Clara, a young teenage girl, has killed herself. The day after, the Arpenteur (surveyor) questions several of her relatives to try and understand the circumstances of her death. Whilst he looks for the reasons that led to this act, he also tries to grasp the reasons that motivate him to live. Each of Clara’s relatives describe memories they had with her and provide contradictory stories of her last moments. Dylan, her boyfriend, admits he felt that she had no desire to live. From the hereafter, Clara observes the same feeling in others. She hears the song that Dylan hums for her and tries to call for him, but to his eyes, she remains invisible. Adrien, Pierre, and Sylvain, whose job is to start fires, say that they saw Clara with the Passeur (the ferryman). In a flashback, we can see Clara asking the Passeur to choose how she is going to die. A chorus of naiads then describes how she drowned in the river. The Arpenteur asks the Passeur to bring Clara back from the dead. The Arpenteur solves a riddle, and the Passeur allows those who were close to Clara to see her one last time. Clara appears and sees how they all suffer, but she reassures them and tells them that she is happier dead than alive.

Not specified

France

Paris

Printed

Suicide

Mysterious death

Remembrance

Grief

Quest

Afterlife

Lust

fleuve

Love

Tragic

Philosophical tale

Fantastic

Éloi Recoing, Un instant suicidaire, Théâtre aux Mains Nues, 2008

French

Concerto pour marionnettes à la mémoire d'un ange

Dead woman

Smuggler

Lover

Naïade

Analepsis (Flash-back)

Dance

Aria

Chorus

Reunion

Dead talking character

Ghost

Un instant suicidaire

A suicidal moment

Whilst she is walking on a beach, Caroline, a puppeteer, tells Filip the story of how she met him twenty years ago. The action of the play goes back to that time, when she was a student and was attending her last drawing class. The teacher gives them a horse, which suddenly bursts in the classroom. Sacha learns that her father is dying. Caroline offers to go with her and so she can say her last goodbye. They drive there with Raphaël, whose girlfriend Marie lives close to their final destination. When they arrive at Marie’s house, Raphaël learns that Marie has been cheating on him with his brother. He still decides to stay with her. Caroline and Sasha leave and arrive in the holiday cottage of one of their classmates. There, Caroline meets Filip. They share a night of love, but at dawn, he is gone. Caroline and Sasha continue their journey where they witness an accident, and they arrive in the village where Sasha’s father lives. Sasha goes to join him whilst Caroline walks along the little streets and meets the villagers. Sasha comes back and announces that her father died. She’s holding a picture of herself when she was a child, and starts talking to the picture and telling it about her passion for puppets. The next day, Sasha and Caroline attend the funeral, and then take a plane to go back home.

Shadow theatre

Direct Manipulation Bunraku-type Puppetry

Human sized puppet

Charleville-Mézières

Electronic text

Journey

Death

Passion

Future

Unfaithfulness

Road-movie

Realist

Dramatic

François Cervantès, Attends-moi, Charleville-Mézières, 2010.

Writer

Puppeteer

Student

Teacher

Neighbour

Brother

Girl friend

Father

Mother

Child

Teenager

Sister

Aunt

Recounting of memories

Classroom scene

Animal cry

Simultaneous scenes

Night scene

Song

Burial

Dreamt scene

Duplication

Attends-moi

Wait for me

A theatre director has hired Polichinelle for the evening, but Polichinelle is late for the show. When he comes on, he is haunted by the ghost of his conscience, that chastises him for his very instinctive personality. Following the director’s questions concerning what is tormenting him, Polichinelle uses glove-puppets to play episodes from his childhood, when he was often punished for his misdemeanour. Once the flashback is over, Polichinelle wants to improvise some jokes, but the director forbids him from tackling political themes. As he does not know what kind of show to put on, Polichinelle keeps talking about his past – how his parents had him then abandoned him for lack of money, and his first heartbreaks. Polichinelle and the director argue. The latter summons Illness and Death, who want to take Polichinelle with them. While screaming that he is an immortal character, Polichinelle manages to drive them out – thus saving theatre and also making up with the director.

Nordmann Jean-Gabriel

Meung-sur-Loire

Childhood

Illness

Unrequited love

Parents

Argument

Grotesque

Comical

Fable théâtrale pour comédiens et marionnettes

Polichinelle

Director

Nurse

Schoolteacher

Devil

Scene fragment

Address to the public

Blow-with-a-stick

Allusion to current political events

Seduction scene

Fight

Sous le masque tu es mortel pauvre orphelin !

Behind the mask you are mortal poor orphan!

In a former espadrille factory closed for years, abandoned objects, clothes and machines come to life to evoke the forty-five years of life of the factory and its workers. Former workers, former managers, and residents who lived by the rhythm of factory life recall with emotion the hours of hard work interspersed with joy, the strike pickets and union struggles, the resistance to successive factory closures and unemployment. Among them, Jacqueline makes her eight-year-old grandson Ulysse understand the place of the factory in her life. The factory, which was closed and left abandoned for a long time, was finally dismantled and demolished. The day the building is razed to the ground, the whole landscape of the city changes, leaving a gaping void for the inhabitants. The children of the school, worried and disoriented, wonder about this disappearance. The headmaster then asks them to draw the factory as they have always seen it or as they have been told about it, so that they will not forget it. Ulysse offers his drawing to his grandmother Jacqueline to console her: it shows the factory teeming with life, as she knew it. This is how this working-class memory is passed on from one generation to the next.

Object theatre

Actor and puppet

All audiences

Chaffin François

Oloron-Sainte-Marie

Factory

Workers’ memory

Industrial past

Machine

Testify

Labour

Pathetic

Lyrical

Des voix sortant des penderies de vestiaire

Voice

Worker

Ouvrière

Patron

Hand

Le dernier ouvrier de la dernière espadrille

Bird

Grandmother

Metonymy (mode of characterisation)

Chorality

Ni bleu ni blouse

Neither blue nor blouse work clothes

Monsieur Legris lives alone in a sad house, where everything is either grey, black or white. That is, until a strange yellow parcel is delivered to his house, from which Confetti comes out. This tiny and colourful character hides immense sorrow inside him. Slowly, despite being complete opposites, the two characters grow closer – each learning how to live again thanks the other.