2009 · Sextett · De Vos · Vigner (EN)

WARNING
As the title explicitly indicates
The play talks about… music
Quite contrary to some common ideas
Music doesn’t always cool down the temper
Sometimes it makes the blood run wild
And drives you to blackouts
It was by listening to the children's choirs
That GILLES DE RAIS forgot Jeanne
SEXTETT addresses itself to sesoned music lovers.
[1]

SEXTETT, created in October 2009 at the CDDB in Lorient, was the third text by the playwright RÉMI DE VOS that ERIC VIGNER put on stage, after JUSQU’À CE QUE LA MORT NOUS SÉPARE (Till death us do part) in 2006 and DÉBRAYAGE (walkout) in 2007. RÉMI DE VOS had been assigned to write SEXTETT for these 6 particular actors, more precisely for 1 actor : MICHA LESCOT in close contact with 5 actresses, 5 women of different cultural backgrounds : ANNE-MARIE CADIEUX and MARIE-FRANCE LAMBERT from Quebec, MARIA DE MEDEIROS from Portugal, JUTTA JOHANNA WEISS from Vienna, and the French actress JOHANNA NIZARD.

"SEXTETT is the continuation of a work and an artistic friendship between Rémi and myself. Many fascinating adventures in the history of theater took place because an author and a director met. In theater, one cannot dissociate essence and form. The director, knowingly or not, gives a form to the writing. Directing is a form of writing - on the stage. And it is related to other art forms such as the visual arts, music... The writing takes shape in 3D, in the time-space of the performance in order to produce theater in the "here and now". With SEXTETT, we wanted to create for these actors in particular. I invited Rémi to my home in Brittany to write. We talked a lot. We walked by the sea. We wanted to produce something new together, to testify in our ways to today’s "desire in theater" (dÉsir en tous ses États)."
ÉRIC VIGNER

SIMON.
"Schubert. A lied by Schubert. A concert on the day my mother was buried. In her house. My mother who never listened to music. I never heard music in my mother’s house. My mother just couldn’t stand music. It’s my first day of mourning. The first time my mother died." 
[1]

"Didn’t VIGNER, DE VOS and LESCOT invent a new genre, the theatrical serial ? The continuity of a project where the story unfolds from one play to the next, in the same set, where we can follow the psycho-erotic education of a very contemporary young man ? Yes, they did. And precisely with the art of fantasy…"
EMMANUELLE BOUCHEZ, Télérama, 17 octobre 2009

"ÉRIC VIGNER gives his favorite young actor the opportunity to reinvent the fortuitous encounter of Eros and Thanatos. In the role of Simon, MICHA LESCOT hardly withstands the appeal of a compelling female quintet in heat which will detonate a choral debauch on Simon’s ancestry. DE VOS provokes the appetite of five female characters, a face-to-face with animosity, a sexual volte-face… where a dog-woman named Walkyrie leads on the pack. In between singers intoning and castrating forces tuning in, it isn’t SCHUBERT that moderates our fantasies, but only a kiss which at the end kills all rivals."
theothea.com, 9 novembre 2009

"Dark zones of the unconscious, images close to dream symbolism - in this kind of theater the body speaks more than words. A universe far from realism and explanation. VIGNER chooses “to give aesthetics the place it deserves in theater”. He works on the artform itself. His way to direct might recall ALMADOVAR, FELLINI,... his set and costumes are magnificent !”
LUC BOULANGER, Le Devoir, Montréal

[1] RÉMI DE VOS, SEXTETT, Actes Sud 2009, Excerpts translated by HERBERT KAISER

 

© Photography : Alain Fonteray
Texts assembled by Jutta Johanna Weiss
Translation from the French by Herbert Kaiser
© CDDB-Théâtre de Lorient