ARCHIVES 2019 / Devotion

If the audience thinks at first glance that they are watching a hotel room in which those who have been exiled from the world gather without knowing where to go, they quickly understand that writer and director Clément Bondu isn't working towards a new realism. Quite the contrary... Bondu has spent the past two years questioning the possibility of a contemporary dramatic ritual with fourteen actors from the École supérieure d'art dramatique of Paris who constantly switch masks here and play with references to literature and cinema. This new generation invites us to follow a tale made of several stories, a deeply poetic story. With its three acts dedicated successively to the personal, the political, and the celebration of the sacred, Devotion, last offering to the dead gods summons the ghosts of Europe to turn theatre into the place where words can be heard without any didacticism. A veritable human menagerie, where the figure of the poet is that of Evil, where Dostoevsky's Idiot makes a comeback, where Ophelia retells her death. A room which isn't actually a room but a world which will allow the audience to discover new faces and new existences buried under the ashes of our time.


Born in 1988, Clément Bondu is a poet, writer, and director for theatre and cinema. His company Année Zéro aims to occupy the stage through directions and performances. He was recently writer-in-residence at the Plateaux sauvages, took part in the Totem(s) project for new operatic writing with La Chartreuse-CNES in Villeneuve lez Avignon, and performed in 2019 the second part of his musical show Nous qui avions perdu le monde (Les Adieux) [We Who Had Lost the World (Goodbyes)] at the Théâtre de la Cité internationale in Paris.

The concept of “actor/creator” is at the heart of the École supérieure d'art dramatique de la ville de Paris, which sees every young actor as a potential artist and offers them, over their three years of training, both the opportunity to work with seasoned veterans and to learn the basics of the craft.