As film director, Éléonore Weber has shot a documentary in Algeria as well as two films, a short and a medium-length feature, entitled respectively Temps Morts (Temps Morts, A Summer Afternoon) (2005) and Les Hommes Sans Gravité (Men Without Gravity) (2007). Author of Manège written in 2001 and commissioned by Roland Fichet for the series of creations “Naissances” she went on to write Décadrage (Unframing) in 2003 within the framework of the writers' group “Pièces d'Identité” (a pun on the word “pièce” to signify both identity papers and plays), directed by Annie Lucas. In 2004, she staged Je M'appelle Vanessa (My Name is Vanessa) by Laurent Quinton, a theatrical happening in which actors and dancers are immersed in the same video installation. With Tu Supposes un Coin d'Herbe (Imagine a Patch of Grass) first performed in 2005, she combines all of her activities, mixing image, words and directing, to analyze “a world that produces shameful secret ways of thinking and a relationship between ourselves and reality that is totally out of synch.”
“Your happiness in danger, a horrid beast starts to crawl up your torso, onto your blue shirt, yet your face brightens up, tenacious above it. Can you see something else beyond yourself?” Rendre une vie vivable n'as rien d'une question vaine (It's No Vain Matter to Make Life Liveable) addresses itself to a mysterious figure that each of us carries inside ourselves and that the actors pass around on stage, as well as on screen. The relationship to desire, love, joy and the norm is constantly challenged or under threat of being twisted. The young director Éléonore Weber is pursuing an approach she already employed in her previous play, Tu Supposes un Coin d'Herbe (Imagine a Patch of Grass), an exploration of a mental space where unavowed ways of thinking take place, resulting in a dissection of “politically, socially, economically or culturally related principles that end up interfering with our most intimate spheres.” Through a succession of real or imaginary confessions, the author sketches the portrait of a present day that makes each of us strangers to ourselves, disconnected from reality and our emotions. By mixing video, sound and by placing the body outside the conventions of the spectacular, her new creation prolongs this questioning between intimacy, no longer a refuge and public space. She also incorporates motifs that touch on identity and transmission. The breaches opened by this exploded portrait, playing on fact and fiction, give a glimpse of the quest for a possible “Us”, an Us amiss today.
Distribution
auteur, metteur en scène :Éléonore Weber
avec :Jeanne François, Mathieu Montanier, Élios Noël, Joana Preiss
assistante à la mise en scène :Charline Grand
image :Mathias Raaflaub
lumière :Laurent Queyrut
scénographie:Stéphane Pauvret
costumes :Laure Mahéo
régie générale :Pierre Grasset
régie vidéo :Wilhem Mastagli
administration :Patrice Rabine, Amélie Philippe
Production
production déléguée :Théâtre de Folle Pensée (Saint-Brieuc)
en coproduction avec: le Festival d'Avignon, Le Manège Scène nationale (La Roche-sur-Yon) et La place Compagnie (Paris)
Le Festival d'Avignon reçoit le soutien de :l'Adami pour la production