Under Different Skies Adapted from Virgil’S Aeneid

Under Different Skies adapted from Virgil’s Aeneid

A Crossroad company theatrical production

Script adaptation Maëlle Poésy, Kevin Keiss Original Writing and Translation Kevin Keiss Direction and Choreography Maëlle Poésy Starring Harrison Arevalo, Genséric Coleno-Demeulenaere, Rosabel Huguet, Marc Lamigeon, Roshanak Morrowatian, Philippe Noël, Roxane Palazzotto, Véronique Sacri With the voice of Hatice Ozer Dramatist Kevin Keiss Director’s Assistant Aurélie Droesch-Du Cerceau Dramatist’s Assistant Baudouin Woehl Translations Christilla Vasserot et Cristina Vinuesa (Spanish), Leila Moussavian-Huppe (Farsi), Federica Martucci (Italian) Scenography Damien Caille-Perret ; Set Design Intern Laure Dezael Lighting César Godefroy Sound Samuel Favart-Mikcha with Alexandre Bellando Video Romain Tanguy Costumes Camille Vallat assisted by Juliette Gaudel ; Costumes Intern Léa Derivet Masks and Accessoires Marion Guérin Make-up Zoé Van Der Waal Choreography Juan Kruz Diaz de Garaio Esnaola, Roshanak Morrowatian, Rosabel Huguet General Manager and Stage Manager Géraud Breton Set Construction Eclectik Sceno Administration le petit bureau / Claire Guièze et Margaux Roy Promotion and Sales Florence Bourgeon

A Crossroad company production, co-produced by the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne-CDN, ThéâtredelaCité – CDN Toulouse Occitanie, Théâtre Gymnase-Bernardines à Marseille, the Avignon Festival, Théâtre Anthéa-Antibes, Théâtre Liberté à Toulon, Scène nationale du Sud Aquitain, Extrapôle, and the Théâtre Firmin Gémier - La Piscine à Châtenay-Malabry. With the artistic participation of the Jeune Théâtre National / Residency at La Chartreuse – CNES de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon Crossroad company is subsidized by the French Ministry of Culture / DRAC Bourgogne Franche-Comté and by the City of Dijon. The company also receives financial support from the Bourgogne Franche-Comté regional government. Maëlle Poésy is an associate artist at the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne – CDN, ThéâtredelaCité – CDN Toulouse Occitanie, Théâtre Gym- nase-Bernardines and the Théâtre Firmin Gémier - La Piscine.

PROJECT INTRODUCTION From Virgil’s Aeneid to the Stage

Under Different Skies draws inspiration from the first part of Virgil’s Aeneid, the section of voyages often referred to as the Aeneid’s Odyssey. At the fall of Troy, Aene- as escapes the carnage with his father and sails off in search of a suitable sport to found an empire. Battled by storms and by the raging fury of Juno—who has sworn to destroy the last of the Trojans—Aeneas doggedly continues his quest, spurred on by the will of the gods.

From Virgil’s original text, we have taken a few decisive threads—the hero’s flight from a ravaged city, the endless cycle of sea crossings and shipwrecks, the en- counter with Dido—and woven them into a narrative of memory, unravelling, spinning in a space between reverie and nightmare, and in a time when the past and the future continually intertwine with the present. There are several interdependent texts that make up the play: fragments of the first six books of the Aeneid translated from Latin, original writing and theatrical script. These three texts form a sort of palimpsest of the logic of memory; on stage, they piece together a puzzle of encounters, setbacks and hopes in the form of a flashback. In the history of one man’s exile, in the course of one’s man’s wanderings, we find a story of identity transformed—cracked, diluted and finally erased.

DIRECTOR’S NOTE Adaptation and Direction by Maëlle Poésy

A narrow escape from a devastated city, a journey wrought with adventures, setbacks and sorrow, a destiny to follow and a quest to fulfil… All this, folded into a story about ini- tiation, exile, heritage, identity—a few of the themes that have always fascinated me and that I have tried to explore in the course of the Company’s work. When I chose the Aeneid as the starting point for a new production, I decided that I wanted to delve into the relationship between exile and memory by creating a story that echoes the way memory itself constructs a story from fragmens of experience.And I wanted to continue Hat our Company’s earlier productions had begun: exploring the crossroads of theatrical scripts and literature. With this play, I intend to dig deep into the physical and emotional rapport between the exiled and their own memories of exile. I want the audience to see that Aeneas’ journey was built on the layers of his accumu- lated memories, and that the evolution and transformation of his individual identity depend on both what he experienced and his memory of that experience. It is this identity in mutation, identity caught in a flux of past and present—it is this that I want to understand.

I am working with the author, translator and playwright Kevin Keiss on this liberal adaptation of Virgil’s epic. For our “narrative of memory”, Kevin and I decided to focus on certain passages from the first section of the Aeneid, the part dedicated to his Aeneas’ journeys, from the moment he left Troy until he arrives in Ita- ly. We have, out of necessity, made some changes to the order of events, modified and invented certain pieces of the story in order to highlight and clarify elements of Virgil’s original text. The final script is composed of three interdependent texts: fragments of the first six books of the Aeneid that Kevin has translated from Latin, some of Kevin’s original writing, and a theatrical script that the Company developed collectively.

« The exile lives in a permanent state of transcience, an interim space where time seems to have come to a stop. The exile says, ‘My soul is still here, but my life is here.’ The exile has, for all intents and purposes, crossed the border that separates two worlds, yet he feels trapped between them, in a sort of no-man’s land of expectation and statelessness. » Lya Tourn Travail de l’exil, deuil, déracinement, identité expatriée (The Work of the Exile: Sorrow, Rootlessness and Expatriated Identity),Septentrion University Presses, 1997

It is this sensation of “in-betweenness” that I wanted to focus on when we were developing the script, because I feel like it is a precise metaphor for the exile: trapped between past and present, between memory and reality. I wanted a story that lives on the edge of multiple times and multiple realities, a story where chronological continuity is shot through with what Walter Benjamin called “involuntary memories” or what Aaron Appelfeld called “the violent stains of memory.”

What if we revisited the story of an exile, Aeneas, and approached it with the prism of his own memory? What if we adapted this prism to the stage in a way that mimics the way that memory functions? How is a memory born? What physical sensations, what images, what words, what visions does memory use to remake and replay the traumatic episodes of our lives? How does a memory make itself?

In my efforts to adapt this type of storytelling for the stage, I was inspired by the work of a number of psychiatrists at the Primo Levi Center in Paris who have conducted research into the post-traumatic memories of refugees and torture victims, but also by a fateful meeting with Francis Eustache, a researcher in neuropsychology and cerebral imaging who specializes in the study of memory.

To me, it is essential that this narrative principle permeate the performance; it must be felt not only in the text but also in the movement of the performers. That’s why I’ve chosen a cast of actors and dancers. The choreography gives us access to the unseen processes of memory and a means to express the unpredictable bursts of memory as “momentary lapses.” But the choreography is critical for the expression of the voyage, for the wanderings of Aeneas and his cohort across land and sea. I imagine dance as a kind of thread that runs through the play, holding it together, spinning a narrative of movement and travel, giving the piece a rhythm and a continuity that resembles an eternal cycle. An infinite starting again. A voyage, once finished, resurges in the mind of the voyager as a memory. The traveller revisits his travels again and again, as the borders between space and time dwindle. And the movement never stops: the voyage is always under way, in real time or in time immemorial. For Aeneas and his crew, there is only motion and transience, a sense of heading constantly towards something but never arriving, of being halfway between one point and another, caught in a movement of eternally repetition.

We never really know which present or which reality we inhabit. Memories intermingle with spaces and only become real when they are told or danced on stage. The play must shine light upon the unseen. Aeneas encounters shade after shade in the course of his travels, the shadows of the dead and the shifting forms of the immortal. I love the theater because the stage is the only place where men and gods do meet, where the living and the dead wander together, all spectres, witnesses and actors in the same grand play.

NOTE D’INTENTION Translation, Adaptation & Original Writing by Kevin Keiss

Under Different Skies is a personal and sensible reading of the Aeneid, the epic poem that Virgil composed between 29 and 19 B.C. The Aeneid itself is a remake of the Homeric epos, a pastiche, with all the distance that sort of imitation implies. In fact, that’s what seduces us when we dive into the text—the sense that we have been here before. We recognize bits and pieces of Homer’s original story but this time it’s an altogether different voyage, a voyage of exiles. If the Iliad and the Odyssey sang the glory of the victors in the Trojan War, the Aeneid is the saga of the vanquished.

Troy has fallen. The City and its inhabitants have been annihilated, and we rejoin the Trojan camp as the story begins. The scenario is simple: a man flees the burning city, carrying his father on his shoulders and his sons in his arms. His wife will not survive the final assault of the Greek armies. The man gathers a small group of survivors and they take to the sea. But these men are not Odysseus sailing home to Ithaca. These men are stateless—and they drift from land to island in search of a new country. Aeneas, guided by the gods, has one singular obsession: the foundation a new Troy. His quest takes him across the seas and even into the Underworld, where he meets the ghost of his father.

Translating and writing for the stage

In Ancient Rome, each literary genre had its own particular meter. Epic poems, for instance, were written exclusively in dactylic hexameter—a verse pattern that relies on the contrasting of short and long vowels to create a sharp, singular rhythm. I translate Virgil for actors. So, mostly, I treat text like raw material. A source for lines that actors will speak aloud. But Virgil’s work was written as a song and intended for singers; its text is by no means self-sufficient. As a script without music, it is woefully inadequate. It is more of a libretto, one element of a greater work, an opus that was only whole when it was scored with music, sung, and even danced by an archimime. Today, the burden is on the actors and to directors to decide what sound and shape Virgil’s poem should have on stage. The Aeneid definitely needs to be “fleshed out.” Many of the texts from Ancient Rome that we have today are marked by an essential duality: they were both “living” works of art, intended for the general public, and intentional monuments to the Empire’s intellectual and cultural elite. Otherwise, they would never have been preserved. These texts were never meant be read in the silence of a library; they were meant to be read aloud. And another big difference between now and then: for Romans, the sentiment and the spectacle of these works were primary. The shape of the performance mattered more than the “storyline” we have come to sacralize in the modern era.

The shape that Maëlle and I decided to give this play required us to make a few cuts and changes to the original order of events—and even to imagine a few new episodes—in order to highlight certain elements in the raw material of Virgil’s text. In order to create a genuinely theatrical adaptation, we felt we needed add some of our own writing into the mix; we invented dialogues, composed scenes of enactment, and created a montage from fragments lifted from the first six books of the Aeneid.

At the crossroads of textual and theatrical writing, Under Other Skies follows the disruptive, unpredictable and sensory nature of memory along two lines: the recollections of Aeneas and the anger of Juno.

As a writer and translator, my work alternates between the precision of Virgil’s text and what classic scholars have called “beautiful infidelities,” those workarounds we use to recreate the verbal, rhythmic and emotional force of a particular passage.

The script I am delivering to our actors resembles blank verse, a series of naked paragraphs posed one after the other, so that they can invent a coherence and a continuity on the stage. Although I haven’t gone as far as to remove the spaces that separate individual words—the way many ancient plays have done—I have removed a majority of the punctuation in order to leave the actors with maximum interpretative freedom. They will find a rhythm in their breathing, in pauses, a power in the rhythm of their bodies of their voices. Despite the complexities of Latin, I avoid using any of the “special effects” that some translators use to render the oddities of an ancient tongue in modern French. I prefer an immediate intelligibility. That means using a physical and an emotional language, a language that fierce and direct. I have modernized certain passages that seemed frozen in Antiquity in order to lift them out of the stiffness of age and into realm of the imagination. That’s another difference between then and now: imagination. In Rome, the word was not the be-all, end-all. The storyline was no more than a line. Text was a thread to be raveled and unraveled. And now it’s our turn. We’ve taken up that thread, and rolled it into a play that brings together translation, invention and theater.

THE AENEID: A GRAND TALE OF CULTURAL CROSS-FERTILIZATION ? By FLORENCE DUPONT

Antiquity often serves to comfort contemporary intellectuals, insofar as they can project themselves and their ideas onto its screen and walk away feeling as if their notions had always been a part of history. Historical anthropology, on the other hand, seeks to trouble that intellectual comfort zone by establishing what it calls “clinical distance.” Athens was a city that was always looking inward. Athenian citizenship was passed down from father—and mother—to son; very rarely did the elders of Athens grant citizenship to the foreign-born. Rome, for its part, adopted the opposite policy. From the start, the Romans liberally awarded citizenship to the enemies they conquered and the slaves they freed—eager new citizens who, once they were integrated into Roman society, provided the Empire with legions of loyal soldiers and an endlessly renewable elite. When we look at “our ancestors, the Romans,” we must understand that this notion of citizenship and identity lies at the very core of their open society (was it multicultural or just multiracial?). As we dig deeper, we are surprised to discover that that Roman citizenship was not simply a legal status accorded to individuals independent of race, ethnicity or cultural background but that it was also based on a complex legal concept called origo, which held that all Roman citizens, in one essential way or another, were citizens from other lands.

“We are all foreigners” could be a motto for the Aeneid, a poem dedicated to origo and to the celebration of Aeneas, the “father of the Romans” and yet the face of otherness. As a hero from a faraway country, he could never have founded Rome.

Florence Dupont, La ville sans origine, L' « Énéide »: un grand récit du métissage ? (The City Without an Origin, The Aeneid: A Grand Story of Cultural Cross-fertilization?) Collection Le Promeneur, Gallimard 2011.

ORGIA, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1966

J’ai subi ce processus d’être différent. Cela m’est arrivé. Par quel dessein du monde? Pour que les autres se reconnaissent comme des Justes? Et ainsi puissent suivre, rassu- rés le chemin de la vie? Mais l’homme auquel, pauvre misère, est arrivé le destin d’être DIFFÉRENT, doit-il rester toute sa vie fermement, épinglé, fiché dans sa différence? Est-ce qu’elle appartient seulement aux autres (les sympathiques normaux, les bouleversants normaux) la prérogative d’aller de l’avant, et de faire son histoire? Alors que moi, le DIFFÉRENT, et tous, mes malheureux compagnons de disgrâce (Nègres, Juifs) n’auraient rien. Pas d’Histoire. Un destin d’immobilité préservé par la haine, par la haine des frères qui moyennant évolutions et révolutions morales et religions, avancent pas à pas

EXCERPT from Under Different Skies Translation and Original Writing by Kevin Keiss

AENEAS—

Friends Neighbours Let’s run to the aid of the city in flames Let‘s die and throw ourselves into the heart of the fight There is only one hope for the Vanquished: to hope for no salvation An ardent fury redoubles in the hearts of the young Thus are we like rapacious wolves blinded by the thick fog Raging hunger grips our stomachs Our little ones are waiting for us in the cottage, famished We rush to the heart of the city The arrows whistle all around us As we run I say to myself We run to our death Who will be able to recount the abomination of this last night? Who will be able to count the dead? Who will be able to shed tears on the scale of the horror? The ancient city Which for so many years reigned Sovereign has little by little crumbled I run We run Bodies There are bodies sprawling Inert Numberless bodies scattered everywhere In the streets In the houses with open doors On the sacred forecourts of temples The heirs of the race of Teucer are not the only ones to pay with their lives Greeks lie here and there and sometimes courage is reborn in our heart Mourning is everywhere Everywhere l the many faces of the horror of death

That’s it father That’s the way Climb on my back I’ll bear you on my shoulders and you’ll weigh nothing at all Whatever happens we stay together Shared peril, shared safety I’ll take Ascanius in my arms Creusa, you follow us Let’s hurry away from the city to the mound of the old temple The old Woods of Ceres by the ancient Cypress tree The one that the piety of our fathers has protected all these years Father, take in your hands the penates statuettes and the sacred objects of our country I can do nothing My hands are covered in blood I can’t touch them without being purified Let’s go to the temple. There are old boats moored on the shore there. We leave as a small group Creausa my wife is behind me

I feel the weight of my father on my shoulders and I clutch my tiny son to me Our last night The last night of Troy

We walk cloaked in darkness I who had rushed into the fight I fear the slightest creak, the slightest snap, the least twig I catch my breath in apprehension of a battalion of Greeks who might suddenly loom before us We’ve almost arrived at the gates of the city The temple’s at the end of the road I see the flash of the Greek shields approaching That’s the gleam of their weapons I lose all clarity and run toward the shore, cutting across fields Suddenly I plunge into the thicket Suddenly I no longer hear Creusa behind me I turn around Creusa has disappeared I don’t know how, I don’t know She was beside me My eyes lost her for a moment and didn’t see her again. We all come to the sacred time of ancient Ceres Our little group is safe Everyone is here except my wife In my dismay I accuse men and gods I entrust my son to my father and turn back I return to the city wearing my shining weapons I face again all the hazards I go back through Troy again I expose my life to all the dead I get back to the walls and the dark door whence we came I go back on our steps and in the night I spot our tracks I go over the path with my eyes I search the night and the horror

Founded in 2010, the Crossroad Company is a diverse group of actors, set designers, costumers, sound and lighting designers, a director and a playwright, all alumni of the École du Théâtre National de Strasbourg (TNS).

The Company produced its first play, Funérailles d’hiver (Winter Funeral), as part of a director’s workshop at TNS and performed it at the Théâtre Les Transversales in Verdun and at the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne-CDN as part of the May Drama Festival in 2011.

In 2012, Crossroad staged Marieluise Fleisser’s Purgatoire à Ingolstadt (Purgatory at Ingolstadt) at the Espace des Arts of the Scène Nationale de Chalon-sur-Saône, at the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne-CDN and, in 2013, at the Théâtre du Nord’s Prémices Festival. From 2012 to 2016, Crossroad was an associate of the Scène Nationale de Chalon-sur-Saône.

For the 2014 May Drama Festival at the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne, the Company staged Candide, si c’est ça le meilleur des mondes (Candide, If That’s Really the Best of All Worlds)—adapted by Maëlle Poésy and Kevin Keiss, with original writing by Kevin Keiss—as a co-production with the Théâtre du Gymnase and the Espace des Arts. The play toured the country from 2014 to 2019, and was performed in Paris at the Théâtre de la Cité Internationale in January 2016.

That same year, Maëlle Poésy directed two short Chekhov plays, The Bear and Swansong, at the Studio of the Comédie Française. In 2016, Maëlle Poésy staged Ceux qui errent ne se trompent pas (Those Who Wander Aren’t Wrong)—based on the José Saramago novel, Seeing, and adapted for the stage by Kevin Keiss in collaboration with Maëlle Poésy—first at the Espace des Arts in Chalon-sur-Saône and then at 70th annual Festival d’Avignon. The play toured the country for the rest of the 2016/17 season.

In 2017, Maëlle Poésy staged Julie Ménard’s Inoxydables (Rustproof) at the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne and toured it nationally for the 2017/18 season.

In a co-direction with Jorge Eiro, Pedro Granato, Lucia Miranda and Florencia Linder, Crossroad presented País Clandestino at the Buenos Aires International Festival (FIBA) and performed it on tour in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Portugal and France from 2017 to 2019.

In June 2016, Maëlle Poésy was awarded the Prix de la Révélation (New Discovery Prize) by the French Critics’ Association for Theater, Dance and Music for her work on The Bear, Swansong, and Candide, Si c’est ça le meilleur des mondes.

Maëlle Poésy and Crossroad are associates of the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne-CDN in 2019, of the Théâtre de la Cité– CDN Toulouse Occitanie until 2022, and theaters in Marseille until 2021.

The Crossroad Company is subsidized by the DRAC Bourgogne Franche-Comté and by the City of Dijon, and receives financial support from the Bourgogne Franche-Comté regional government.

CONTACT INFORMATION Administration and production Claire Guièze — tel. +33 (0)6 82 34 60 90 Promotion Florence Bourgeon — tel. +33 (0)6 09 56 44 24

THE CREATIVE TEAM

MAËLLE POÉSY - DIRECTOR An actor and director with a Master of Theatrical Arts from the Sorbonne, Maëlle Poésy also studied dance under Hofesh Schechter, Damien Jalet and Koen Augustijnen (Les Ballets C de la B). In 2007, she matriculated to the London Academy of Drama and Music (LAMDA) and later studied at the École Supérieure d’Art Dramatique at the Théâtre National de Strasbourg (TNS). Maëlle joined the drama company at the École du TNS, where she acted under the direction of Paul Desveaux, Kevin Keiss, Nikolai Koliada, Gerold Schumann and Christiane Jatahy. She has worked with the film makers Marc Rivière, Edwin Baily and Philippe Claudel in France, and with Nathan Silver in the United States. Maëlle directed Hanokh Levin’s Funérailles d’hiver (Winter Funeral) at the May Drama Festival in 2011; she staged Fleisser’s Purgatoire à Ingolstadt (Purgatory in Ingolstadt) at the Espace des Arts of the Scène Nationale de Chalon- sur-Saône in 2012, and toured with the play for the 2012/13 season. In 2014, Maëlle staged and directed Candide, si c’est ça le meilleur des mondes... d’après Voltaire (Candide, If That’s Really the Best of All Worlds) for the May Drama Festival at the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne-CDN, and then toured it nationally from 2014 to 2019, including a stint in Paris at the Théâtre de la Cité Internationale in January 2016. Maëlle attended the Directors’ Lab at New York’s Lincoln Center Theater in 2014 and she also took part in the FTA’s International Rendezvous in Quebec in 2015. In 2016, she directed two Chekhov plays for the Studio of the Comédie Française, The Bear and Swansong, and went on to stage Ceux qui errent ne se trompent pas (Those Who Wander Aren’t Wrong)—written by Kevin Keiss in collaboration with Maëlle Poésy—at the Espace des Arts of the Scène Nationale de Chalon-sur-Saône. The play was also performed at the 70th annual Festival d’Avignon. In June 2016, Maëlle was awarded the Prix de la Révélation (New Discovery Prize) by the French Critics’ Association for Theater, Dance and Music for her work on The Bear, Swansong, and Candide, Si c’est ça le meilleur des mondes. In 2017, Maëlle staged Glück’s Orpheus and Eurydice at the Dijon City Opera. She co-wrote, co-directed and performed in País Clandestino with her colleagues, the actors and directors Jorge Eiro (Argentina), Pedro Granato (Brazil), Lucia Miranda (Spain) and Florencia Linder (Uruguay). First performed at the Buenos Aires International Festival (FIBA), País Clandestino continued its run in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, Portugal and France. Maëlle staged Julie Ménard’s Inoxydables (Rustproof), an itenirant play that was performed at lycées and other venues across Burgundy for the 2017/18 season. Maëlle has also worked as a drama teacher at the École Régionale d’Acteurs de Cannes (ERAC).

KEVIN KEISS – AUTHOR, TRANSLATOR, DRAMATIST An author, playwright and director trained at the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, Kevin Keiss is a specialist in classical theater and holds a Master’s degree in Classics from the Sorbonne. He is an associate professor at the University of Bordeaux-Montaigne and a member of the CNRS Antiquité: Territoire des Écarts (Antiquity and the Territory of Difference) unit at the French National Center for Scientific Research. Kevin has worked on numerous creative productions in France and abroad, including the entire cycle of collaborations with Maëlle Poésy and the Crossroad Company. A regular lecturer at CNES La Chartreuse (The National Center for Playwriting), Kevin was a founder of the Traverse Writers’ Collective there. A number of Kevin’s plays have been staged, including: Troyennes, les morts se moquent des beaux enterrements (The Women of Troy, or The Dead Scoff at Beautiful Burials), directed by Louis Guédon of Théâtre 13; Love Me Tender, a play for younger audiences published by Acte(s) as part of their series, À Mots Découverts; Ceux qui errent ne se trompent pas (Those Who Wander Aren’t Wrong), winner of the National Theater Center’s award for “Plural Playwriting,” written in collaboration with Maëlle Poésy for Actes Sud-Papiers at the 2016 Festival d’Avignon; Je vous jure que je peux le faire (I Swear I Can Do It), directed by Alexandre Ethève and performed at the Théâtre de Sartrouville and the Théâtre des Yvelines-CDN; Harlem Quartet, translated and adapted from a text by James Baldwin, directed by Élise Vigier and performed at the MAC in Créteil; Désobéir (Disobey), a collaboration with Alice Zeniter, directed by Julie Bérès for La Commune-CDN d’Aubervilliers; Le jour où les femmes ont perdu le droit de vote (The Day Women Lost the Right to Vote), directed by Didier Girauldon, staged first at the CDN de Tours and then toured nationally; Irrépressible (Unstoppable), commissioned by Les Sens des Mots and published in an anthology by Les Solitaires Intempestifs, directed by Baptiste Guiton at the TNP de Villeurbanne; Ce qui nous reste de ciel (What We Have Left of the Sky), winner of the Artcena Prize and laureat of the 3rd annual Festival du Jamais Lu de Paris, staged for the Théâtre Ouvert by the Canadian director Sylvain Belanger, its script soon to be published by Actes Sud-Papiers; Rien ne se passe jamais comme prévu (Nothing Ever Happens the Way It’s Supposed To), directed by Lucie Bérélowitsch for the CDN de Caen; Pavillon noir (Black Pavilion), an OS’O group project, written by the Traverse Writers’ Collective/ TNBA. Kevin is currently working on a production of Ritsos’ Song for the Scène Nationale de Cherbourg and Portrait de Stéphane Hessel for the CDN de Caen.

DAMIEN CAILLE-PERRET - SCENOGRAPHER After finishing his studies in Literature, Applied Arts and Theater, Damien joined the Théâtre National de Strasbourg (TNS) where he studied scenography and worked on some his first plays. Damien first worked as an assistant to the director Jacques Nichet and has since worked as a scenographer with directors like Sylvain Maurice, Richard Mitou, Nicolas Struve, Olivier Werner, Edith Scob, Dominique Valadié, Nicolas Liautard, Betty Heurtebise, Arnaud Meunier and Maëlle Poésy. Since 1999, Damien has been responsible for the scenography in all of Yves Beaunesne’s theatrical productions, including La fausse suivante (The False Servant), Partage de midi (Break of Noon) at the Comédie Française, L’annonce faite à Marie (The Annunciation of Marie) at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, El Cid, Ella; and in his operatic productions, including Werther and Rigoletto at the Lille Opera, Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) at the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Carmen at the Opéra Bastille. Until 2015, Damien was the director of the Têtes de Bois company, whose work is a mix of drama, music and marionette theater. Damien’s has also collaborated with the Dijon Opera on a number of productions, as a director on L’Opéra de la lune (The Moon’s Opera), Actéon and more recently, Hommage à Lorca; as a scenographer for Laurent Joyeux’s stagings of Katia Kabanova and The Ring cycle, and for Maëlle Poésy’s production of Orpheus and Eurydice.

CÉSAR GODEFROY – LIGHTING DESIGN A graduate of the École Olivier de Serres in Paris where he studied architecture, scenography and then stage building, César worked in a number of Parisian theaters before joining the École du Théâtre National de Strasbourg (TNS) as a stage manager. Starting in 2009, César worked as a stage manager and property designer for the directors Hubert Colas (Chto Trilogie, Face au mur) and Alain Françon (Du mariage au divorce). In 2012, he worked on his first production as a lighting designer and contributed to the scenography of Julien Brochen’s Whistling Psyche at the TNS, and from 2012 to 2014, he assisted in the lighting design on Gauvain, Perceval et Lancelot at the TNS and the TNP Villeurbanne. César also worked as a stage manager to Christophe Perton in his 2015 production of L’avantage avec les animaux (The Advantages of Animals) at the Théâtre du Rond-Point in Paris. Since 2016, César has dedicated most of his time and energy to lighting design, working with theater companies like L’Impossible—on Julien Allouf and Clément Bondu’s Désertion/Jour 0 (Desertion/Day 0)—and the L’Image et Demi Company on Aurélia Guillet’s Quelque chose de possible (Something Possible). César also designed the lighting for Guillaume Vincent’s staging of Songes et métamorphoses (Dreams and Metamorphoses) at the Théâtre de l’Odéon. He worked as a lighting technician on the L’Unanime company’s production of Petite Nature and Panoramas by Laura Fouqueré and Cyril Ollivier, and on the Dinoponera Howl Factory’s staging of the Trilogie de l’état urgent (The State of Emergency Trilogy) by Mathias Moritz. César is currently working on three new productions by Arnaud Meunier, Guillaume Vincent and Samuel Achache.

CAMILLE VALLAT – COSTUME DESIGN After finishing her degree in Architecture (DPLG) in 2007, Camille continued her studies at the École Nationale Supérieure de l’Architecture (Higher School of Architecture) Paris-Belleville and at the University of Rome III. In 2008, she joined the Costume and Set Design department at the École du Théâtre National de Strasbourg (TNS) in 2008. Camille has worked with Jean Pierre Vincent on the scenography for Bertold Brecht’s Fear and Misery of the Third Reich and Georges Büchner’s Woyzeck (TNS, Théâtre de la Commune, 2011); and on the scenography and costume design for Aeschylus’ The Suppliants at the Théâtre du Gymnase in Marseille en 2013. She has worked with the director Thomas Condemine on the scenography and costume design for Lachaud’s Hétéro at the Théâtre du Rond- Point in 2014 and for L’Otage et le Pain Dur (The Hostage and Hard Bread) by Paul Claudel at the Théâtre National de Toulouse in 2014. Camille also designed costumes for Mickey le Rouge, adapted from Tom Robbins’s Still Life With Woodpecker, performed at the May Drama Festival in Dijon in 2015, and for Andromache at the Comédie de Poitiers in 2017. She has alos collaborated with the director Didier Girauldon, contributing scenography and costume design for M.A. Cyr’s Fratrie (Brotherhood) at the CDRT Tours in 2014, and scenography for Paratonnerres at CDRT Tours in 2016. Camille first worked with Maëlle Poésy on the costumes for Candide, si c’est ça le meilleur des mondes... d’après Voltaire (Candide, If That’s Really the Best of All Worlds) for the May Drama Festival at the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne- CDN in 2013, for Kevin Keiss’ Ceux qui errent ne se trompent pas (Those Who Wander Aren’t Wrong) at the Festival d’Avignon in 2016, and for Glück’s Orpheus and Eurydice at the Opéra de Dijon in 2017. Additionally, Camille has worked as second costume assistant to Moidele Bickel on Robert Wilson’s staging of Jean Genet’s Les Nègres at the Theâtre de l’Odéon in 2014, and as scenographer’s assistant to Renato Bianchi on Bozon- net’s production of Soulèvements (Uprisings) at the Théâtre des Métallos in 2015.

SAMUEL FAVART-MIKCHA - SOUND DESIGN A graduate of the l’École du Théâtre National de Strasbourg (TNS), Samuel worked as the lead sound designer on Joël Jouanneau’s staging of À l’Ouest, Saisons 1 à 7 (Out West, Seasons 1-7) at the Théâtre de Lorient, the Théâtre National de Strasbourg and the Théâtre National de la Colline in 2010. Samuel was also responsible for sound and lighting

12 design at the Sfumato company’s Avec Dostoïevski atelier the same year. Samuel has worked with the Compagnie Graines de Soleil, most notably as a sound designer and engineer to Khalid Tamer and Julien Favart on their production of Profils atypiques (Atypical Profiles) at the Lavoir Moderne Parisien in Montreal in 2010, but also as a stage manager at the Awaln’ Art Festival in Morocco in 2013. In May 2011, Samuel was the lead sound designer for David Clavel’s Planète de Evguéni Grichkovets (The Planet of Evgeny Grishkovets), a production with Les Possédés collective for La Ferme du Buisson-Noisiel and the Théâtre de la Bastille. The same year, he also worked as the sound designer on Vincent Ecrepont’s Les Interrompus (The Interrupted), an À Vrai Dire company production at the Comédie de Picardie d’Amiens, in Colombes and Avignon. In 2013, Samuel designed the lighting for Quand quelqu’un bouge (When Someone Moves), a creation for the Collectif de la Bascule. In collaboration with Charlotte Lagrange and the La Chair du Monde company, Samuel was responsible for the sound design of L’Âge des poissons (The Age of Fish) at the La Filature theater in Mulhouse in 2013, and of Aux Suivants (Next!) at the Comédie de l’Est in Colmar in 2015. In 2014, he designed the sound for and acted in Victor Hugo’s Marie Tudor with the La Galerie collective. Samuel has been collaborating with the Crossroad company since 2011, and has been a sound designer on Maëlle Poésy’s productions of Funérailles d’hiver (Winter Funeral), Fleisser’s Purgatoire à Ingolstadt (Purgatory at Ingolstadt), Candide, si c’est ça le meilleur des mondes (Candide, If That’s Really the Best of All Worlds), The Bear, Swansong and Ceux qui errent ne se trompent pas (Those Who Wander Aren’t Wrong).

ROMAIN TANGUY - VIDEOGRAPHY Born in 1976 in the city of Rennes—where he also completed his degree in Fine Arts— Romain currently lives and works in Paris as a video artist and director. Since 2002, he has consecrated most of his artistic work to projects in theater, dance, music and opera. Romain is probably best known as the designer and videographer behind all the music videos for the group Yosh for the last dozen years. Since 2005, Romain has collaborated with the Théâtre des Lucioles company on a number of productions, in tandem with Martial Di Fonzo Bo, Elise Vigier and Pierre Maillet. Romain has also worked with a number of well-known directors and choreographers like Bruno Geslin, Marc Lainé, Lazare, Carolyn Carlson and the La Zampa company.

AURÉLIE DROESCH DU CERCEAU – DIRECTOR’S ASSISTANT Once she finished her bachelor’s degree in Theatrical and Audiovisual Arts, Aurélie studied directing at the École du Théâtre National de Strasbourg (TNS) from 2014 to 2017. She also studied documentary film under Swen De Pauw (Répliques, Projectile) and worked as an audio technician and as an intern-assistant to the director on Jusqu’à la fin et jusqu’au bord (Until the End and On the Edge) in 2012, and on Le Divan du monde (The World’s Sofa) in 2013, nationally released in 2016. While Aurélie’s artistic experience has focused on directing, acting and sound design, her sensibilities have all been influenced by documentary cinema, poetry, dance and the art of the clown. This season, Aurélie is working as an assistant to the directors Maëlle Poésy and Julie Berès, as an artistic collaborator and sound engineer on Cloé Lastère’s Adieu Fatigue at the Comédie de Saint-Etienne, as a director for La Nuit juste avant les forêts (The Night Just Before the Forests) with Quentin Barbosa and for Burn Baby Burn with the Atelier Sauvage.

GÉRAUD BRETON – STAGE MANAGEMENT AND SET CONSTRUCTION After a stint as a carpenter in events management, Géraud discovered his calling in the theater when he first worked on a production at the Théâtre du Peuple in 2014. Soon after, Géraud was hired onto the stage crew at the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne-CDN for the 2014/15 season and honed his skills as a machinist and set builder during the 2015/16 season. At the Théâtre du Peuple, Géraud worked as a stage manager and builder on a number of Vincent Goetthals’ productions, including Small Talk, Opéra de Quat’sous, Lady First and La dame de chez Maxim…ou presque! (The Woman from Maxim’s...or Almost!), and on Guy Pierre Couleau’s staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. At the Théâtre Dijon Bourgogne-CDN, Géraud has worked with Pauline Bureau on Dormir 100 ans (To Sleep 100 Years) and with Myriam Marzouki on her Ce qui nous regarde (That Which Concerns Us), and is currently developing sets for the next season, the May Drama Festival and the national tour of Benoit Lambert’s La Devise (The Motto) and Le jeu de l’amour et du hasard (The Game of Love and Chance). Géraud is the company stage manager and production coordinator for La Galerie and Crossroad.

HARRISON AREVALO - ACTOR, DANCER A native of Colombia, Harrison first studied at the Superior Academy of Arts in Bogotá (ASAB). He has performed in Spanish-language productions of plays by Müller and Shakespeare and has acted with Carlos Sepulveda et Merida Urquia. In 2009, Harrison moved to Paris to study with La Classe Libre du Cours Florent, and then the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique (CNSAD). Harrison performed in Lagarce’s Le Pays Lointain de with Jean Pierre Garnier, and after graduating from CNSAD in 2015, he worked with Frédéric Jessua on John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s A Whore at the Théâtre La Tempête and with Christophe Perton on Pier Paolo Pasolini’s A Desperate Vitality at the Festival d’Avignon. Harrison will soon be performing in Lazare Herson-Macarel’s production of Cyrano. Currently, he is playing

13 in Christophe Honorés production of Les Idoles (The Idols).

GENSÉRIC COLÉNO-DEMEULENAERE - ACTOR From 2012 to 2014, Genseric studied in the DEUST program at the Théâtre de Besançon and then joined Group 43 at the École du Théâtre National de Strasbourg (TNS), where he learned more about art and humanity from his interactions with professors and students alike. Since his graduation in 2017, Genseric has acted in Julien Gosselin’s 1993 and has been pursuing his passion for music, poetry and photography.

ROSABEL HUGUET – ACTOR, DANCER Rosabel Huguet finished her degree in Physical Theater from the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona in 2010. Since then, Rosabel has been living in Berlin and working around the world as an actor, dancer and choreographer. For the last 5 seasons, she has worked with the Berliner Schaubühne under the direction of Thomas Ostermeier and Romeo Castellucci on productions that have toured both nationally and internationally. Since 2015, Rosabel has worked as an assistant director for the Sasha Waltz & Guests company and has conducted improvisation workshops at the Open Studio of the Radialsystem V artspace in Berlin. Rosabel is currently exploring new approaches to the staging and “mise-en-espace” of classical music concerts and has collaborated on a number of concert shows in the Netherlands.

MARC LAMIGEON - ACTOR Marc studied the dramatic arts in a myriad of institutions, including the Studio Pygmalion, the Cours Florent, the Cours Jean-Laurent Cochet, the Conservatoire du Centre and the Conservatoire du XIe in Paris. In 2004, he matriculated to the Higher School of Theatrical Arts and Techniques (ENSATT) where he also studied singing. At ENSATT, he acted in Philippe Delaigue’s production of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Vegetable, Olivier Maurin’s staging of Oriza Hirata’s From S Plateau, and Guillaume Delaveau and Simon Delétang’s production of Ou le monde me tue ou je tue le monde (Either the World Kills Me or I Kill the World) based on a script by students in the playwriting department at ENSATT. In 2007, Marc was chosen by Christian Schiaretti to act in Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin’s Les visionnaires (The Visionaries) at the Théâtre National Populaire (TNP-Villeurbanne). Since finishing ENSATT, Marc has acted in Olivier Maurin’s production of David Harrower’s Knives in Hens at the Comédie de Valence in 2007, in Magali Léris’ staging of Sonia Ristic’s Sniper Avenue at La Scène Watteau, at the Théâtre de Cachan et the Théâtre des Quartiers d’Ivry in 2008, and he also acted in the La Tornade company’s first production of Loves, an adaptation based on Dorothy Parker’s novels, directed by Cassandre Vittu de Kerraoul and performed in Paris and Lyon, as well as at the Théâtre La Luna as part of the Avignon OFF Festival in 2012. Marc has played the title role in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in Magali Léris’ production for the Théâtre Jean Arp in Clamart and the Théâtre des Quartiers d’Ivry in 2010. Marc also performed in two plays by Martine Dugowson, Dans le Vif and Le cabaret de la grande guerre (The Great War’s Cabaret), directed by Paul Golub and staged at the Théâtre Firmin Gémier in Anthony and at the Théâtre de l’Union in Limoges in 2011. And in 2013, he acted in Cyril Cotinaut’s production of Euripidus’ Orestes at the TGP Frouard. Marc has also played in radio dramas by Myriam Meerson and Laure Egoroff for France Culture Radio and has performed on Philippe Meyer’s radio show on France Inter, La prochaine fois je vous le chanterai (Next Time I’ll Sing It For You). Marc also acted in Maëlle Poésy’s Candide, si c’est ça le meilleur des mondes (Candide, If That’s Really the Best of All Worlds) at the May Drama Festival in Dijon in 2014, and in Ceux qui errent ne se trompent pas (Those Who Wander Aren’t Wrong) in 2016. In 2017, Marc performed in Philippe Baronet’s staging of Bernard-Marie Koltés’ Quai ouest (Quay West) at the Théâtre de la Tempête.

ROSHANAK MORROWATIAN – ACTOR, DANCER Roshanak Morrowatian was born in Iran in 1989 and grew up in the Netherlands. A dancer and choreographer, Roshanak studied dance at Folkwang University in Essen, Germany. She has performed in productions by Marina Abramovic, Alexis Blake, Pina Bausch, William Sánchez, Henrietta Horn, Urs Dietrich and Isabelle Beernaert. Since 2015, Roxanne has been part of the Gotra/Joost Vrouenraets company. She has worked as a choreographer with Foteini Papadopoulou on the performance reading of Hips Don’t Lie at the Machinenhaus in Essen and the Oranjerie in Cologne, with Sarah Waelchli on Walk to the 10 at the Théâtre de l’Usine in Geneva, and was responsible for the choreography of Roderik Vanderstraeten’s staging of The Bald Soprano with the actors of the Zeche Bochum. Roshanak has also acted in Wiam Al-Zabari’s film, Arezo, which was selected for competition at the Dutch Film Festival et the Videodance Festival in Sao Carlos, Brazil.

PHILIPPE NOËL - ACTOR Philippe Noël is an actor, musician and a director who trained under Jacques Lecoq, Antoine Vitez, Annie Fratellini, Edouardo Manet and Philippe Avron, and studied at the École Marceau. Philippe created his first drama company with Coluche, Coline Serreau and Brigitte Rouan. He acted in productions by Patrice Chéreau, Jacques Mauclair, Michel Dubois, Hubert Gignoux, François-Michel Pesanti, Jacques Rosner, Pierre Santini, Daniel Mesguich, Marion Bierry and Jean-Pierre Baro, among others. On screen, Philippe has worked the directors Coline Serreau, Yannick Bellon,

Geneviève Ripeau and Charles Némès. As a director, Philippe staged Léonce et Léna by Georg Büchner and Pascal Rambert, Mémoire d’un fou (Memory of a Madman) by Gustave Flaubert, and Doublages (Doubling) by Michel Vittoz. He also collaborated with Daniel Mesguich on a number of productions. More recently, Philippe acted in Frédéric Borie’s production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet at the CDN in Montpellier, in Jean-Pierre Baro’s stagings of Ivanov and Woyczeck, as well as in Gilbert Rouvière’s production of La nuit des Camisards (The Night of the Camisards) by Lionel Astier.

ROXANE PALAZOTTO - ACTOR A graduate of the ERAC actor’s school in Cannes, Roxane has worked with Didier Galas, Bruno Bayen and David Lescot, among others. She has acted in plays by Jean-Pierre Vincent, Thierry Roisin, Aurélie Leroux, Jean-Pierre Baro and Charles-Éric Petit. During the 2008/09 season, Roxane performed in Aurélie Leroux’s production of Tatez là, si j’ai le coeur qui bat, d’après Tchekhov (Check There If My Heart Is Beating) at the Théâtre des Bernardines in Marseille and the Théâtre de la Bastille in Paris. Last season, she had the opportunity to work with a Charles-Éric Petit on Notre Dallas at the Gyptis in Marseille, on tour at the Théâtre Antoine Vitez in Aix-en-Provence, in Cannes and at the CDN in Nice. Roxane has also taken part in the drama workshop directed by Julien Gaillard on Heinrich von Kleist’s Penthesilea since its launch two years ago. She has acted in a number of Maëlle Poésy’s productions, including Purgatoire à Ingolstadt (Purgatory in Ingolstadt) in 2013, Candide, si c’est ça le meilleur des mondes (Candide, If That’s Really the Best of All Worlds) in 2014, as well as Ceux qui errent ne se trompent pas (Those Who Wander Aren’t Wront) in 2016.

VÉRONIQUE SACRI - ACTOR A graduate of the Conservatoire National de Paris, Véronique has worked with renowned directors like Daniel Mesguish, Stéphane Braunschweig, Caroline Marcadé and Jacques Lassalle. She has played Ophelia in Peter Brook’s production of Hamlet, Elise in Roger Planchon’s staging of Molière’s L’Avare, Lucretia in Marie-Louise Bischofberger’s The Rape of Lucretia. She has also acted in David Géry’s production of Aeschylus’ Orestes, Thierry Bedard’s staging of Raharimanana’s The Gecko’s Nightmare and Peter Handke’s Subterranean Blues, directed by Xavier Bazin and Yann Collette. Recently, she has worked with the director Ahmed Madani on Daughter of Paradise (Fille du Paradis), adapted from Nelly Arcan’s book, Putain; and with Kristof Langromme on his production of Jon Fosse’s Someone Is Going to Come. Véronique has worked with film makers Tinouche Nazmjou in Iran and Brigitte Sy in France.