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Peau, chair et os

Gilles Maheu

In a Prussian blue and blood-red setting wracked by a motionless hurricane swirl a man, a woman, a bird and a blade sparkling in the sun. Retouched with Heine Müller’s explosive eroticism, the myth of Alcestis — the young wife who agrees to die so that her husband will live and then returns from the underworld, silent and veiled —becomes the starting point for a mesmerizing portrayal of a strange image: once you look, you can no longer turn away.

Details

A woman returns daily from the world of the dead and is murdered daily after the same brutal coitus; the man holds in his fist a bird immobilized in a cry while another strains his beak towards the woman… In a performance where the characters burst the confines of their setting in a savage dance, song infiltrates between words, shapes are altered, voices seek each other, bodies flee… Between text, choreography and opera, a raucous song to throbbing, pulsating life.

Credits

Co-commissioned by the Festival de théâtre des Amériques Based on Heiner Müller’s Paysage sous surveillance and Euripede’s Alcestis Created and directed by Gilles Maheu Music composed by Alain Thibault