2024-01-10 15:12:54
– Three creations trace the threads of filiation
Past and family heritage are explored on stage at Usine à Gaz in Nyon, La Grange in Dorigny and l’Oriental in Vevey. To look better into the future?
Published today at 4:12 p.m.
The hitzAhitz company, the Compagnie Porte-Bagages as well as Flavia Papadaniel and Cédric Simon are preparing to present their work on stage.
Jonas Lambelet/Compagnie Porte-Bagages/Diane Dormet
What to do with your family history when it is too heavy to carry on a daily basis or loaded with cumbersome secrets? Should we eclipse it, confront it, reappropriate it? How? And for what purposes?
Among the theatrical offerings at the start of the year (read below), three creations will explore these questions on the Vaudois stages: “Thios” designed by Flavia Papadaniel at the Usine à Gaz in Nyon, “Shekhina” by the Compagnie Porte-Bagages at the Oriental in Vevey and “Perhaps a day something unexpected will spring from these stomachs”, directed by Jonas Lambelet at La Grange de Dorigny. Three explorations carried out by thirty-somethings who express the need of a generation, that of expressing what their elders preferred to keep quiet.
This start of the year is rich in creations on the Vaudois boards. At Waouw, in Aigle, “Solitude 3000” will trace the journey of a mountaineer swallowed up by a glacier during a hike (Feb. 2-4). In this solo, planned for November but postponed following water infiltration into the now dry theater premises, Claire Nicolas will seek to question our relationship to the unexpected and to catastrophe. Predestined!
At the Oriental in Vevey, the Les Bernardes company will appropriate the mythical figure of Médée in “Médée superstar” (Feb. 21-25 then May 25-26 at La Grange). These three monologues, written by three authors (Valérie Poirier, Béatrice Bienville and Judith Bordas) for three actresses (Giulia Belet, Clémence Mermet & Coralie Vollichard), will reflect on the violence of women and the emancipatory or non-emancipatory value of revenge.
We also note the revival of Omar Porras’ “Conte des contes” at the TKM, in Renens (Jan. 23 – Feb. 4) or that at the Pulloff, in Lausanne, of “Dans l’extraordinaire cuisine de Mister Jack” (30 Jan. – Feb. 4). In this revisitation of the legend of Jack the Ripper, directed by Jean-Gabriel Chobaz, actor Stéphane Rentznik lends his features to the famous murderer from the London district of Whitechapel.
All thus find their origins in reality: a correspondence between a great-uncle and a grandmother during the Second World War for the first, painful episodes rehashed by relatives for the second, discussions with a grandmother during the Covid-19 pandemic for the third. The raw material, autobiographical, was then worked on, nourished, to give the shows a broader scope.
In the footsteps of Takis
No one in Flavia Papadaniel’s family knew what happened to Takis, who was arrested during the Second World War in Thessaloniki, Greece. His disappearance, the subject of incomplete, even contradictory family stories, gave way to a cumbersome silence. After inheriting letters exchanged between this young man and his sister, the actress’s grandmother, the latter decided to engage in an investigation to find out what had happened to him. “For me it was regarding going beyond the narrative that said he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, without transforming this uncle who died at the age of 22 into a martyr, a symbol or a hero “, notes Flavia Papadaniel.
Her research took her to Greece, to the University of Thessaloniki for example, where the young man had studied, or to the administration of the city of Kevala where the family came from. “I did not make an unexpected discovery, what happened to him, although terrible, happened to a good number of individuals at that time,” believes the actress. But I told myself that this apparent banality created a spectacle and opened up a field of intimacy that might touch people.”
Flavia Papadaniel likes to say that the scenography was co-constructed with Takis, thanks to the content of the letters: metaphors, images, are used on stage without however using archives. “Reality can be overwhelming on set.”
A more serene future?
This journey, from the personal to the universal, also guided the reflection of Tamara Lysek, initiator of “Shekhina”. His main idea: to work, via text, music and movement, on the consequences of trauma experienced by his family on his identity. “How can we not completely abandon this heritage without simply reproducing it?” illustrates the actress.
She also prefers to keep quiet regarding the exact origins of her family in order to further universalize her remarks: “Each and everyone must be able to create links between what is shown on stage and their personal history.” On the set, Schätzeli, a woman of today, the grandmothers, symbols of past generations, and the Shekhina, a female figure who embodies a divine presence on earth, will cross paths in a quest for serenity.
This look towards the future is also central to the subject of “Perhaps one day something unexpected will spring from these stomachs”, produced as part of the Theatrical Companionship Grant won by Jonas Lambelet in 2021. By listening the stories of his grandmother, a lifelong resident of Vers-chez-les-Blanc, the Lausanne resident has an intuition. “The pandemic was a period when this idea of the next world was in the air. I understood that a lot of what we might imagine for this future was a repetition of what my grandmother had already known.
Give a different color to the present
The director glimpses a material that he will then phosphorize in the company of six artists, including a dancer and a lyric singer. Six stories emerge tackling distinct subjects such as the arrival of a material inheritance or, once more, the traumas of the Second World War. “These stories echo each other via sentences and concepts. Loops are completed while stories stop where others begin,” says Jonas Lambelet, identifying what he calls “temporal nodes.” He adds: “Telling stories also means sorting, choosing what we keep or not, what we let go, what we transform.”
A posture that Tamara Lysek and Flavia Papadaniel would probably not deny. “Doing this work on the past gives a different color to the present. This gives a form of strength, confides the latter. We all carry a story that we are not necessarily aware of. Being active in the latter allows you to no longer be just its object.”
“Shekhina”: Vevey, L’Oriental, Jan. 31 – Feb. 4. (Wed-Thursday 8 p.m., Sat 7 p.m., Sun 5:30 p.m.). www.orientalvevey.ch.
“Perhaps one day something unexpected will spring from these stomachs”: Lausanne, La Grange, February 27 – March 3 (Tue-Th 7 p.m., Wed-Fri 8 p.m., Sat 6 p.m., Sun 5 p.m.). www.grange-unil.ch.
Read alsoLea Gloor has been a journalist in the cultural section since 2023. She covers, among other things, the performing arts and series news. Graduated in 2014 from the Academy of Journalism and Media at the University of Neuchâtel, she previously worked for ArcInfo.More info@LeaGloor
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