For nearly 30 years, the Théâtre de l’Ante troupe has been crisscrossing the roads of Indre-et-Loire in the summer: two months of roaming and outdoor performances, with, almost every day, the assembly and disassembly of the set-up, stage, dressing rooms and stands! Evoking the demarcation line, “Assunta, au fil de la ligne” by Gilbert Gilet is on the program for the 2024 tour.
27 performances from June 28 to August 24, and a last one on September 13 at Athée sur Cher…Like every summer since 1995, the Théâtre de l’Ante takes to the roads again to meet the Touraine public.
Born in 1980 from the professionalization of a university company created in 1967, the Théâtre de l’Ante has been commissioned since 1995 by the departmental council for an action of awareness and dissemination of theater in Indre-et-Loire.
In 2024, the company will go on tour again with a creation by Gilbert Gilet. The author who, from Malade Repenti to Mourant réfractory, from Piano dans la Grange to La Môme Chair de Poule, has accompanied and enriched the company’s repertoire for so many years.
“Whether it is original works or adaptations, Gilbert has been present for more than 30 years in the company’s shows, explains Jean-Louis Dumont, director. The first time I worked with him was for Le Malade Repenti, which we produced in 1991 and performed 120 times at the time!”
While crisscrossing the department, the Théâtre de l’Ante team sometimes discovers, at a crossroads or along a small road, a barrier or a post that seems frozen in time. Remains of the demarcation line that, between June 40 and March 43, violently imposed itself on the Tours landscape:
“This line completely crossed the department of Indre-et-Loire, from Descartes to the banks of the Cher, recalls Gilbert Gilet, the author of Assunta, throughout the line. She tore through our countryside for almost three years, lining up her posts, white, black and red, in the landscape, multiplying surveillance patrols and controls.”
A dividing line that will serve as a framework and common thread for the new play by the author from Tours:
On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the Liberation of the Department, it is worth recalling that for nearly three years the war here took the concrete form of a wall against which the lives of our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents were shattered. It is the memory of these lives, great or small, heroic or anonymous, that the show wants to recall. It will do so through the theatrical evocation of fictional or historical characters, who had to suffer and confront the consequences of this internal border.
Gilbert Gilet, playwright
Jean-Louis Dumont specifies that the starting point of Assunta, along the line, is also a meeting with an association of Atheists-sur-Cher, History and Memory of the Vallée du Cher, which has worked a lot on the demarcation line :
Banned from traveling, country circus artists also find themselves deprived of spectators
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© Matthieu Fays / Théâtre de l’Ante
“From there, Gilbert began to write a show around a country circus. It should be noted that circuses could no longer travel at the time, the artists were under house arrest. Inevitably, it became complicated, very quickly there were no more spectators. The team of the small traveling circus was confronted with the great History. A small troupe that could also have been that of a traveling theater, like ours… In the political period that we are going through today, certain passages of Assunta take on a completely different resonance…”
The premiere of Assunta will be given in Langeais, Halle Alingavia, Friday June 28 at 9:30 p.m. The following performances will take place from July 2 to 6 in Villandry, Cinq-Mars-la-Pile, Montlouis-sur-Loire, Saint-Etienne-de-Chigny and Thilouze. All information, dates, prices and online ticketing can be found on the Théâtre de l’Ante website.
