One day, little Agustí decides to grow a tree and plants a seed. But another child, Fidel, swaps the seed with another and the resulting tree produces a very special fruit: it contains the genie Eugeni, who punishes Fidel by beating him with a stick. Fidel asks for forgiveness and the genie throws confetti and sweets to the audience.

Glove-puppet

Young audiences

Lanuza Empar de

Spain

Valencia

Printed

Tree

Ecology

Environment

Tale

Seed

Candy

Theatre at school

Child

Mean trick

Punishment

Didactic

Fantasy

Catalan

Genie

Misunderstanding

Blow-with-a-stick

Appearance of a genius

Un arbre genial

An amazing tree

A French journalist – François – is in a country at war to work on a report. He is welcomed by Malik – the leader of one of the camps, a collector of weapons and a fan of the Western consumer society and of the soap opera Santa Barbara. François also meets a sculptor monk, who happily guards the “cemetery of idiots”, and Marcel, a blind professor who philosophises about the fall of communism and the moral misery of humanity. François shows more and more aversion to the trade of journalism, which forces him to seek for the most gruesome news, and aversion also to humanity as a whole. The rats take an interest in this personal crisis: they are looking to communicate with him. Then the journalist meets the leader of the enemy camp, who happens to be Malik. For years, the militiamen have been fighting against themselves, playing the role of two enemy camps. The rats explain their inter-species cooperation project to François, the aim of which is to clean up the waste on Earth, and to purge humanity of its metaphysical stain. A world summit of good neighbourliness is organised in Luxembourg, to discuss the modalities of the alliance. But the rats are too visible and so the situation slowly deteriorates. The play ends with François’ burial in the “cemetery of idiots”.

Adults

Visniec Matéi

France

Paris

Avignon

Television

Capitalism

TV soap opera

Journalism

Cemetery

Communism

Socialism

Waste

Globalization

Depollution

Censorship

Balkans

Satirical

Grotesque

Tragic

Matéi Visniec, La Mémoire des serpillières (front cover)

French

Journalist

Militiaman

Sculptor monk

President

Le Ministre français des affaires étrangères

Minister

Architect

Macedonian

Russian

Clown

Soldier

Talking animal

Political allegory

Modular scenes

Scene fragment

Exchangeable characters

Address to the public

Masked characters

Procession

Chorus

Off-stage voices

Plot twist

Throws

La Mémoire des serpillères

The Memory of mops

The work tells the legendary story of the city of Elx (Elche), which is surrounded by palm forests, and of an angry dragon who sees his natural kingdom threatened by the development of the city beyond its walls. To prevent this, the dragon kidnaps the girls of the town and, by means of a spell, turns them into slender palm trees. An improvised hero puts an end to this curse: with the help of a fairy, he reaches an agreement between the dragon and the inhabitants, so that they preserve the palm grove forever.