ARCHIVES 2010 / Adishatz / Adieu

We know Jonathan Capdevielle's secret and tragic characters, tormented adolescents or schizophrenic murderers that he has been composing for Gisèle Vienne since their encounter at the École supérieure nationale des Arts de la Marionnette of Charleville-Mézières. Adishatz/ Adieu (Farewell) presents an opposite image. In an unexpected montage of songs and family conversations, the actor evokes that curious mix that results from the relationship between international and local culture (adishatz means farewell in the Pyrenees dialect). These a capella interpretations form the main theme of a private confession, revealing the vulnerability, solitude and fragility of a child from the provinces who dreams that he is an artist and becomes one through dint of a strange will. If he uses the spangled costume and postures from disco clips, it is to tell a truth that could not be revealed otherwise: that of an indivi?dual who is both a man and a woman, past and present, child and adult, a person from Tarbes in the Pyrenees and an incarnation of a dream life. It is this confusion that makes Jonathan Capdevielle an amazing figure of ambivalence. ADB