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| Conversation avec un Jeunne Homme (FIMFA Lx13, São Luiz Teatro Municipal, 2013). |
When I was a child, my mother used to buy large packages of washing powder, which came with a gift deep down at the bottom: "The Bonux gif". I used to dive my hand in the white powder to find out tinny little objects (armchairs, tables, chairs…). Then, at my little table I used to manipulate these miniature reproductions of family scenes, I played, I contemplated: I observed the world from above!
Much later in my life I´ve encountered these same sensations from my childhood. After pursuing a personal research, it was very natural the way objects would occupy again an increasingly more important role in my creative work. I cannot imagine myself writing a piece, where the object is not part of the story.
When we say “object”, we are talking about objects that were or still are part of our daily life, with all the nostalgic, creative or poetic values that they contain. This concept can be extended to natural materials and others (such as sand, ground, trees…). They were not built for theatre and this is what interests me the most, their metaphoric value, their power to evoke and suggest, their poetic strength. The visual impact is immediate. These “elements, are recognisable by everyone as they have come out of everyday life, without suffering any transformation, but by chance, there're being brought to the stage, through random encounters.
What personally interests me, is the relation between the actor-manipulator (the one who looks, the one who has a point of view) and the object in action (more than the object being manipulated). Throughout the years and after several creations, space has exploded. The table that once served as a stage, the actor-manipulator behind it, the body was launched out in the space and that lead to new waltzes, new movements, a whole body engagement, taking the objects with it, but yet without losing the intimate relation with the audience.
Sweet reencounters have happened, from festival to festival, along 30 years. The artists and the organizers have become friends and a relationship of fidelity has been established, moments of sharing and good wine.
The object theatre: a theatre of author, singular, rooted in our world and but still with a bright future ahead.
We may talk about a contemporary movement that erupted 30 years ago, but we have not invented anything. I think that this form of theatre that mixes the actor and the object has always existed, and that the Pre-historic man when he covered his body in ashes and manipulated a bone to make his friends laugh, there, he was already going beyond the ludic.
BIO
Agnès Limbos (BE): Writer, director and performer. Artistic director of Cie Gare Centrale.
She played in FIMFA with Ô! (Teatro da Trindade, 2008), Troubles: ô!..., iii!..., ah! (Museu da Marioneta, 2010), Conversation avec un Jeunne Homme (São Luiz Teatro Municipal, 2013). She directed with Nicole Mossoux the workshop The Body and the Object (Culturgest, 2013).
