le GdRA
It was in 2005, on a show in which all three of them were interpreters, that the paths of Christophe Rulhes, Julien Cassier and Sébastien Barrier crossed. The first had come as a musician; the second as a circus artist, seen in shows by Anomalie and Aurélien Bory; the third was a barker and juggler, better known in street theatre under the name of Ronan Tablantec. Very quickly, their three universes drew together, or rather four, as Christophe Rulhes was also a graduate of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, in communication, sociology and anthropology. It was the desire to have stories taken from reality and restored to the fictional narrative, that durably brought them together and gave birth to their own company, but also the desire to create together, to compare each other's practices and to form links between disciplines that are too often not familiar to each other. They consider that the theatre stage remains the only place where this encounter can be effective and can give rise to a performance, an installation, a play, regardless of what it is called, in any case an artistic object sharable with the public. Literary or coming from reality, individual or collective, the story is at the heart of their work and is the object of a narration that is burst apart in time and space. A space inhabited by words, images and sounds, music and songs, dance and acrobatics, just as by anything that can be used to make the elements of "everyday life" be seen and heard. Slices of daily life, "core samples" of our experience that they transpose into a very thoroughly studied aesthetic to shift the spectator's view and to rehabilitate, through the strength of their documentary theatre, the incredible wealth of the ordinary.
JFP, April 2010