Des histoires, des vies

For her sixth show as author and director, Mathilda May extracts the substance from a multitude of different stories, building, through laughter and emotion, a kaleidoscope of humanity in motion.
In a minimalist scenography, six performers (three women, three men) with committed, physical acting bring to life an anthology of characters: a couple in love stroll through a forest, a coach galvanizes his team at half-time of a match, several people get stuck in an elevator, a doctor and his team urgently seek a bed for a patient... As if we were "scrolling" on our phone, the staging zaps from one story to another at breakneck speed, carried by Sly Johnson's sound score, which brings to life the unspeakable of these shared moments of life. Almost every time, the situation, contemporary and anodyne at the outset, is toppled and derailed by an unexpected event or encounter, revealing the fragility, ridiculousness and incoherence, as well as the bravery and beauty, of our lives. In a fragmentary style of writing where drama rubs shoulders with farce, politics with entertainment, the social with the absurd, Mathilda May gives us a glimpse of humanity, in all its richness and complexity.