The Life and Times adventure draws its source from the minutely detailed narrative that Kristin Worrall, a member of the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, transmitted by phone to Kelly Copper and Pavol Liška. For 16 hours, this 34-year-old American answered their questions, recounting her very ordinary life, from the cradle to the present day to them. From birth to the age of seven, then from eight to 14, from the most trivial to the most striking memories, episodes 1 and 2 probes her childhood and early adolescence in a cosy American suburb. It is the period for first times, first emotions, first pain, first rebellion: the period in which molehills seem like mountains. This daily life obviously has something to tell us. We share it in one way or another. It concerns us but, the victims of habit, we no longer see it. Kelly Copper and Pavol Liška's idea consists in fact in giving this banality a literary, aesthetic and emotional value: the phone conversation was therefore transcribed word for word, without any cuts or corrections, including the "huhs" and "ums", the "you knows" as well as digressions, slips of the tongue and pat expressions. Set to music and sung in the image of a musical, rigorously choreographed following a totally Soviet inspiration, the conversation turns out to be a genuine dramatic chronicle. Funny, intelligent, fetishist, hypnotic through their repetitive loops, the first two episodes of Life and Times, among the 10 that the cycle will have, which can be seen consecutively or separately, have the virtue of establishing an almost inseparable relationship between the actors and the spectators. Anyone can become dependent on them, in the same way as we can become dependent on an American TV series that goes into the thousand and one details of daily life. But here we also discover all the magic of theatre: regulated with virtuosity, the acting of the fabulous actor-singers constantly challenges the spectators who identify with this bittersweet apprenticeship of life. ADB
Distribution
conception and direction Kelly Copper, Pavol Liška from a phone conversation with Kristin Worrall
dramaturgy Florian Malzacher
direction assistant Nora Hertlein
scenography Peter Nigrini
music Robert M. Johanson, Julie LaMendola
with Ilan Bachrach, Elisabeth Conner, Gabel Eiben, Daniel Gower, Anne Gridley, Fumiyo Ikeda, Robert M. Johanson, Matthew Korahais, Julie LaMendola, Alison Weisgall, Kristin Worrall
Production
production Nature Theater of Oklahoma, Burgtheater (Vienne)
coproduction Festival d'Avignon, Kampnagel Hamburg, Théâtre de la Ville-Paris, Kaaitheater (Bruxelles), Rosas
avec l'aide de la New England Foundation for the Arts' National Theater Pilot et le soutien de la Fondation Andrew W. Mellon