“When we come across a work that is made for us, the click is often instantaneous. Cédric Delorme-Bouchard was only on the third page of the Employees, a novel by Danish Olga Ravn, which he was already convinced had found the material for his new project. An object he desired in continuity with Slats —his magnificent first creation as a director in 2018, a work of images where light is the basis of the show — but with, this time, a textual basis.
He had just started writing the play, in the form of monologues by the inhabitants of a spaceship, when he fell in love with this book. “Not only was it the form that I visualized, but it was also the type of writing that I wanted, sensory. Ravn makes extensive use of tactile, olfactory sensations. There is something very poetic in his writing, even if we are in a science fiction universe. »
A genre of which Cédric Delorme-Bouchard turns out to be a great reader. “There are so many questions about it. I find that science fiction takes a fairly sharp look at the present, allowing itself liberties on the form, with the imagination. The cinema has completely appropriated it. But this is not a terrain where the theater usually ventures. I think the question arises of the representability on stage of what is named in these works: how [illustrer] concretely these manufactured worlds? At the same time, it is characteristic of theater to create a lot with sometimes very little. »
The employees takes the form of a succession of depositions, delivered by the workers of an interstellar company to a commission of inquiry charged with examining what happened on the six thousandth vessel. “It’s as if the reader had access to a document that comes from human resources. We dive through very personal stories, memories of the Earth that these travelers left behind, loves, lost children, dreams, nightmares. We go from these very intimate testimonies to a much more political crisis, which comes to shatter the established order. As we only have subjective points of view, it is through everyone’s gaze that we can discern the shape of this future, which is one of extreme capitalism. »
And we understand, over the course of these monologues that penetrate their psyche, that the relationship is deteriorating between the two groups that coexist on the spacecraft: humans and resemblances, beings made in the laboratory to become labor artwork. “So we are in questions of ethics, because it is a future that is possible. We see it in some countries, even in China, where there are experiments that are already going very far with genetic manipulation. It is above all on this question that the novel plays, the idea that those who were created solely for work end up having the same aspirations, the same desires as us. They may not be supposed to have emotions, dreams, but lookalikes develop all of these things and ultimately become identical to humans. But with a plus, because they were created to be perfect. A race, therefore, which surpasses its creators. »
And for Cédric Delorme-Bouchard, the work is crossed by the theme of death. He is also delighted to present The employees immediately after his staging ofInterior by Maurice Maeterlinck, at Usine C, a rapprochement forced by the postponements due to the pandemic. “That the two end up in the same season, I find it quite great. We are talking about two mythological forms that question death, but obviously, in completely different registers: we go from the ancestral to the future between these two creations. »
The prolific designer of light and space admits having “a fascination for the invisible”, for dimensions that transcend existence. And Olga Ravn’s novel raises the question of immortality, of the “possibility of eternity through science, biological augmentations”. Resemblances never really die, thanks to a download. “This program, which remains mysterious in the novel, is one of the axes that absolutely had to be kept in the play. This is perhaps most important because the program becomes the same as religion for us humans: the possibility of an existence that does not end at death. »
Machine
In order to draw a line in this work which raises several “very vast questions”, the creator worked with William Durbau, son-dramaturge, to rearrange the chosen monologues. For the adaptation, the text was recorded in the studio by 13 performers. “Then, the composition of the general work is like a cinematographic frame where the music and the voices, the texts, are spun word by word and note by note to create the frame on which the performance will take place. And it’s a machine, in a way, that the spectators will see activated in front of them, by sound and light. A very sophisticated recording machine that will summon sound, olfactory and visual sensations to the stage. He compares the device to the black box of an airplane, which “releases what it has accumulated in a fragmented way, but which gives us the reconstruction of what took place on the ship”.
These recordings feature thirteen distinct personalities. “This is where we will have access to a lot of humanity, while the landscape on stage plunges us further into the future, through the use of laser beams, holograms and shapes that materialize in the smoke. » The one who also signs the scenography and the lighting worked with a material « which is not made for the stage: lasers that we would rather use in optics or science. Devices created to measure for the project. »
At La Chapelle, we will also see Mélanie Chouinard, Jennyfer Desbiens, Myriam Foisy, Jonathan Malenfant and Alexis Trépanier, performers with whom Cédric Delorme-Bouchard says he is very close and who, for the most part, have participated in his previous creations. These interpreters will carry the corporeal vocabulary, a vocabulary that the director always admits he is reluctant to call dance. “But it’s with Danielle Lecourtois that I work on the composition of bodies in space. It’s a very hybrid work. I am very happy to see how all the elements are welded together. It’s a very well-oiled machine that will unfold, borrowing as much from the textual language as from the physical, scenographic and luminous to make a whole. »
An object that appeals to the viewer’s imagination: Cédric Delorme-Bouchard likes works that challenge the stage presentation. “This is perhaps why I am more often attracted to those which are not already plays, or which pose huge questions about how to deliver them to the public, or that the framework of the performance has to be invented. . That [demande] lot of energy. But it’s stimulating to dive in and have the impression each time of having to invent a form that doesn’t quite exist. I had never put on a play where there is text from beginning to end and where, however, no one utters a single word on stage. It’s a very particular shape for me, which doesn’t look like anything else, and which I’m pretty sure I won’t do again like it. A unique experience. »