicate what drives me, the preposterousness of being alive and at the same time the sense of deep injustice that we have to die some day. It is so absurd to exist that I need to exhaust myself, to lose myself, to learn, to blossom, to progress. And I find it incredibly abject that this should one day stop. My energy comes from that place, from the desire to grasp time with others, to risk it. As for the concept of Little Brother... there are some things one should not be protected against.

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Distribution & Thanks

www.rictus-davidbobee.net