C.H.S.

C.H.S (S.H.C) for Spontaneous Human Combustion. But the play could have been called Fire, for everything that is consumed by it: the stake, cigarettes, solitude, the interior flame... S.H.C. presents a man who plans to immolate himself. It is his inner voice that speaks, almost calmly, while he is being devoured by the flames, while his skin melts, his muscles blaze, his bones crack. Behind him, at her window, a service station cashier listens; nearby, a scientist comments, rectifies, specifies, using diagrams. Christian Lapointe's writing, simultaneously simple, narrative and fragmented, imposes itself, encompassing different universes, playing on the polysemy of fire, from antiquity to the death camps, from creation to combustion, from the phoenix that burns but is reborn from its ashes to the everlasting condemnation of Prometheus. A collective question infiltrates the existential questioning, that of the trauma of history: that image of a man who is consumed functions as an emblem. Without being a total analogy, it is a way of naming the inexpressible. It is also a metaphor for the act of loving, creating, simply living. All this is expressed through the device of the acting, minimal, far from any realism: a tableau vivant that is almost motionless, lighting and sound with an evocative power, a television screen, a jerry can of petrol, three actors occupying a space that is as straight as a die. And a text that shifts from one body to another and sharpens our perceptions, in a stripped down and sensitive ceremony. ADB

text and direction: Christian Lapointe
direction assistance: Adèle Saint-Amand
scenography: Jean-François Labbé
video: Lionel Arnould
lighting: Martin Sirois
music and sound: Mathieu Campagna
with: Sylvio-Manuel Arriola, Maryse Lapierre, Christian Lapointe

production: Le théâtre Péril (Québec)
coproduction: Cinaps
avec le soutien: du Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, du Service de la Culture de la Ville de Québec, du Conseil des Arts du Canada et d'Air Canada