MOVING BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN FICTION AND REALITY, PATIENTS AND CARERS, BETWEEN AREAS BEHIND CLOSED DOORS OR OPEN FOR STAGING PERFORMANCES TO REDISCOVER VOICES AND BODIES.
The concept of performance as a cure dates back to Aristotle and Greek tragedy, but in the 1930s Jacob Levy Moreno developed the concept of improvisational theater as therapy, performing as treatment: pretending, returning to and reliving an experience that has been repressed, a taboo, a trauma, allowing scope for investigation. For Lisa Guez with her experience of theater in a mental health facility, this meant she could explore the full potential for catharsis. Six women are the extraordinary actors in Psychodrama, alternating in roles as patients and carers, not to stage a documentary drama, but rather to invent a story. In the mental health facility for women only, they uncover phantoms and monsters haunting their minds and muting their power of speech. Emerging from this is life and confusion, and thus they manage to rediscover meaning where meaning from the past had been lost.
Marina Da Silva
COMPAGNIE 13/31
Original idea & direction
Lisa Guez
Collaboration for direction & dramaturgy Sarah Doukhan
Lighting design & scenography Lila Meynard
Sound design Louis-Marie Hippolyte
Scientific adviser Géraldine Rougevin-Baville
Artistic collaboration Clara Normand
Consultant choreography Cyril Viallon
With Fernanda Barth, Valentine Bellone, Anne Knosp, Valentine Krasnochok, Nelly Latour, Jordane Soudre
Production Compagnie 13/31. Coproduction Comédie de Béthune, CDN Hauts-de-France – ThéâtredelaCité - CDN de Toulouse Occitanie – Bain Public à Saint-Nazaire – Le Quai de rêves, scène de territoire pour le Théâtre de la Ville de Lamballe- Armor… (en cours). Avec le soutien de région Bretagne – ministère de la Culture-DRAC de Bretagne – Les Tréteaux de France, CDN (résidence) – Bain Public à Saint-Nazaire (résidences). La Compagnie 13/31 est conventionnée par le ministère de la Culture-DRAC de Bretagne.
