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Author(s)
Le rêve de votre vie (à vos souhaits)
Social vaudeville for fifty puppets and three actors
Le rêve de votre vie (à vos souhaits) [The Dream of your life (Blessyou!)] was written by Daniel Lemahieu as part of a project conceived with the french director and puppeteer François Lazaro (Clastic Théâtre) and the art brut artist Francis Marshall, who built the fifty human-sized puppets used for the staging. The writing project was therefore developed in constant dialogue with the manipulators on stage, and the writing of the text took shape as the rehearsals progressed. In the show, the puppets were manipulated by two visible manipulators, who also played the role of the elected official and his secretary. As in Entre Chien et Loup, Lemahieu's writing gives voice to alienated individuals who generally remain unheard of. Here, however, the atmosphere is more explicitly political, although it is not a manifesto. The definition in the subtitle, 'social vaudeville', refers to the genre of popular theatre, whose light form is charged with a deeper social meaning. There are several versions of the text, each with minor differences, from a first version in 1999 to a last one in 2001.
The gap between politics and the dreams of the working classes
At the beginning of the year 2000, the elected representative and his secretary organised an evening in a municipal multi-purpose hall, where they met with the 'working classes' to ask them what their dreams were. The politician wants to redesign the local bar so that it is no longer a meeting place for 'not normal people', and hopes to direct people's dreams towards his goal. But nothing happens as he imagined: everyone talks about their dreams, but they turn out to be expressions of inner unease or personal hopes, rather than achievable wishes. By sharing fragments of their drifting lives, the citizens turn the evening into a slump of violent outbursts, which nevertheless leaves room for bursts of infinite tenderness.
First performance
First performance in July 1999 at the Chartreuse de Villeneuve-les-Avignon as part of the Avignon Festival.