2023-10-06 05:00:00
At the Théâtre Joliette, the director and her puppeteers perform Vagues, adapted from the English novel, in a very ephemeral version.
Their translucent bodies stand out from the darkness of the Théâtre Joliette, revealing their fragility. The protagonists of Wavesa creation presented Tuesday in Marseille, are ice puppets, an ephemeral material allowing “cross time», like Virginia Woolf’s characters. Between these, which the British writer’s novel follows “from early childhood to very old age» and their frosted, human-sized effigies, «there was some sort of correspondence“, as “An evidence», Explains to AFP the director and visual artist Elise Vigneron, who has been working with ice for around ten years.
«It’s really a fascinating material because it is completely ephemeral, she continues, and at the same time, there is this possibility of crossing history or freezing”, like this ice cream “fossil» which was formed several thousand years ago in Antarctica and the study of which allows scientists to better understand past changes in the climate.
Extracted one by one from a large refrigerator-display placed at the back of the stage, Bernard, Susan, Rhoda, Jinny and Louis advance towards us, suspended by their wires from high rails and delicately guided by the five performers of the show, including an actor and a dancer. “I was very apprehensive about working with ice», confides Thomas Cordeiro, 31, a trained puppeteer who is confronting this material for the first time. “Manipulation is really in the present“, he explains, because the disadvantage of ice, “it’s going to break» and from then on, “it’s no longer the same weights» at the end of the wires therefore «it’s up to us to rebalance ourselves».
“Faced with this material, the viewer immediately identifies, there is a kind of empathy, something very sensitive which does not need words,” believes Elise Vigneron. NICOLAS TUCAT / AFP
It is a materialin movement, in transformation» without necessarily controlling these changes, notes Elise Vigneron. “It’s really a technical and artistic challenge» for the team, which must adapt and “accept that there is randomness», Adds the 43-year-old director, whose new creation takes place in a cycle on ice started in 2020.
A challenge that begins the day before each performance, by filling with water the various resin and silicone molds which will give shape – with 12 to 15 hours of freezing – to the limbs of the puppets, before they are assembled thanks to a stainless steel skeleton trapped in ice. “We make ice which is hollow so we have to have a fairly precise time to be able to empty the water which is in the molds. If it is too full, it will not melt enough and will be too heavy for handlers. And at the same time, if it is too thin, it breaks too quickly», explains Elise Vigneron.
By extracting Bernard’s head from its silicone matrix, Vincent Debuire ensures that the child’s face has been sufficiently sculpted. “The difficulty with ice is that we lose the lines quite easily», specifies the young man, one of the builders responsible for making the puppets. Hence the use of talcum powder to “hang» and emphasize the contours of the face. “Faced with this material, the viewer immediately identifies, there is a kind of empathy, something very sensitive which does not need words», Estimates Elise Vigneron.
However, “it is an ephemeral which is not morbid” more “cyclic“, like water, “very organic material» et «alive», which is like a metaphor for our own existence, according to the visual artist. The passage of time is also perceptible in the “different qualities of ice cream» which run through the show: «very very white at the start“, the puppets will little by little become “more and more transparent“, she notes. Eventually, “these individuals who are quite separated throughout the show”, melting, go “unify in the matter that is on the ground», taking its place again in the great whole.
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