Tendre jeudi

Mathieu Bauer is one of the co-founders of the Sentimental Bourreau Company (whose name is worth translating as it means Sentimental Executioner) which was set up in 1990. In 1999, he became the company's artistic director. He is also a musician and stage director. He and the company have trodden an original path, always with great interest in cinema and music, placing them at the center of most of their shows.
In transposing Jean-Luc Godard's Les Carabiniers (The Carabineers) and adapting the writings of cinema critic Serge Daney (L'Exercice a été Profitable, Monsieur) (The Exercice was Profitable, Sir) as well as Ernest B. Shoedsack's 1932 film, The Most Dangerous Game, Mathieu Bauer has sought to bring the world of celluloid to life on stage. The company has also taken detours into the realm of madness with La Grande Charge Hystérique (The Great Hysterical Charge), through a concoction of the worlds of Stefan Zweig and Georges Bataille with Rien Ne Va Plus – a sort of road-movie like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Always curious and creative, Mathieu Bauer and the members of Sentimental Bourreau lead us down new paths, taking theatre to unexpected places. This time they take us on another trip to America, to Steinbeck's America.
At the Avignon Festival, Mathieu Bauer and Sentimental Bourreau presented Faites Vos Jeux in the 25th Hour programme in 2004.

Set at a time when America was emerging from World War Two, in Monterey, a small fishing port south of San Francisco, in Cannery Row where” nobody listens, but everybody hears,” a small community of individuals live on the fringes of society with their own way of functioning, rejecting a world where “it's becoming a crime to be happy without modern comforts.” Steinbeck arranges a gallery of colourful characters – prostitutes, a barman, musicians, petty crooks – around the enlightened Doc, a researcher who despairs in melancholy solitude, and they try to save their friend by finding him a soul-mate. In this work, where there is much tenderness and lots of humour, Steinbeck reveals, one by one, the stories of these men and women who realise that the world around them is changing, and who try with the little means they have to hang on, not to be left behind fading away. They stubbornly refuse to give up their dreams, protecting themselves from outside aggression through solidarity – not with words, but with acts.
Mathieu Bauer has been working on his adaptation of Sweet Thursday with Sentimental Bourreau since 1990. It's a work which combines text and music, theatre and cinema. His aim is to give voice to the people of America who live on the margins of society, who have also contributed to the making of the American legend. To this end he transposes the loneliness, the search for kindness and the need for solidarity, which are the essence of Steinbeck's novel, to the present. Who, like Doc, will today make the sad observation, that goodness, honesty, sensitivity and understanding are considered as weaknesses in our society? And are not those things that the characters in Sweet Thursday reject such as harshness, bitterness, meanness, selfishness and self-interest considered qualities? Where are the noble souls who will refuse to become dead souls?

mise en scène :Mathieu Bauer
adaptation et dramaturgie :Mathieu Bauer, Irène Bonnaud
avec :Marc Berman, Alain Demoyencourt, Judith Henry, Richard Sandra, Martin Selze, Georgia Stahl
musique originale :Mathieu Bauer (batterie, percussions)
Sylvain Cartigny (guitares), Arthur Simon (trompette)
scénographie et lumières :Jean-Marc Skatchko
costumes: Nathalie Raoul
son :Alain Gravier
vidéo/images :Stéphane Lavoix
prises de vue :Julien Bureau
régie générale :Stan Valette
administration :Véronique Felenbok, Florence Bourgeon
Tendre jeudi est publié au Livre de poche

coproduction :Sentimental Bourreau, Festival d'Avignon, Centre dramatique national de Montreuil, Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, Maison de la culture d'Amiens, Théâtre d'Arras, le Festival international des Arts de Castille et León (Salamanque), Banlieues Bleues
avec le soutien du :Conseil régional d'Île-de-France
Le Festival d'Avignon reçoit le soutien de :l'Adami pour la production