After a show created in 2011 in homage to Felix Mirbt, a puppeteer of German origin, the author and artistic director of the Théâtre La Pire Espèce, Francis Monty, and his sidekick, Olivier Dumas, go through the creator’s personal diary and remember two anecdotes: crossing Germany by bike and a stint at military school when the artist was only 13 years old.
Written briefly, taking up half a page, or even two for the episode of the military school, Mirbt’s texts are not at all, initially, made to be presented in the theater. Monty is therefore inspired by these anecdotes experienced by the author, who classified these stories in the category of “fairy tales”.
” Fairy tales ? Really ? » asks Francis Monty astonished, intrigued by this way of naming stories in which he did not detect anything magical. He therefore “wanted to see what would happen if[il] explored what lies behind these stories. And finally, by pulling on the thread, by re-reading them properly, [il y a vu] a paradox” which serves the purpose of his new creation, My tale of fire. On a bike between the falling bombsent, he says on the line. Or “how the child manages to build himself in something terrible, traumatic, in a world which, ultimately, collapses around him”. Thus, like Mirbt’s perspective, the show takes up the structure of the fairy tale, does not get bogged down in details, depicts a boy who will have to face trials and who will manage to achieve his goals.
The ability to talk about violence, about war, without showing it, without falling into absolute drama, is one of Monty’s strengths, but also, he says, a challenge. “I had a lot of difficulty writing the ending. I wrote it several times […] First of all, I am not an author who works in realism, I like to always have a kind of distance, to leave an exit door for the spectators so that they can remain critical, reflect, enter and exit whenever they want. in the show. »
The choice of puppet elements, the manipulation which is never camouflaged – carried out here by Marcelle Hudon -, the work on the image and of course on the structure of the story, all of this contributes to this way of telling a drama while avoiding the frontal approach. “Basically, that was my challenge: to make people feel a certain violence (for example when children beat up another young person). We still have to go there, we have to feel the violence, but we also have to be able to come out of it and take away something that will allow the hero, later, to build himself. It’s really the elements of the story,” explains the playwright.
Beware of the obvious
There is thus, as a filigree of My tale of fire, the teaching Monty received from Felix Mirbt. The author and artistic director remembers this puppeteer’s way of working, sometimes disturbing for some, his way of replaying a scene otherwise just to measure all the possibilities. “It already corresponded a little to my temperament, but he, let’s say, asserted it. It comes from the fact — and I think this is what the show is about — that you can never trust what seems obvious. We must be wary, we must question. This is clearly linked, in my opinion, to Felix Mirbt’s way of surviving. Things seem logical, correct and concrete, but it’s horror, it’s hoax what some people are told. »
There is also in this need to be wary of the obvious, felt by young Félix, the importance of forging an identity in a world where everything is falling apart. The staging composed of animal masks will perhaps remind those initiated of the storytelling tools of Art Spiegelman in Maus, an aesthetic also in this way of depicting animal figures. But, unlike the American cartoonist “who represents fixed identities – the mice are Jews, the cats, Germans, etc. —, My tale of fire presents human beings who will transform into animals, but these masks can actually change. Unlike what we see in Maus precisely – it is certain that its author was telling something else, another point of view -, identity is murky and changing, and this is what Félix will learn during his journey, which is extremely disturbing for the child , who needs benchmarks […] This is what it will be built from,” explains Monty.
Like certain pieces by Monty, young Félix maintains in tale of fire a difficult relationship with his father who, although present, is not accessible. Félix’s journey, however, will supplant this theme of the father-son relationship. Here he will turn to other examples, which are hardly better. “At the military school, there are the young people around him – who will beat him up – there are the soldiers who are completely crazy and, finally, he will realize at the end of the war that he He’s not on the side of the good guys, but on the side of the bad guys. So what are you holding on to? There’s not much left. So, how do you build yourself when the models don’t exist, when you don’t want to resemble the existing models? »
Play for adults and for children from 8 years old, My tale of fire. Cycling between falling bombs thus raises universal concerns and, as the classic tale did, explores above all human emotions and behaviors that transcend the notion of age.