ARCHIVES 2000 / L'Origine rouge (The Red origin)

"Purgatorius ceratops, plesiadapis triscupidens, oelopithecus chirobates... " The Wife of Separacides is trying to work out the order of humankind's ancestry; then she gives birth. Jean Terrier declares his love in algebra. The Bonhomme Nihil trys to remember a dictation excercise that began with, "The altar was in Jerusalem, but the blood of the victim bathed the universe..." In the middle of the night, the Homme en Matière Vide paints anthropoglyphes on the theatre floor, strewing figures, organs carelessly - a human sketch. His characters enter, live and kill. There are eight clowns who take on human shape, but sometimes behave like animals. They sniff around on the floor, are driven by a single passion: to discover why their state is that of a clown, and they want to see simultaneously their "animal" and their '"thought process" - and the language that comes out of their mouths in a material form and flies into the air like a ribbon."
Valère Novarina


This play is the reverse side of the Opérette Imaginaire (Avignon 1999) and of La Chair de l'Homme (Avignon 1995). An archipelago of acts, spoken and sung, against a background of paintings – Valère Novarina combines more and more simple elements in his stage direction to create a tireless explanation of the world in rebounding word and in the transciencee of a crowd of characters. These elements pose an unusual question, with a comic ending and the tragedy of language.