HUMAN (articulations)

Christophe Huysman is an actor, writer and stage director, with the company, Les Hommes Penchés as well as being the founder of Laboratoire mobile HYC. His activities are diverse but they havea single aim – to share the voice of the poet which he claims is the priority, whatever form he chooses. He is keen to experiment with multimedia performance, with circus, with song recitals, with sound art, travelling through theatre where each discovery, meeting or fancy leads him. He likes to team up artists from different backgrounds to give the audience a chance to rediscover what is real through what should seem like new eyes and new ears. Everyday routine is turned into surprising poetical and theatrical work made up of fragments, tiny bits and pieces which are very carefully put into shape.
Les Hommes dégringolés (The Brokendown Men), Cet homme s'appelle HYC (This Man is called HYC), Espèces, pièce de cirque (Species, a circus play) and les Repas HYC (HYC's Meals)… are all stages of the permanent construction of a universe that is always fragile, where words, voices, sounds, images and living bodies resist any attempt to destroy what is human.
At the Avignon Festival, Christophe Huysman presented Les Hommes dégringolés in 2001 and Cet homme s'appelle HYC in 2002.

With HUMAN (articulations), Christophe Huysman continues his work that began with Espèces, pièce de cirque, (Species, a circus play) his previous work. It's about seeking a new space for the act of drama, wanting to find a new way to communicate dramatic speech. Actors and circus artists give shape to a space that is made of vertical lines – Chinese poles – or horizontal, along which they move. It is an almost empty space which may remind the audience of the cabaret, music-hall and of the course, the circus ring.
This place which conjures no immediate reference is where the poet asks questions about the world around him, about the feeling of void or of falling which sometimes overwhelms those who point a finger at catastrophe and protect themselves with mockery. The received notion that everything leads us into chaos in a kind of uncontrollable movement can, if we are not careful, stifle the voice of artists who continue their quest, to continue to dream of and to imagine a different tomorrow even if they will not be singing the same songs. Here, on the stage, a chorus – voices and bodies – try to say gaily, albeit not without violence, that one should not play around too much with the ambient casualness, but instead, one should invent new ways of describing how the world is, such as in celebratory artistic forms to counter all forms of human barbarity that appear on the horizon, with moving forms, rich in what they have to offer. Dizzy bodies under duress, dizzy crushed words demanding we resist.
Jean-François Perrier

texte et mise en scène : Christophe Huysman
avec : Florent Blondeau, Colline Caen, Manu Debuck, Christophe Huysman, Antoine Raimondi, William Valet
scénographie et conseiller cirque : Gérard Fasoli
travail de la voix : Chantal Jannelle
création et régie lumières : Emma Juliard, Patrice Bésombes
construction décor : Ernest Clennell pour Show-Biz
production : Laure Guazzoni assistée d'Agathe Renaud et diffusion Marie Faure pour Et bientôt

Production déléguée : Compagnie LES HOMMES PENCHÉS
Coproduction : Les Subsistances/Lyon, Festival d'Avignon, CNES-La Chartreuse, La Faïencerie-Théâtre de Creil, DSN-Dieppe Scène nationale
En partenariat avec : La Comète-Scène nationale (Châlons-en-Champagne), Théâtre de la Foudre-Scène nationale (Petit-Quevilly)
avec l'aide : du Centre national des Arts du cirque (Châlons-en-Champagne) et le soutien du Conseil régional Champagne-Ardenne
avec l'aide à la création et l'aide à l'écriture : du ministère de la Culture et de la Communication (DMDTS/DRAC Ile-de-France)
avec le soutien : de la Région Ile-de-France
texte publié : aux éditions Les Solitaires intempestifs
Le Festival d'Avignon reçoit le soutien de l'Adami pour la production