Prélude de Pan is based on a Jean Giono short story. How did the idea for this creation come about?
Prélude de Pan was born in 2021 from a meeting between the rural territory of the Théâtre de Bécherel—then led by the École Parallèle Imaginaire created by Simon Gauchet—the festival Les Tombées de la Nuit, and the work we were doing on the texts of Jean Giono with Romain de Becdelièvre. When Claude Guinard, then director of Les Tombées de la Nuit, invited us to present a work-in-progress version of Que ma joie demeure, an epic production we were in the process of writing and which we presented in Avignon in 2023, only three of the actors from the ensemble were available. Rather than decline the invitation, we decided to take a step aside from the ongoing creation and to follow another path, which almost inadvertently led us to the development of this smaller form. What mattered to me then was to use theatre to explore the living environments in which we are immersed and which sustain us, to broaden the category of what is considered “interesting.” Can the living world through which the audience moves become the very subject of the performance, rather than just its backdrop? Can we attempt to repopulate our imagination with these other forms of life that make the world and keep it liveable? We chose this short story by Jean Giono because in just a few pages and through the form of a tale, it plunges us into these questions while also awakening within us something enigmatic and obscure, fantastic and philosophical.
Can you tell us about your adaptation of the text?
Prélude de Pan is a strange tale, recounting both an apocalyptic and ecstatic union between humans and animals during a votive celebration. From the outset, Romain and I decided to take advantage of the short format of the text to try and hybridise it with other, contemporary voices collected on site. The theme of “hybrids” is actually present in the story itself, and it became a guiding thread in our montage. We resumed our documentary investigation, which we had begun at the very start of our engagement with Jean Giono’s universe. Who are the heirs to his characters? Who are those who today call themselves “peasants”? What remains of these stories of the land? For one week, we recorded interviews during the day and edited them in the evening. Each time we have performed this show since, we have repeated that process of sound collection and reinvented how those voices could blend with Giono’s text in the performance.
What shape does the show take?
Prélude de Pan takes on a form similar to that of Que ma joie demeure: in a sense, this smaller creation served as a kind of training for us; it features the same principle of a wandering journey, which this time more often begins in the heart of a village and ventures into increasingly agricultural or even wild areas—where such places still exist! It even includes an important scene from Que ma joie demeure. But this time, the blending of the tale and the documentary is more intentional, less smoothed over by a continuous narrative. The walking between different scenes, the presence during performances of those who lent us their voices, the poetic and tangible circulation of these mutual gifts, in situ, gives the project a collective, unexpected, and expanded dimension: connecting a language, a literary material, a territory, a land, landscapes, and those who shape them—both human and non-human.