Les poulets n'ont pas de chaises / Loretta Strong (Chicken Don't Have Chairs/Loretta Strong)

Paris has been home since 1987 for Argentine actor Marcial Di Fonzo Bo who studied at the École du Théâtre National de Bretagne in France before working with Claude Régy and Matthias Langhoff (for whom he played Richard III) as well as Rodrigo García, Olivier Py and Luc Bondy etc. A founding member of the Théâtre des Lucioles troupe in Rennes, Brittany, he staged Copi, a Portrait in 1998, then in Chile, Eva Perón by Copi in 2001. Alternating between acting and directing plays and opera (Honnegger and Salieri), he remains attached to his troupe and works mainly on contemporary authors like Fassbinder, Genet, Lars Norén, Leslie Kaplan, Philippe Minyana, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Copi, with whose work he carves a rigorous and creative path.  He brings back to the stage the most French of Argentine writers, the man who made French his \'master' language.

Raul Damonte Botana known as Copi was born in Buenos Aires in 1939 into a family of Argentine intellectuals and he died in Paris in 1987. He became well-known in France soon after his arrival in 1963 through his cartoon in the current affairs magazine, Le Nouvel Observateur. He chose French for his novels and his plays which made him stand out in French cultural circles in the 1970s. Author, director, actor, cartoonist, his many and diverse talents were the vectors for his mockery and caustic sense of humour and which are present in all his works. Content with his choice of being a bit of an outsider, he was provocative and attractive, placing his ironic fancy and his generosity at the centre of his work. From La Journée d'une rêveuse (The Dreamer's Day) in 1968 to his last play Une visite Inopportune (An Untimely Visit), in which he describes his own death, he is always talking about himself, between Argentina and France, an implacable witness of his epoch, but with a tender and humorous eye.

A trip through the varied body of Copi's work, whose itinerary includes two stage plays, Loretta Strong and La Tour de la Défense (The Tower at La Défense), a sort of prologue, Les poulets n'ont pas de chai-ses (Chickens Don't Have Chairs), performed and directed around his drawings, in particular La Femme Assise (Seated Lady) . The provocateur of the 1970s and 80s seems even more \'modern' today, more directly in tune with our world, as a sort of precursor, an artist-messiah amid laughter and dramas. From 7 p.m. till after midnight, in one place, it is possible to follow this course in one single go or step-by-step following the guide, actor and director Marcial Di Fonzo Bo.
For this project, the Théâtre des Lucioles, with the Théâtre Dromesko, reconstructed the Volière Dromesko, a poetical fairground designed by Lily and Igor at the end of the 1980s. Its skeleton stands up once again and wearing a new skin is turned into a huge magic lantern where Copi's drawings appear to be just as alive as the actors.  Circular screens and layers of curtains, netting and practicable scenery give shape to this enclosed large public space renamed “Oh! Caracol”.

As a prologue, using the drawings entitled La Femme Assise (Seated lady) which appeared in the hey days of the French publication Nouvel Observateur and later in daily newspaper Libération, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo and his actors recreate the little world of this famous woman and her guests – her lovers, her double, her daughter etc. Accompanied by live music by Pierre Allio and by video image, the actors interact with the drawings which may even come to life themselves.
Cosmonaut Loretta Strong, murderous right from the start of her monologue, learns from the radio that the Earth has just exploded. Alone in her space capsule on a mission to grow gold on the planet Bételgeuse, she finds herself in the middle of a series of explosions, exploding planets around her own.
This science-fiction voyage continues inside the body of Loretta Strong with one aim, to stage \'death' in Copi's own way, i.e. permanently funny, through a series of wild, comical scenes, with a kind of craziness that he invented alone, as writer, actor and director of it.
In this play, we meet all the author's favourite friends, frigidaire and rats, boa and \'waters', bats and parrots... and a whole range of characters who come out of Loretta's imagination, whom she chats with before making them disappear. Death, which becomes a character too, will be eaten by cannibals who come from Venus...
A macabre yet joyful carnival turns into a sort of gigantic nightmarish dream played by Marcial Di Fonzo Bo.
At the end of the evening, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo presents Sale Crise pour les putes(A Bad Time for the Whores), a theatrical display of Copi's lesser-known drawings, where he designs on paper his bestiary, his universe of snails, whores, trans-sexuals, his “faces of humanity”.
Jean-François Perrier

conception et mise en scène : Marcial Di Fonzo Bo, Élise Vigier
avec : Marcial Di Fonzo Bo en « Loretta Strong » et Jean-François Auguste, Marina Foïs, Mickaël Gaspar, Pierre Maillet, Clément Sibony, élise Vigier pour Les poulets n'ont pas de chaises
lumières : Maryse Gautier
vidéo, animation et images : Clément Martin, Bruno Geslin
musique : Pierre Allio
musiciens : Jean Yves Gratius, violoncelle, Benoît Gaudelette, percussions, Sylvain Gontard, trompette, Pierre Allio, piano
son : Teddy Degouys
corps, masques et animaux : Anne Leray
collaboration aux costumes : Yvan Robin, Lucio Bo
perruques et maquillages : Cécile Kretschmar
directrice de production Coralie Barthélemy
et pour le chapiteau Oh ! Caracol : Igor (théâtre dromesko), Patrick Bouchain (H. architecte), Napo (HMMH constructeur) et le Théâtre des Lucioles

Production : Théâtre des Lucioles en résidence à La Ferme du Buisson - Scène nationale de Marne-la-Vallée
en coproduction avec : le Festival d'Avignon, le Théâtre de la Ville-Paris / Festival d'Automne, le Théâtre national de Bretagne (Rennes), Le Maillon - Théâtre de Strasbourg, Bonlieu - Scène nationale d'Annecy, Arte - Chantier Festival temps d'images 2005
avec le soutien : de la Comédie de Valence - Centre dramatique national Drôme-Ardèche, du Quartz - Scène nationale de Brest, du Lieu unique-Scène nationale de Nantes et du Duo Dijon texte publié :aux éditions Christian Bourgois
Le Festival d'Avignon reçoit le soutien de l'Adami pour la production