Western dramedies. Project and team! 1-9

Transcription

1 GREMAUD/GURTNER/BOVAY Western dramedies Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can t see. Andy Warhol Project and team! 1-9 Conditions:! 9-10 Reviews (in french)! Video:! pro.2bcompany.ch page 1

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3 Synopsis Tiphanie Bovay-Klameth, Michèle Gurtner and François Gremaud have undertaken since KKQQ and Récital, a collective experiment that is as freeform as precise, using, as Bergson would say, "conscious and considered feedback from intuitive facts". For Western Dramedies, they went searching for large American spaces along Route 66, from Los Angeles to Oklahoma City. Creation is an adventure, and the three artists chose to drive along this legendary road - a symbol of freedom and conquest, and today partly abandoned - in order to physically cross the territories of inspiration that constitute this fantastical America. Along the way, they collected an impressive amount of material for this performance, which they envision as a real "disorientated" theater. (performance in English, with subtitles) page 3

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5 Dramaturgical notes A journey Our method of work is very porous. Our every day life, the context of each production and our work environment greatly influences our improvisations, which is why we wanted to travel. In the beginning of Western Dramedies, we all shared the desire to go on an adventure, both by "going out into the unknown" (to go freely without knowing where) and "to take a risk" (to expose ourselves to our peril). So we decided to travel along the Route 66 from Los Angeles. Crossing California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and New Mexico, all the way to Oklahoma City. We accumulated diverse material (images, sounds, films, texts...) without any particular structure in mind, and then we let a few months go by before starting our creation process, following our usual method. This is how, through improvisation, the characters that inhabit Western Dramedies appeared. Dramedies Improvising situations and dialogues, we realized that the figures who inhabited our imagination all came from this or that stage of our journey, and that each one of the situations which seemed nonetheless quite funny, held a kind of "mini drama." This mixed-up feeling often traversed us along our journey. The word "dramedy" used in the United States to designate a certain kind of television series which contain both drama and comedy, seemed to us to be the exact "genre" of this performance. Sonority English imposed itself quite quickly as it permitted us to on one hand to discover a new way to act (changing our manner of improvising), and on the other to re-discover the sensations, which we experienced throughout the journey. After selecting them, we rigorously reworked our improvisations like musical scores, accentuating the sonority, the rhythm and harmony of American English. page 5

6 Dramaturgical notes Music We found that the scenes we chose evoked well the sensations we felt throughout the different stages of our journey, but the unique sensations of the space and time experienced on the road, while traversing this enormous America, was missing. We thought about the long hours we spent in the car listening to music (mainly folk and country) in the middle of unforgettable landscapes an had the idea to structure our performance like our journey: a series of stop-overs punctuated with musical space. We wrote the texts for the songs, which the "Blue Moon Shadows," a group which we portray during one of the scenes of the play, could have sung. We asked Samuel Pajand to compose music for them and perform them. The music has a double role in the performance: a carrier of sensations (of time and space) and a dramaturgical element linking the different scenes of the play. page 6

7 A working method evolving from performance to performance It is a bit by chance, and while working as a collective (Tiphanie Bovay-Klameth, François Gremaud and Michèle Gurtner) on certain structural constraints imposed by the complex technical process of our performance "KKQQ," that we discovered and adopted a specific work protocol: we put ourselves in front of a computer with a webcam, and without any themes or constraints, we record "what happens," including spoken, sung or physical improvisation: dialogues, songs, stories etc. Then we adapt the results of these improvisations, word for word, note for note, without censorship, in order not to lose their the meaning and tone. In doing this we are able to archive all of our improvisations (constituting a sort of "data bank" from year to year.) This intuitive process situates itself halfway between automatic writing (because everything is invented on the spot) and the exquisite corpse (because each person pursues or develops on the other's proposition). Wobbly structures (semantic and rhythmic) seem to appear, like unconscious occurrences, masses of diverse realities, which hint at an approximate dramaturgy. Mishaps (in language or meaning) and their expression are fully constituted using this method, definitively "un-noble," porous, polysemous and protean. The entire spoken (and sung) part of "KKQQ" was written according to this principal, while "Recital" was composed of the remnants of "KKQQ" (the best of the leftovers) and new improvisations. For "Presentation," we filmed, using the same method, our improvisations in movement resembling dance- or a certain idea, which we have of dance. Then we reproduced loyally these improvisations, again without censorship. "Choral"- which presents a choir of 4 people in rehearsal- was also constructed using the same principle: each song sung in the performance, with rigor and precision, is the result of one single improvisation session. Thus, the texts, songs and movements of our performances seem to emerge from a vast and organic pool, a pell-mell of collected ideas, semblances of recollections and approximate references-a shifting pool, which resembles more or less our culture. Presented all higgledy-piggledy, but with varnish and an almost obsessive precision, these appearances reveal- from performance to performance- a humorous territory with vague contours, in which one can hardly distinguish sense and absolute nonsense. page 7

8 2b company GREMAUD/GURTNER/BOVAY Founded in 2005 by François Gremaud, the 2b company developped a unique repertory mixing adaptable and short performances with larger stage productions. Certain productions (Re, Simone, two, three, four, KKQQ...) are signed by François Gremaud and others by the collective which he formed with Michèle Gurtner and Tiphanie Bovay-Klameth (Recital, Choral, Presentation and Western dramedies). The 2b company has presented their productions at the Arsenic and Vidy theatres in Lausanne, at the Belluard Bollwerk International in Fribourg, a the Comédie in St- Etienne, at the St-Gervais theatre in Geneva, at the Swiss Cultural Centre in Paris, in the Spring of September at the Cartier Foundation, and at the Far Festival of performing arts in Nyon. 2b company benefits from a contract of confidence from the city of Lausanne and was the first laureate of the Label + contest in Swiss-Francophone theatre for the performance Re. François Gremaud Trained in theatre direction at the l'insas in Brussels, he has collaborated in particular with Noêlle REnaude, Yvette Théraulaz with whom he directed his performance Comme Un Vertige. He regularly gives workshops at the Manufacture, school for higher education in theatre in Lausanne, to students in acting and directing (master and bachelor.) Tiphanie Bovay-Klameth After finishing her studies at the Manufacture in Lausanne, Tiphanie Bovay-Klameth acted under the direction of Jean-Louis Benoît, Eric Vigner, Massimo Furlan, Marielle Pinsard, and especially with Jérôme Deschamp and Mascha Makeïeff. Michèle Gurtner Trained at the Dimitri school in Ticino. Michèle Gurtner navigates joyfully in the unique universes of Oskar Comes Matta, Marco Berettini, May Bosch, Foofwa d'immobilité and Vincent Thomasset «The 2b company offers some of most stable proof of the vitality of the Swiss contemporary art scene and constitutes one of the most innovative propositions on an international scale. Oscillating elegantly between theatre and dance, installation and performance, the performances created by François Gremaud and his game partners- in particular Michèle Gurtner and Tiphanie Bovay-Klameth- is characterized first by its creativity adorned with sophisticated features (like in KKQQ with an elaborate audiovisual set-up) or deployed naked or almost so (as in, Recital or Presentation for example). Both share an acute sense for a kind of minimal burlesque» Jérôme Provençal, journalist for Mouvement, Les Inrock, in Le Phare. page 8

9 Cast and credits Finances and conditions Interpretation Tiphanie Bovay-Klameth, François Gremaud, Michèle Gurtner, Samuel Pajand (Lausanne, Genève) / Ruth Childs (Fribourg, Paris) Collective creation GREMAUD/GURTNER/BOVAY Administration, production, touring : mm - Michaël Monney, Alexandre de Charrière Light design : Antoine Friderici Music : Samuel Pajand Set desigh : Victor Roy English coach : Ruth Childs Technical director: Manuel Ducosson Lights Hadrien Mayoraz Sewing: Séverine Besson Picture (billboard): Christian Lutz Pictures (stage): Dorothée Thébert Filliger Production : 2b company Co-production : Arsenic Lausanne, Saint-Gervais Genève Le Théâtre Support : Loterie Romande, Pro Helvetia, Fondation suisse pour la culture, Ernst Göhner Stiftung, Pourcent culturel Migros, CORODIS La 2b company est au bénéfice du contrat de confiance de la Ville de Lausanne Figures below do not take any grant we could have (Pro Helvetia, Corodis, City of Lausanne, etc) into account: 1 performance: 9500 CHF (7900 ) 2 performance: CHF (9500 ) 3 performance; CHF (11250 ) +++ Author rights Transport of set (22m3) Travel, per diem, accomodation for a cast of 4 comedian and musician, 2 technicians, 1 subtitler and 1 tour manager (to be discussed) Stage: Opening of minimum 8,5m, depth of 10m, height of 5,5 m. Set up: count 2.5 day to set up, half a day for rehearsals. Set-down: 3 hours. Full technical rider available on demand page 9

10 Contacts Tourplan Availability (please check with us) 2b company Rue St-Martin 9 CH-1003 Lausanne Administration, diffusion, production mm Michaël Monney michael.monney@2bcompany.ch Full videos: pro.2bcompany.ch 23 January - 2 February 14 Arsenic, Lausanne (CH) 6-8 February 14 Nouveau-Monde, Fribourg (CH) March 14 Centre Culturel Suisse, Paris (FR) 5-6 June 14 TakeThat Swiss performance showcase, Zurich (CH) 7-18 October 14 St-Gervais Genève Le Théâtre (CH) November 14 Manufacture Atlantique, Bordeaux (FR) February 18 (TBC) Usine à Gaz, Nyon (CH) 8-11 April 15 (TBC) Théâtre de Nice (FR) 15 Feb. 15 to 19 March March 15 to 7 April April to 25 May 15 starting 8 June 15: contact us. page 10

11 Critique - Marie-Pierre Genecand Le Temps du 28 janvier 2014 page 11

12 Critique - Corinne Jaquiéry La Liberté du 1er février 14 et Le Courrier du 7 février 14 WESTERN DRAMEDIES page 12

13 Critique - Eric Bulliard La Gruyère - 6 février 14 page 13

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