Collectif GREMAUD/ GURTNER/BOVAY 

Pièce

Archive 2019
Theatre

Created by Collectif GREMAUD/GURTNER/BOVAY
With Tiphanie Bovay-Klameth, François Gremaud, Michèle Gurtner, and Samuel Pajand
Stage design, Victor Roy
Music and sound, Samuel Pajand
Lighting, Antoine Friderici
Costumes, Sarah André
Produced by 2b company (Lausanne)
In association with Théâtre de Vidy-Lausanne ; Théâtre Saint-Gervais (Geneva)
In association with Théâtre de la Ville-Paris ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
With support from Fondation suisse pour la culture Pro Helvetia, Ville de Lausanne, Canton de Vaud, Loterie Romande, Fondation Ernst Göhner, Fondation Leenaards, Fonds culturel de la Société Suisse des Auteurs, and Fondation Casino Barrière Montreux
First performed on the 22nd March 2019 at Théâtre de Vidy-Lausanne

This piece shows a group rehearsing a piece of theatre, in a room. And while the piece plays out, other pieces are, almost inevitably, being played out. By taking a closer look at what is being related or recounted in the different strata of language, GREMAUD/GURTNER/BOVAY prompt us to see what, in human terms, is being played out.

Tiphanie Bovay-Klameth, François Gremaud and Michèle Gurtner play an actor and two actresses working on a piece of theatre, or even several pieces, in the same room. But what these figures make us believe is not exactly what we see. Indeed, it is here, in these blurred areas, that the unconscious elements behind the way these individuals act come to the surface, and which in turn reveal the system by which this social group is governed. The situation thus becomes a pretext for mises en abymes in which language – via its habits and shortfalls – gives the go-ahead to a fiction in order to imagine another possible ‘real’. For the last ten years, the trio has been putting into practice a clearly-defined method: starting with an idea, it carries out filmed improvisations out of which any selected material becomes the object of a rigorous process of re-enactment. Without removing any of its language-based impurities, they compose a double partition disassociating language from gesture. On the border between automatic writing and exquisite cadaver, the narration takes shape and opens itself up to interpretation by the audience. Close to an oulipian or dadaist enterprise, of a poetically engaged nature, their intuitive rather than intellectual approach stems from the observation of people and these “amateurs” who do what they like, even when it comes to the tragic. GREMAUD/GURTNER/BOVAY look for the peculiar in the banal.
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Estimated running time: 1h20