Since L'Ordalie (The Ordeal) (1994), through Anthropozoo (2003), or more recently L'Homme de Février (February Man) (2006) and Ghosts, created for the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique, Gildas Milin has been prolific at producing plays and projects with his company Les Bourdons Farouches (The Wild Bumblebees) founded in 1995. Eclectic by taste as much as by background – trained in visual arts, music and theatre – as an actor he has worked notably with Philippe Adrien, Stuart Seide, Bernard Sobel, Julie Brochen, Michel Dydim and Alain Françon, while as a director, after having worked on Brecht and Copi, he has focused on his own texts of which certain titles clearly define the stakes: Triomphe de l'échec (The Triumph of Failure), Lenz et la Fabrique Scientifique pour un Théâtre du Ressenti (Lenz and Scientific Production for a Theatre of Feeling), Comme un n'est pas Commun (One Doesn't make it Common).
His writing favours a fragmented style, a series of elements, without beginning or end, where the intervals make space for the imagination to run free. By using a multi-dimensional mode, Gildas Milin turns fiction into an opportunity to mix sciences and technology with an approach to human enigma, integrating machines, ghosts, bodies, acting and movement.
At the Avignon Festival, Gildas Milin has performed in Shakespeare's Henry VI directed by Stuart Seide in 1994 and directed Bande de Décohérence (Decoherent Band) in the 25th Hour programme in 2005.
Machine sans Cible (Aimless Machine), a partition for seven actors, a robot and an absentee, presents itself as an impossible but fun experiment. How can you define love and intelligence and find out what they have in common? To answer, the central character resorts to scientific methods and gathers those close to him as well as volunteers to take part in this original study of sensitivity. In this area, nothing is certain; Gildas Milin, author and director, orchestrates the movement of this reflection like a flow that from babbling beginnings, rebounds and deepens language in many dimensions. The author devised this “protocol” for the study of his subject. The seven characters of Machine sans Cible talk to each other but don't lecture as they record secrets and answers, silences and reactions and modify parameters. This experiment uses a scientific method with efficient technological tools, like the little robot, delightfully named “ad hoc numeric generator”, especially designed to go nowhere, and who, propelled by the laws of chaos, establishes emotional ties with baby chicks. But for all its subtlety, the system seems to have a few flaws, failures, gaps through which the game seeps in and the unexpected springs out. Not forgetting that everyone is expecting a latecomer who ought to be present.
Distribution
avec la Chartreuse de Villeneuve lez Avignon
texte et mise en scène :Gildas Milin
avec :Marc Arnaud, Morgane Buissière, Julia Cima, Rodolphe Congé, Éric Didry, Déborah Marique, Gildas Milin
assistants :Yann Richard, Guillaume Rannou
scénographie :Gildas Milin, Françoise Lebeau
lumière :Bruno Goubert
costumes :Magali Murbach
régie générale :Éric Da Graça Neves
conception et réalisation du robot :Pascal Molina
administration :Françoise Lebeau, Lelabo
texte à paraître aux éditions Actes Sud-Papiers en janvier 2008
Production
production :Les Bourdons farouches
en coproduction avec: le Festival d'Avignon, le Théâtre national de la Colline, la Scène nationale de Cavaillon, L'Hexagone - Scène nationale de Meylan, la CCAS
avec le soutien de: la Région Île-de-France et la participation artistique du Jeune théâtre national
Le Festival d'Avignon reçoit le soutien de :l'Adami pour la production