Trained as a puppeteer at the Ecole Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionette, Gisèle Vienne set out on her own in 2000. From the outset, working with Etienne Bideau-Rey, her stage work has involved puppets, dolls, mannequins and masques, which she uses in her exploration of this troubled universe where eroticism is a central issue. At the heart of her research is an examination of the notion of performance between reality and fantasy, questioning the rapport between bodies, the animate and artificiality.After Splendid's (2000), a play written by Jean Genet, ShowRoomDummies (2001) that falls somewhere between robotic coldness and glamourous sensuality, Stéréotypie (2003) where the image of bodies treated like icons develops in the emptiness left between reality and desire and Tranen Veinzen (2004) on exposure, she has continued her research with other artists. With Dennis Cooper, an American art critic and writer - whose iconoclastic work is about breaking-in and violence, both from a corporal point of view as from a literary point of view – she stages her two new plays while he writes the texts and works on the dramaturgy. Gisèle Vienne's productions are like suggestive objects where metaphorical images of violence and eroticism become rituals of the stage performance.
Three characters immersed in a mental world stretched by obsession, stroll around mysteriously. They are surrounded by twenty rubber, life-like dolls representing young girls. One of the characters, like a lost adolescent, brings their memories on stage. Dennis Cooper, as a voice-off, distills poems and monologues between two musical accidents. Step-by-step, a path is traced where fragments of memor float. Blurred images, a story woven from bits and pieces withholding some clever confusion between what is real and what imaginary. In this play, Gisèle Vienne continues her reflection on the body and the object, via eroticism. Accompanied by Dennis Cooper, author of sombre and passionate writings, she develops a fragmented dramaturgical structure. It is a work of reconstitution where memory, fiction and a material composition, help create a universe peopled with dreams and fantasies. This disjointed tale is situated in a cold climate, but suffused with a harmonious gentleness. Mask effects, icons, postures, impostures, litter this disturbing background which comes close to a police mystery and fantasy. Clues suggesting adolescent violence scattered across the show mark this sliding of senses and contribute to the unveiling of an ambiguous poetry, at once carnal and dis-incarnated, where the timbre vibrates with a strange seductiveness.
Distribution
Conception : Gisèle Vienne
Texts : Dennis Cooper
Created in collaboration with and performed by : Jonathan Capdevielle, Anja Röttgerkamp, Jean-Luc Verna
Music : Peter Rehberg
lighting : Patrick Riou
make-up : Rebecca Flores
Creation of the dolls : Raphaël Rubbens, Dorothéa Vienne-Pollak, Gisèle Vienne
Texts traduced from American by : Laurence Viallet
Production
Coproduction : Les Subsistances 2004 Lyon, Wp-zimmer (Anvers)
Avec le soutien : du Centre chorégraphique national de Grenoble dans le cadre de l'accueil Studio 2004, du ministère de la Culture et de la Communication / Drac Rhône-Alpes, du Conseil régional Rhône-Alpes, du Conseil général de l'Isère, de Ske (Autriche)
Les livres de Dennis Cooper sont publiés : aux éditions P.O.L
Les musiques de Peter Rehberg sont éditées : chez Mego
Certains textes peuvent heurter la sensibilité des spectateurs.