Encyclopédie de la parole Emmanuelle Lafon

A hundred or so words, of diverse origins, are spoken by the same mouth. Interwoven, they offer a whole theatre of the imagination to spectators young and old alike. Directed by Emmanuelle Lafon and composed by Joris Lacoste, blablabla unfurls in close contact with the prosody of each word. A train guard welcomes us on-board the TGV n°1456, a robot gives his identity, a sports commentator lists the names of the players, Yannis states the rules of the game cops-and-robbers, a female youtuber starts an argument, the voice of a photobooth gives users its instructions, a rapper raps, the queen of hearts wants to make heads roll… What do words mean to us when they have been taken out of context, and we listen to them purely in terms of their sound? What does this makes us realise about them in terms of their power and their power over us? Made audible thanks to a mechanism developed by the Ircam sound research institute, the actress-musicians Armelle Dousset and Anna Carlier experiment with the Encyclopédie de la parole’s collection. The latter has been used as the basis for exploring the real via the means of human language over the course of the last ten years. Using their voices and bodies, they summon up a vast array of characters and situations, ranging from daily life to fairy-tale.