Le Colonel des Zouaves

Ludovic Lagarde, a man who has directed the works of Brecht, Bond and Chekhov, wanted to do theatre to learn to read literary texts. Olivier Cadiot, author of a book of poetry intermingled with a novel and published by P.O.L, a work-mate of music composers (Georges Aperghis, Pascal Dusapin and Benoît Delbecq), translator of the Song of Songs and the biblical Psalms, author of lyrics (for Kat Onoma, Rodolphe Burger and Alain Bashung), sometimes comes on stage to read from his works. The two men met in a bar, just as the laws of need and chance would have it. Olivier Cadiot watched Samuel Beckett's Trois Dramaticules (A piece of Monologue, That Time and Ohio Impromtu), directed by Ludovic Lagarde, who discovered \'Poetic Art', a poetical explosion and exploration by Olivier Cadiot who in his particular way, developed the \'cut-up', a way of “taking samples of reality and re-arranging them” from grammar books. Their working partnership materialized with Le Colonel des Zouaves (1997), and continued with the stage production of Retour Définitif et Durable de L'Être Aimé (The Final and Lasting Return of the Loved One) (2002). Their latest joint effort, has generated two new plays, and these with another performance of Le Colonel des Zouaves, played alternately throughout the Festival, are the fruit of three months in residence at the Chartreuse de Villeneuve lez Avignon.


Le Colonel des Zouaves (Colonel of the Zouaves)
Standing to attention, his finger on the tray like on his trouser seam, a servant in a manor house churns over his frenetic thoughts, like Robinson Crusoe in a networked world. His feet rooted to the ground, the Man Friday bends over backwards to satisfy his masters, becomes a contortionist of housework, planetary spy at a dinner party of mondain cretins, colonel of an army of Zouaves made out of papier maché. As if multiplied by strange voice gymnastics, actor Laurent Poitrenaux plays all the roles, brings to life the obsessions of a butler. The actor pushes back the frontiers of reality and of fiction, of subject and form. Composer Gilles Grand steps in on-line with his cursor, carries out a human experiment with the hand movements and the gestures of an obsessive neurotic, punctuates the narration, alters the rhythms and the energy flows. Supple, flexible, “adaptable to the necessarily changing wishes of the client”, this servant functions just like a worker in the new economic age. In this tale of solitude and of servitude, but also of love and humour, a 21st Century soldier enters the fray in a permanent war which takes place within his own brain. The speed of Olivier Cadiot's mutant and comicktic phrasing is in a way brought to light by Ludovic Lagarde's physical, visual and playful directing.

stage direction Ludovic Lagarde
music : Gilles Grand
cast : Laurent Poitrenaux
lighting : Sébastien Michaud
costumes : Virginie et Jean-Jacques Weil
with the artistic participation of : Odile Duboc, choreographer

coproduction : Compagnie Ludovic Lagarde, CDDB Théâtre de Lorient, Le Carreau - Scène nationale de Forbach
texte publié : aux éditions P. O. L