4+4 Days in Motion:
Elles Vivent (They live)
The title of the production refers to thoughts – they live, they have a life of their own, and it’s difficult to get rid of them. The production’s author, Antonin Defoort – an observer of thoughts – realized that one of the few ways to kill a thought is to forget about it. But there’s a catch – you end up thinking about it even more. In the play, Taylor tells his friend Michel about the power of thought, using a mnemoprojector – a nifty little device that projects memories as holograms. It informs him of the rise of the unlikely political party they co-founded some time ago. Michel spent some time in a spiritual retreat, so he’s a bit out of things. The Context and Modality Platform, a half-serious, half-joke attempt at creating a political party, has experienced a great political adventure, going from brainstorming and theories about Pokemons© to raving about forest therapy, to paradoxical magic. Elles vivent is a moment of liberating laughter that brings hope that we will emerge alive from the predicted disaster if we use our incredible ability to compose stories to build the world.
The performance is part of the 29th International Festival of Contemporary Art 4+4 Days in Motion, which will take place in Prague from 4 to 13 October. The festival traditionally combines theatre and visual arts. Five foreign and seven Czech theatre premieres will be accompanied by two exhibitions. More at https://ctyridny.cz/en/
Conception: Antoine Defoort
Artistic collaboration: Lorette Moreau
Performed by: Sofia Teillet, Alexandre Le Nours, Antoine Defoort and Arnaud Boulogne
Technical manager: Simon Stenmans
Sound design: Mélodie Souquet
Composition: Lieven Dousselaere
Stage design consultant: Marie Szersnovicz
Production: Célestine Dahan, Alice Broyelle and Thomas Riou
Outside eye: Stephanie Brotchie
DIY: Sébastien Vial and Vincent Tandonnet
Engineering of the fliflifli reform robot: Kevin Matagne
Logomorphic adviser: Spirit of the Forest
Distribution: Claire Girod
Surtitles (Czech premiere): AZ Translation
Production: L’Amicale
Coproduction: le phénix scène nationale Valenciennes pôle européen de création / Teatro Nacional D.Maria II – Lisbonne / Atelier 210, Bruxelles / LE CENTQUATRE-PARIS / Malraux, scène nationale Chambéry – Savoie / Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg – Scène européenne / Le Bateau Feu – Scène nationale Dunkerque / Vooruit – Gand / le Vivat, Scène conventionnée d’intérêt national pour l’art et la création / Théâtre Saint-Gervais – Genève / Scène nationale Carré-Colonnes / Bordeaux Métropole / La Rose des Vents – Scène Nationale Lille Métropole – Villeneuve d’Ascq
Supported by: Théâtre de Poche, scène de territoire pour le théâtre / Bretagne romantique & Val d’Ille-Aubigné / Buda – Courtrai
Large auditorium, free seating.
Lenght of the performance: 90 min.
In French with czech and english subtitles
Antoine Defoort
studied mathematics and later attended art school. He now dabbles in DIY futurology, enjoys looking for connections between ideas to see what will happen and creates theatre performances in which he hopes to achieve a very good ratio between education and entertainment.
He enjoys trying his hand at various formats, such as exploring copyright history in the manner of a mountain exploration (Low Degree of Originality, 2016), playing music with footballs crashing into landscape paintings (CHEVAL, 2008), performing an abstract and poetic sci-fi mashup on a loop for four hours (&&&&& &&&&, 2009), or inventing a small world from scratch (Germinal, 2012).
In 2020, he co-founded L’Amicale de Production, which has now transformed into a cooperative platform. The goal is to create a safe space for creators to develop their projects while helping each other. L’Amicale creates artistic transversal objects that lie somewhere between theatre, fine art, and performative art.
“The only theatre performance about politics that we ask you to go see now.” – Libération
