LES GRANDS

Conception and directing Fanny de Chaillé
Text Pierre Alferi

With (at the creation) :
adults Margot Alexandre, Guillaume Bailliart, Grégoire Monsaingeon
adolescents Ulysse Genevrey, Pierrick Grillet, Elisa Mollier Sabet or Soline Baudet, Oscar Boiron, Félicien Fonsino
child Antoine Adobati, Sacha Buisson Roux and alternately Zoé Chapuis, Jeanne Grollier, Gil Perrissin

Original song Dominique A
Sound engineer Manuel Coursin
Senography and costumes Nadia Lauro
Lights Willy Cessa
General stage management Baptiste Douaud
Assistant director Christophe Ives
Production // diffusion Isabelle Ellul

Duration 1h20

Spectacle created on 7 and 8 March 2017 at the Espace Malraux, Scène nationale Chambéry Savoie.

All ages, from the crib to the grave, are participants of humanity.
Not childhood, adolescence, or adulthood would be likely regard ed as pre-, post- or sub-human.
A premise is at the start of this project: Observing three people on stage, growing up physically and intellectually within one hour.
And taking this premise literally: gathering nine actors, three children, three teenagers and three adults to play the same role.
Within the theatrical hour that is given to us, the attempt is to reach the impossible: observing people growing up.
In the making of our piece, it is about taking the advantage of the theatrical illusion, which enables among other things, the making of a fiction.
Using theatre to produce the impossible, images, and unmanageable situations, to better question reality, or rather to better contaminate reality through fiction.
Observing human beings constructing and deconstructing themselves:

Observing human beings constructing and deconstructing themselves: What kind of child were we, What kind of teenager have we been, what kind of adults are we…
How did we get there?

Fanny de Chaillé
Paris, November 3, 2015

Production Display
Coproduction with Malraux, Scène nationale Chambéry Savoie, Bonlieu Scène nationale d’Annecy, Festival d’Avignon, La Comédie de Reims Centre dramatique national, le Centre chorégraphique national de Caen en Normandie dans le cadre de l’accueil studio, le Centre de développement chorégraphique de Toulouse Midi- Pyrénées, les Spectacles vivants – Centre Pompidou (Paris), le Festival d’Automne à Paris, le Carré, les Colonnes – scène métropolitaine (Saint-Médard-en-Jalles et Blanquefort), le Parv is Scène nationale de Tarbes-Pyrénées.
With the support from the Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication / Drac Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, la Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, CN D – Centre national de la danse (Panti n), Carreau du Temple (Paris), Théâtre Ouvert (Paris).
With the kind permission of de Cinq7/Wagram Music
Special thanks to Joanne Bidaux-Colaisseau, Bazil Bradel, Zoran Bradel, Lucien Breniaux, Louise Breniaux, Jean Cazin, Jasmin Colas, Louise Coursin, Cléo Coursin, Sarah Dupuy, Ugolin François, Anna Frumy, Sacha Gayet, Cécilia Lapeyre, Louise Lemasson, Sine Leverdier, Léonard Lopez-Capdenat, Sao Mai Mertinez, Annette Monnerie, Zadig Monsaingeon, Charly Paillet, Raoul Silbermann, Lucie Zirk (et leurs parents), Sandrine Delaune, Laure Mullot, les enfants de la comédie, l’Association PI:ES Alain Buffard, l’Association MM – Mathilde Monnier.

TEXT

«Three adults summon the children’s and teenagers’ ghosts which they once once. The secret logic of the first ones, the uncertainty and exasperation of the second ones produce foreign talks that the adult’s speech finds difficult to translate. The misunderstanding is cruel. It is thus within each one them that the three ages confront one another, come alive to give a try to an uneven and often humorous dialogue. But they’ll need to summon one another to begin to learn what one learns nowhere.»

Pierre Alferi
Parler (Répète, Coloc, Les Grands), P.O.L (juillet 2017)

ORIGINAL SONG

Dominique A wrote a song which evolves, grows, resonates from one age group to the other, which he called “Cycle”. Fanny de Chaillé’s wish to work with him came upon watching the movie “Peau de cochon” by Philippe Katerine. Dominique A plays a recording tape for Philippe Katerine, one of his first recordings made in his bedroom when he was about ten years old. In this short excerpt, we hear his childhood’s voice and the entire artist’s world as we know it today is already present, his voice, his love for melodies, simple pieces.

SCENOGRAPHY

 «When Fanny told me about her project «les grands» and invited me to imagine the scenography for the piece, I was thinking about the possibility of having a space which gives room to time. I worked from topographic maps to create a device made of curves with layers of levels. An abstract space offering a geological time scale, oscillating between a landscape scale and an interior filled with stairs.»

Nadia Lauro