THE CLOWN OF THE BOULDER # 2
First day of rehearsals: clearing away the deadwood
While Jean-Luc Therminarias and Nourel Boucherk are busy installing a console and loudspeakers by the pond in the summer heat, we start a first reading with Laure Wolf. We are sat on a bench affixed to the ground, the text placed on a small rickety table made of two metallic trestles that a few slanting clumps of earth hold upright.
To prepare this complex and lyrical prose, we have to lighten its message, decompose it and extract the internal structure that will give us direction and perspective. We start reading, and images come to us quickly: we can suddenly think of possible actions. This is the start of Jean Lambert-wild’s imaginary mise-en-scène.
Meanwhile, another weeding process has started and a deafening buzzing sound grows. Two gardeners appear, wearing helmets and dungarees. They carry machines which thrumming engines they operate only a few metres away from us. They swing the strimmers from left to right, which creates a powerful throbbing sound. Laure starts speaking louder, trying to pierce the hubbub by projecting the text through this wall of sound. We were expecting the bucolic calm of the forest, and instead, we’re grappling with the racket of machines.
With each minute, Laure increasingly struggles to make the text heard. She tries to tune her sentences, her words, to the rotating sound of the engines. On the other hand, Jean seems to totally disregard such an untimely activity. He continues to send his clown on the journey of the text which, against all odds, reaches him. He enthusiastically finds the pace and scansion that fit his clown’s gestures and movements. Not only is he not distracted by the machines’ sputtering, but it even acts for him like an invisible dome that intensifies his focus.
When it all stops, the space is suddenly full of a redeeming emptiness that the sounds of nature quickly recapture: a light breeze, the chirping of birds, the frogs’ croak… Their job done, the two gardeners greet us amicably and a little awkwardly before slipping out. We continue to read the text again and again, and it now finds a new resonance in the soft and verdant acoustics. In this newly liberated space, everything becomes lighter, everything creates echoes.
