First production / Theatre of objects - Music

Michel Laubu has only just come back from a land called Turakie. Since his last show, he has come back to what had first pushed him to travel: the leatherette sofas at his uncles and aunties place, all the same, the narrow streets of mining towns in the Lorraine region. The heavy accent heard in his childhood was never forgotten... It has, apparently, strong similarities with the Turakian accent. This return to familiar regional dialects was already explored by musician Rodolphe Burger several years ago. From Sainte-Marieaux-Mines to Creutzwald, both of them end up on the path to these cherished and wobbly musicalities, peculiar gestures, rhythms and grammars that remain alive in our minds from our childhood. They invite us to lend an ear, to return to our home land in imaginary class.

“In order to develop a project around languages when one practices an almost silent theatre based on images... We’ve quickly started to discuss grammar, conjugations, language learning methods, and this little French grammar book called the “bled”... I then thought about pursuing my autobiographical adventure in the Moselle region, in a sort of grammar of uncles, like a return to the homeland, also sometimes called ‘bled’.” Michel Laubu

See synospsis (pdf / 57 KB) !In french!

Biography

Michel Laubu discovers Turakie in 1985. He is the official guide, ethnologist, linguist, and archaeologist of the country, while remaining throughout an artist. He invented a theatre mixing puppeteering and a theatre of objects. From his first show, the Turak native lays down his vision of a theatre filled to the rim with a rare imagination. For a few years now, Michel Laubu has been examining the renewal of theatrical devices. He stated his wish to develop new fields of writing, new tools that make it possible for the theatre of objects to keep its intimate quality while developing forms with a greater scope. He also examined the role of the actor in this type of theatre. What is of particular interest to Michel Laubu in the work with puppets is the outline of the puppeteer standing behind, the shadow of the person who holds and moves the object. Actors/Puppeteers are one with their creations and you can admire the coordination of their movements, the skill and grace they show, their dexterity, the way poetry and magic shoot out from almost anything in their art.

Rodolphe Burger is a singer and guitar player and a former philosophy teacher. He founded Kat Onoma (a quintet from Strasbourg), who mix rock and contemporary philosophy. Famous singer Françoise Hardy has said that “his guitar has a unique sound and his melancholy loops are obsessive. Artistically speaking, there is something magic about him.” Burger has just created his own music label, Dernière Bande, with which he keeps organising meetings and duets, partnerships and experiments, crusades and peregrinations. He gently landed in the same field as Lou Reed, Nick Cave and Stuart Staples from the Tindersticks. His album Hôtel Robinson came out in 2002, and was made in partnership with Olivier Cadiot. Rodolphe Burger is also interested in his own roots and went searching in his native place with Cadiot. They collected stories and songs in the ‘welche’ language (a Romanic dialect still spoken by thousand or so people in the Alsatian valley he hails from), and sampled and kneaded them to finally come up with the first mantra from the Vosges. Since 2001, he has been a permanent feature at the Vieilles Charrues Festival in Carhaix.

Cast and crew & thanks

Writer, director, stage designer: Michel Laubu. Music performed and written by Rodolphe Burger, Marco de Oliveira. Performed by Michel Laubu, Emmeline Beaussier. Video Engineer: Laurent Mathieu. Lighting Engineer: Dominique Legland. Stage Manager: Emmeline Beaussier, Camille Perreau. Artistic contributor: Emili Hufnagel.
Production: Turak. Co-production & Residence: Les Subsistances / Lyon / France. The Turak Theatre is subsidised by Ministère de la Culture – DRAC Rhône Alpes and Région Rhône Alpes, funded by Ville de Lyon, and receives regular support from Culturesfrance for its projects abroad.

Michel Laubu / Turak
& Rodolphe Burger / France

« Grammaire des oncles et
apprentissage
du silence

(A grammar of uncles and the learning of silence) »

First production / Theatre of objects - Music

Biography

Cast and crew & thanks

Dates

Duration

Price

Link :

Michel Laubu / Turak & Rodolphe Burger / France

« Grammaire des oncles et apprentissage du silence

(A grammar of uncles and the learning of silence) »

First production / Theatre of objects - Music

Biography

Cast and crew & thanks

Dates

Duration

Price

Link :

Michel Laubu / Turak
& Rodolphe Burger / France

« Grammaire des oncles et
apprentissage
du silence