Gulliver, the last voyage

Madeleine Louarn and Jean-François Auguste adapt with the actors of Catalyse the third of Gulliver’s Travels. After being shipwrecked, Gulliver discovers the Laputa archipelago: four extraordinary islands whose inhabitants turn out to be ever more surprising. In this show for all audiences, the actors’ writing mixes with Jonathan Swift’s to explore our collective and individual frailties, our fear of death, our irrational reactions, and our clumsy utopias. The Anglo-Irish author wrote in 1725 that he aimed “to vex the world rather than divert it,” but here we discover a world where we’re invited to laugh at everything in order to counter existential anxiety in these most uncertain times. Thanks to the actors of Catalyse, we “enter the dream” to meet characters as colourful and unique as the actors portraying them.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) was an Anglo-Irish author. A novelist, satirist, essayist, and pamphleteer, he was for a time Dean of Saint-Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin and member of the Scriblerus Club, an informal literary group that aimed to satirise the excesses of erudition. Gullivers’ Travels, written after the economic crash of 1720, was partly censored for ten years before being published in its original version in 1735. It remains Swift’s best-known work.

With Pierre Chevallier and the performers of the Atelier Catalyse Tristan Cantin, Guillaume Drouadaine, Manon Carpentier, Emilio Le Tareau, Christelle Podeur, Jean-Claude Pouliquen, Sylvain Robic

Text Jonathan Swift
Direction Madeleine Louarn and Jean-François Auguste
Stage design Hélène Delprat
Lights Mana Gauthier
Costumes Clémence Delille
Music Alain Mahé
Dramaturgy and writing worshops Pierre Chevallier, Leslie Six

Production Centre national pour la création adaptée / Cie For Happy People And Co
Co-production MC93 Maison de la Culture de Seine-Saint-Denis à Bobigny, Le Quartz Scène nationale de Brest, La Comédie de Reims, Théâtre national de Bretagne, Points communs nouvelle Scène nationale de Cergy-Pontoise / Val d'Oise, Théâtre des 13 vents Centre dramatique national de Montpellier, Théâtre du Pays de Morlaix Scène de territoire pour le théâtre, ESAT des Genêts d’Or
With the support of Jeune Théâtre National
With the help of the MC93 workshops for the construction of the sets
Thanks to the Théâtre national de Bretagne workshops