Last night was the first performance of L of the flood at La Chapelle Contemporary Scenes. After fruit time (2020), this second collaboration between Marilyn Daoust and Gabriel Léger-Savard brings us to the mourning of a love, but also questions us about the issues of our current society, all through mythical, mythological and wacky characters.
As soon as the audience enters, the performers are present on stage. In an urban setting, rather dark and mechanical, they are mostly dressed in fluorescent orange. In the game and the lightness, they welcome the spectators. After a few laughs, the mood changes drastically. It is about a wrenching, an end of love, a separation, caused by life, but especially by society and the rules it contains. We then begin to follow the mourning, but also the journey, of Ariane. One quickly understands the references to mythology, not only by the names, but also by the formation of a chorus, reminiscent of Greek tragedies.
The 11 performers on stage chant parables, stories, but also live through their bodies the different emotions that the main character, Ariane, goes through. Multidisciplinarity takes on its full meaning in this piece. Indeed, the dance is not there to decorate, neither is the song. Together, they enhance the discourse and anchor the bodies in the words. The costumes, materials and lights are also there to add flesh to bone and are not incidental. The two creators have succeeded in precisely tying up the different arts to make a whole piece of it, yes, but above all an adventure. In canon or in chorus, the artists on the stage do not divulge, but live the entire story.
Without changing the scenery, we spend the seasons with Ariane, separated from her lover. We see the letters they send each other and we gradually contemplate the decadence, the crumbling of their love, ultimately impossible. In the course of her pain, Ariane meets friends, who will sometimes turn out to be enemies, embodied there also precisely by the performers. Color, madness and humor then know how to slip into this chaos, which is nevertheless full of meaning.
Techno music, clubs and furs of all kinds, Ariane then rubs elbows with excess, again flirting with mythology and Dionysus. Above her, serene, the goddesses sit enthroned and watch. Around her, the monsters take shape, try to subjugate her and impose her a path, the one and only, that of the big tower, a metaphor for the society of mass consumption, fast, creating dependencies and dedicated to a disastrous end.
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All in subtlety, L of the flood depicts a reality, ours. While retaining its references, its language and its mythological characters, the play questions us about our way of life. Are we going too fast? What’s the point of living when the planet is on the verge of dying? In transparency, it also evokes the drifts of the night, the vulnerability of beings, but also their violence. Without shocking, the authors use humor and derision to portray the dirty traits of humanity.
The performers and the characters they embody play true, authentic. We follow them in their unique personality, their sometimes cheeky acting and their originality. Indeed, the choir is far from being monolithic. Quite the contrary. Such an artistic choice also makes it possible to have a direct connection with the spectator and a form of recognition. The choir is not cold, it feels and it reflects the crowd.
Marilyn Daoust and Gabriel Léger-Savard took as reference Greek mythology, but also Egyptian and Mesopotamian. We then meet on stage Enki, god of underground waters, but also Skhmet the Powerful. Despite the millennia that separate us from these stories, we fully visualize, even today, their purpose. Moreover, by rooting the story and its subjects around love, L of the flood becomes universal.
All in modernity, this light, but powerful work questions the seductive routine, blindness in the face of death, harmful influences, modern tragedies, but also places on a pedestal the omnipotence of love and love. ‘hope.