Aucune idée | Christoph Marthaler

A working or circus ring, or a flight path for improvisers and musicians, to juggle experience and non-knowledge..

These two found each other. One had just left his native Scotland to study German literature. The other was seventeen years old, working on his oboe, practicing pantomime and dance. The meeting took place in a boarding house in Zurich, the birthplace of Dadaism - which cannot be a coincidence. First performance, first scandal: during an evening at the end of the school year, in the hall of a small country parish, Marthaler let Valentine enter, dressed only in an old bed sheet, to make him interpret a song by Marlene Dietrich while striking lascivious poses in front of the pastor and his flock. That was in 1970. Fifty-some years later, have they changed so much? Valentine has finished his studies and "found his clown," as the actors say: whether he is a language teacher (a profession he actually practiced), a deadpan singer-declarer expert in provocations, or a master of ceremonies completing the task of leading visitors astray through his compère's installations, his intriguing presence on stage, his lanky figure with a piercing gaze, his proud immobility suddenly shot through with convulsions have made him one of the familiar creatures of a theatrical world among the most original of our time. As for Marthaler, he has imperturbably become the creator of a scenic poetry that has upset the codes, enchanted the audience and continues to escape all description, a kind of neo-surrealism based on musical collages - counterfeits, nose-thumbing, clown nose -, exquisite cadavers, dreamy irony and liberating nonsense. These explosive mixes, which for lack of a better term are called his "shows", he concocts with the help of a group with variable geometry, depending on the needs, of first-rate artistic collaborators: in this case Martin Zeller, a virtuoso of the viola da gamba and the cello, and Valentine himself. With only a few months to go before the premiere, it would be vain to predict the outcome of their (re)discoveries. The most we can say is that the trio will explore, according to the show's dramaturge, "a recurring global phenomenon: the lacuna. How does it happen? Where does it nestle? I have no idea. [...] All this in all languages and in all registers. And in music. To what music? No idea." Project shared with the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne.