Jérôme Hankins presents an original project for discovering a part of Edward Bond's work mainly for young people. On the sidelines of their production of Numéro d'équilibre (The Balancing Act), the stage team are giving several workshops and opportunities to meet the author. In 2002, Jérôme Hankins worked with teenagers on a production of Les Enfants (The Children), one of the shorter plays which Bond wrote for amateur and professional troupes in the Theatre-in-Education programme.
Le Numéro d'équilibre (The Balancing Act) is one of Edward Bond's shorter plays which will come as a surprise to those are not familiar with his many comedies and satirical works. This play is a pure and simple farce, a mixture of realism and comedy. The play is about Viv, a youngster who has decided to drop everything to watch a point on the earth which ‘keeps the world in balance' in an area under demolition, and her friend Nelson who wants to help her, an ambitious, fanatical site foreman, his perfect wife, a thief, and a mad visionary old lady. They all get caught up in the same situation which makes each of them go insane. And it is the end of the world when they begin one last “morning tango tarantella”.
Even though this play was written primarily for young people, the themes are the same as those in the longer works of Edward Bond, and it is like an enlargement of one of their details.
Jean-François Perrier
Distribution
translation and stage direction Jérôme Hankins
with : Jean-Christophe Binet, Albert Delpy, Maury Deschamps, Fanny Masson, Emmanuel Matte, Julia Vidit
assistant to stage director : Benjamin Charlery
stage : Sophie Lebel
light : Pierre Montessuit
costums : Isabelle Perillat
construction : Édouard Sautai
administration : Véronique Felenbok, Florence Bourgeon assisted by Aurélia Ferrière
Production
Projet proposé en collaboration avec : le ministère de l'Éducation nationale et le SCEREN CNDP
Coproduction : Comédie de Picardie, L'Outil Compagnie, les Céléstins-Théâtre de Lyon
avec le soutien : du ministère de la Culture - DRAC Picardie
avec l'aide : à la création des œuvres dramatiques de la DMDTS