En
Fr
EsDecember 2023
Plonger
Menteuses [Be]
Theater & circus
It’s night, somewhere, beside a swimming pool that seems to have been abandoned. Through the half-light, we can make out a young woman walking around the water. Who is she and why is she here?
Plonger portrays an insomniac in a bathing suit and her mischievous partner, who accompanies her nocturnal wanderings, alternating between lifeguard, cleaner and confidant. Between dreams and bursts of life, this duo of intranquillists probes every physical and narrative potential, suspended above the void that calls to them, in that flash of pure present where fear and desire suddenly go together.
Credits
Conceived, written and co-directed by Sarah Devaux Co-direction Mélissa Von Vépy As the insomniac in swimming suit Sarah Devaux As the pool caretaker Marcel Vidal Castells Sound design Noée Voisard Light design & technical management Thibault Condy Set design Neil Price, Camille Collin & Charlotte Perrin Costume design Camille Collin aidée de Cinzia Derom Dramaturgy consultancy Yvain Juilliard (as part of écriture en campagne-Sacd) Text coaching Jérémie Siska Production & administration Myriam Chekhemani – La chouette diffusion Touring & production Cécile Imbernon – La chouette diffusion
The text contains extracts from Eloges du risque by Anne Dufourmantelle, a testimonial by Guillaume Néry, and a lecture by Gilles Deleuze on Spinoza.
A production by Cie Menteuses
Financial supports Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles – Service Général de la Création artistique – Service du Cirque, des Arts forains et des Arts de la Rue, SACD – Soutien à l’écriture Spectacle vivant; Wallonie Bruxelles International, Wallonie Bruxelles Théâtre / Danse, Bourse Ecriture en Campagne – with the support of Latitude50, La Chaufferie-Acte1, la SACD et la SSA Residencies & coproductions La Maison de la culture de Tournai – La Piste aux Espoirs (Be), Théâtre Varia, Bruxelles (Be), Le Sirque, pôle national cirque de Nexon (Fr87), UP – Circus & Performing Arts, Bruxelles (Be) Residencies Le Château de Monthelon – Atelier international de création artistique (Fr89), Théâtre des Doms, Avignon (Fr84), Cie Happés/Mélissa Von Vépy, Aigues-Vives (Fr30), Théâtre des Franciscains, Béziers (Fr34), Latitude 50, Marchin (Be), Le Columban, Wavre (Be)
“The diving board becomes a veritable metaphor for life, in a surreal atmosphere where time seems distended, far from realism. The pool, mirroring the inner state of our characters, is transformed into a swimming pool or a raging ocean. Somewhere between dance, circus and performance, “Plonger” offers us an emotional, funny and melancholy moment. A genuine philosophical and psychoanalytical reflection on our own vertigo. “
“Blending theater and circus technique, the show directed by Sarah Devaux and Mélissa Von Vépy is a little gem of strangeness, humor and daring. Diving means letting go, jumping into the void, taking risks. (…) And it’s all here in this breathtaking performance on the edge of theater and circus techniques. With the added bonus of a clever set design that lets you imagine anything.”
“Above the diving board, the imagination leaps to life. A few set pieces and a few pieces of equipment are enough to tell the whole story, from the pool to the ocean, a diving board, shrimp nets to catch dreams, a plastic sheet to hold back the monsters of the abyss and a little arm oil to make the rising tide swell”.
The company
Menteuses [Be]
Menteuses was created in 2015 by Sarah Devaux and Célia Casagrande – Pouchet, to host their first show, À nos fantômes.
Since then, the company has been establishing itself in the Brussels landscape, but is also expanding its collaborations with various partners internationally. She sets out to give form to what moves us, agitates us, worries us and moves us: our unconscious, our fantasies, our thoughts, what doesn’t (yet) have a word, what doesn’t (yet) have a form. What rumbles underground. What we sense but don’t see. What goes beyond us, doesn’t belong to us, yet flows through us.
There’s a joyful need to bring subterranean life into existence and free it up, to lay bare the multiple, infinite layers of reality, to push back its walls, to investigate the multiple textures that make it up.
The body, with all its potential, is at the heart of our concerns. Whatever its form of representation and its mode of activity, it becomes our raw material for work and writing: the physical, theatrical, imaginary, thinking, immobile, dancing, speaking body… It becomes a channel for affects, sensations and perceptions.
Sarah Devaux
Sarah studied at the Ecole Supérieure des arts du cirque de Bruxelles for 3 years (2011 to 2014). While there, she specialized in rope and made a number of encounters that were to shape the rest of her career. She co-created Menteuses with Célia Casagrande-Pouchet to create their first show À Nos Fantômes, with Mélissa Von Vépy and Tom Boccara (Director). Today, she is developing her artistic research and practice around various physical-poetic media. Her preferred languages and skills begin with the body in suspension, in this “air” space where verticality, an imaginary relationship with water, and an intimate relationship with gravity, falling or even flight are at play. His love of words and their power opened up the field of theater and fiction, as well as a growing appetite for philosophy. She recently met Nadia Vadauri-Gauthier, and trained in the corps sismographe® method. The freedom and immensity of the dancing, moving body, a vector of affects, sensations and imagination, becomes the raw material that links these different media. His work is becoming increasingly hybrid, translating into a metaphorical language and a singular, physical theatrical universe. The body becomes a powerful means of telling a different story. Telling an invisible story, and bringing to light the forces that underlie the human being, confronting him with his fragility and potential in the making.
Alongside her own creations, Sarah collaborates with various directors, in a fairly broad and hybrid spectrum embracing circus, theater and dance (Valérie Dubourg, Damien Droin-cie Hors Surface, Camille Châtelain-cie l’indécente, Mélissa von Vépy, Pascal Crochet , Sébastien Barberon. )
