Box exp., at Premier Acte, offers an exploration of our present through technological dystopia. In the way of black-mirror or of The fourth dimension, the different sketches of the show combine with the near future to question different contemporary social issues. The distance taken, at times, may however seem very small.
The first of five sketches, where an ordinary young woman rises to stardom after a viral video is posted online, sinks her amused fangs into instant success in the age of reality TV — and our fragile appetites for recognition too. . The futuristic decor and the year, 2055, however, remain cosmetic: here we find ourselves fully in the present, visible in the fall of the sketch in the form of a denunciation, in tune with current events.
The second sketch, carried in a nicely playful way by Charlie Cameron-Verge, won’t dispel that feeling of a harshly present near future, after all. A supermarket shopper happily walks the aisles, while a chip inside him guides his choices — to the point of physically constraining him. The echo of the applications marking out our lives is obvious; at this point, however, the critical range proves to be reduced, behind the pleasure of the wink.
The discussion between two flatmates of the following sketch, which addresses the moral legitimacy of selling certain body cells, will begin to draw the outlines of a text ultimately desirous, perhaps, of not leaving any contemporary particularity in the shadows.
This will be visible in particular when one of the two people, female but male, ends up admitting to being pregnant. However, we do not feel here so much the audacity of a lifted taboo as an imposed figure, difficult to link to an emotional charge conveyed by the scene – hence this feeling of a quilt that seeks to name everything, to exhaust the present so to speak.
Who kisses too much…
The short format of each capsule, therefore, begins to make its limits felt. The dramatic scope of the scenes remains hesitant and we, on the outside. About fifteen telephones distributed in the public will add an element of interactivity, certain moments inviting the preference of the public to determine the continuation. It is nevertheless with a distance that this will be experienced.
A fourth sketch, the attempt by a man to proceed himself to the installation of a chip in his wrist, will certainly find the right comic note, sheets on stage forming a screen and forcing to imagine the contours of this operation which turn bad. But when the scene leads to pedophilia issues, there again, we will wonder about what this Box exp.
Despite the futuristic context, it is quite simply the present that seems to be served to us as it is in a juxtaposition of elements, as if the mere accumulation should naturally bring light.
A final painting, longer and more consistent, will exhibit subjects living in cubicles and interacting through virtual reality, under the supervision of an omnipresent artificial intelligence.
The contours of distant relationships will then emerge — questions about the possibility of loving or about what makes the human, too, blade runner on your mind.
The bifrontal staging by Samuel Corbeil and Lauriane Charbonneau (the latter also in the text), which plays with sheets to hide certain parts of the action, will keep us at an intriguing distance.
Nevertheless, it will remain difficult to marry completely the experience of the characters, the short format of each capsule undoubtedly contributing to this difficulty.
Admittedly, there is a lot to be said about our time, about Instagram and Tik-Tok, about the omnipresence of screens in the permanent connection; a lot to say about technologies in our lives and their consequences in our relationships.
The piece, from which emanates a visible concern for its time, struggles however, in the end, to spare the necessary distance to move the gaze, as if it were caught in the fog of the present.