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COMMENT ALLUMER UNE GUIRLANDE DE NOËL EN PLEIN ÉTÉ ?

 

 

Conceived with François Gendre and Massimo Furlan, COMMENT ALLUMER UNE GUIRLANDE DE NOËL EN PLEIN ÉTÉ ? (How to Light A Christmas Garland in Mid-Summer?) is a stupid and intelligent, absurd and poetic, sometimes cynical show, which takes place in the public space during the Festival de la Cité 2010 in Lausanne.

On stage, under the combined comments and encouragement of Monsieur Loyal, the characters, animals, mechanisms, physical or chemical phenomena that make up the adventure have the mission, each time in a different way, to make the Christmas garland that overlooks them shine. Throughout the duration of the festival, several times a night at full hour, the spectators discover a new trick invented to achieve this goal.

Some examples? The belly of a gulping-pig who is stuffing mountains of sauerkraut swells up to the point where the switch on the garland placed a good meter in front of him is activated. A luminescent liquid flows through a rubber tube to write Merry Christmas. Sordid quotes are offered to the spectators whose whistles and booing raise the applause until the decoration lights up. A woman, with a switch on her cheek, gets slapped and the garland sparkles. Another time, the sweat of a cyclist in full effort or the tears of a man who is told a sad story make the electrical system break down. Then an obsessed man, stuffed with pornographic films, has an erection such that his sex reaches the button. Tarzan, for his part, hits it after flying over the crowd at the end of his creeper when, in the next scene, a piano rushing from the air crashes into the ignition mechanism. Later, a finger reaches out to a breast that acts as an electrical relay, while a rabbit, with switches stowed on its flanks, falls into apoplexy after coitus and engages the garland. Finally, a man hangs himself and makes the light shine one last time by sliding off his stool.

Titles: La Choucroute (Sauerkraut), Superman, Flamme (Flame), Le Cycliste (The Cyclist), Prière de toucher (Please Touch), Tarzan, L'Acrobate (The Acrobat), Les Lapins (The Rabbits), Réconciliation (Reconciliation), Luminescence, Érection (Erection), Van der Graaf, La Force de l'amour (The Force of Love), Femme battue (Battered Woman), Histoire triste (Sad Story), Concerto pour piano (Piano Concerto), L'Attente (Waiting), Sordide (Sordid), Le Dépit (Resentment).

With, in the main roles: Alain Borek and Cédric Simon. And the participation of : Guillaume Chassot, Michael Egger, Marine Grand, Denis Maillefer, Laurent Sudan.

 

HOW TO LIGHT A CHRISTMAS GUIRLAND IN FULL SUMMER? is the winner of the Académie 2010 Creation Contest at the Festival de la Cité in Lausanne.

 

 

 

 

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