REACCLIMATING THE STAGE (SKENOMORPHOSES)

vincent roumagnac

REACCLIMATING THE STAGE (SKENOMORPHOSES) An Ecotonal Doctoral Piece in 40 Scènes, 15 Parergonal Writings and 5 Double-Postcards. From the perspective of mise-en-scène (staging), and correlatively that of the place and the practice of the metteur-en-scène (theatre director), this artistic research project addresses, examines and experiments on the question of the scenic/scenographic representation of a postnatural world, in climate transition, affected by global warming and moved by abstract data-flows, in a tangled web of storms, information, and algorithms. While lived and conceptual "time", no longer telically given as linear and chronological, is being anthropodecentered and, therefore, diffracted into an open plurality, the Reacclimating the Stage (Skenomorphoses) artistic research project takes the earlier notion of time as a raw material to reexamine, from an eco-scenic and research perspective, in order to transform the theatrical practice of its author and to trigger the latter’s specific contribution to artistic research milieu. By obliquely playing on one hand with memories of theatrical history of scenic internal modi operandi, architecture, and literature, and on the other hand with institutional requirements for doctoral research appearance, the project aims at repositioning the director's practice in a movement of transition of scenic thinking and imaginary through a series of artistic and research experiments, whose enactments and resonant redistribution are poetically at interpretative play in this exposition.

Jardins

Jardin

One of the first theatre houses in Paris was the Théâtre des Tuileries a.k.a. Salle des Machines at the Tuileries Royal Palace. It was situated in between the Jardin des Tuileries (Tuileries' Garden) and the Cour du Carrousel (Carrousel Courtyard). At the time, stage right and stage left (from the spectator's view) were called côté de la Reine (Queen's side) and côté du Roi (King's side), in relation to their respective boxes in the theatre. After the French Revolution talking about the royalty was prohibited, so the two expressions became côté cour for stage right because the Queen's box side was near the Cour du Carrousel (Carrousel Courtyard) and côté jardin for stage left because the King's box side was near the Jardin des Tuileries (Tuileries' Garden). Since that time the terms of cour and jardin have entered the usual theatrical vocabulary, the courtyard side always designating the right side of the stage, seen from the seats, as opposed to the garden side, which designates the left side. These two terms allow the director and the actors to communicate more easily than if they would speak of the "left" and "right" sides, which vary according to the orientation of the speaker. This vocabulary is still used today.

The project consists of planting original vegetal species from the Tuileries' Garden in the left backstage of the main stage of the Comédie Française and let them grow and expand throughout the following successive depopulated theatre seasons. Ad infinitum.

(image: project blueprint)

La Saison Théâtrale N'Aura Plus Lieu

The Theatre Season Will No Longer Take Place

I had often heard of the Jardin Shakespeare* located in the landscape garden of Pré Catélan in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris, but I had never been there. In April, last year, I go there for the first time. On this day, for reasons of high winds, I find the park temporarily closed in accordance with the instructions of the City of Paris, all the parks, gardens and squares of the city being closed according to a municipal decree because of the risks of downed trees and power lines, flying debris and building collapses due to the force of the winds. Six months later, in November, I go back, on a beautiful, sunny, windless Sunday afternoon. The park is open but the Jardin Shakespeare isn't. Closed for renovation. The construction site being depopulated on a Sunday, I climb over the gates. I take a walk in the garden and take some photos. Six months later while I am quarantined, in confinement due to the pandemic spread of the covid-19, and at the moment when all the parks in the city are closed again, this time according to a state decree, I make a series of gifs/screensavers by altering the photographs of the garden with a wind-effect filter, while listening to free online audio recordings of Shakespeare's plays.

* In 1857, an open-air theatre, known as a "theatre of flowers", was opened in the Pré Catelan garden, amidst many attractions which disappeared in the turmoil of 1870. In 1953, the chief architect of the gardens of Paris, Robert Joffet, created the Jardin Shakespeare. This small garden-theater consists of a stage with vegetal and mineral decor and a surrounding amphitheatre, also vegetalized and mineralized, which can accommodate around 400 spectators. The general conception of the garden, based on the literary production of Shakespeare, evokes five different types of gardens through which one can stroll around the stage and the amphitheatre, reenacting vegetally five masterpieces of the author: "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Tempest", "Macbeth", "Hamlet" and " As You Like It ".

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La Cerisaie

The Cherry Orchard

At the end of March-beginning of April, while all the other residents have returned to France because of the pandemic, I remain alone, lockeddown, at Villa Kujoyama, a French artist-in-residency institution, for a week, in quarantine after a visit to Tokyo where the virus was spreading, having difficulty finding a flight back to Helsinki. Spring arrived very early due to an abnormally warm winter and the villa is surrounded by cherry blossom. I make some videos not of a cherry tree but of a peach tree in bloom, visible from my studio, in an interior courtyard. Finally I set up an installation from these films in the auditorium of the depopulated building. A video slightly altered by adding white noise and by boosting the pixelation is projected on two screens. One, made of white paper, fixed, the other, electric and motorized, made of plasticized fabric goes up and down, randomly. The mechanism is quite old, so with each movement of the motorized screen, we hear a squeaking noise. I operate the moving screen myself, imagining a finalized version of the play, with a programmed electronic activation of the screen movements, going up and down, triggered by the seismic activity of the archipelago, in an auditorium accessible day and night over an indeterminate period.

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