DIVINE PARTY
FROM NOVEMBER, 16 TO FEBRUARY, 1 2010
Divine Party, a new work by the director Alexis Forestier, takes the form of a compilation of fragments from Dante’s "Divine Comedy" and poems or short stories by Kafka; the fragments from Kafka, the basis of the musical score, are sung in German, while Dante’s words are mainly spoken, and sometimes sung, in Italian. This project is of course devised as a triptych (Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise), although the parts were developed separately with considerable time lapses between the different working periods. The prospect of assembling the different parts into a single whole necessitates the revision and rewriting of the entire project with a view to establishing a common stage grammar, defining how to manage the transitions and scene changes between the different sections, finding the timing that makes it possible to link them up, and finally studying the musical and sound logic that constitutes one of the main foundations of this writing. This is the aspect that Alexis Forestier and his artistic team will be working on at the CENTQUATRE ahead of their resumption of stage preparations as such: developing the set-up and arranging the musical hardware accumulated since the start of the project in 2005. The recording of a disk likewise consisting of three distinct parts - Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise - is planned to take place in the course of 2010.
BIOGRAPHY
After studying architecture, Alexis Forestier was involved in the creation of a musical ensemble close to the alternative scene, Les endimanchés, a percussion group inspired both by industrial noise music and popular song. The company was formed in 1993 centred on shows at the Cabaret Voltaire, evoking the birth of the Dada movement in Zurich, after "Flight Out of Time: A Dada Diary" by Hugo Ball. Alexis Forestier directs the company’s various shows, as well as working on poetic writings and fragmentary forms - dramatic or literary - and the question of their theatrical and musical transposition. Along with Cécile Saint-Paul, he has used texts by Henri Michaux, René Char, Francis Ponge, Maurice Blanchot, Bertolt Brecht, Georg Büchner, Franz Kafka, Gertrude Stein, and Daniil Harms. Alexis Forestier creates sound and visual landscapes in a polyphony of bodies, voices and images. His stage works are hybrid forms that lie between theatre, three-dimensional installation and concerts in multiple musical registers.
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Concept: Alexis Forestier in collaboration with Cécile Saint-Paul, Julien Boudart and Antonin Rayon / Director: Alexis Forestier / Images : Cécile Saint-Paul / Lighting: Matthieu Ferry / Arrangements and sound set-up: Antonin Rayon / Arrangements and DIY noises: Julien Boudart / Original music: Alexis Forestier / With: Julien Boudart, Alexis Forestier, Antonin Rayon and Cécile Saint-Paul. Co-production: Les endimanchés company, Le grandR, La Roche-sur-Yon national theatre. Inferno Party received creative funding from the DMDTS. Purgatory Party received creative funding from the CNT - Dramaturgies plurielles. Les endimanchés company is sponsored by the Ministry of Culture - DRAC Ile-de-France.
