After more than twenty years of career across the world and countless performances on TV sets, magician and mentalist David Jarre finally presents his first one-man show, Mosaic. A show “ experiential » visible from 8 to 88 years old and inviting spectators to reconnect with their dreams. Conversation.
How does the visual component impact your designs and the way you work?
David Jarre : It has an impact because we realized that 90% of humans — most people } are visual rather than auditory or kinesthetic. The visual plays a lot in this case for magic because it is Also a visual discipline. What people tend to forget, especially performers, is that it is also and above all a discipline of feeling. What makes us impressed is through the visual, but what surprises us, and what triggers emotion in us, is the feeling. I try to focus everything on that.
The visual therefore plays to inspire us, to make us go, to make us dream… But we can see something very pretty which does not touch us and does not transmit this emotion. So you shouldn’t get lost in the visuals – a little digression for Instagram (smile).
In a world where hyper-technology seems to have trivialized the concept of magic, how do you understand the fact that magicians have retained their aura? By this extra emotion and poetry that they convey?
There’s a quote from Arthur C. Clarke that I love: “ any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from true magic » — which is completely true: at the time when we “invented” electricity, when we saw a light bulb light up, it was a star on earth. If we don’t understand the technology behind it, it’s super beautiful… It’s very important to return to the organic: everything that is electronic and digital can be magical and positive… but also very disconnecting because we disconnect touch, tactile and organic – but this is still what makes us vibrate as mammals.
I think that magic takes us back to the soul and to our emotion, precisely. When we describe a magnificent phenomenon that we feel and which is beyond words – it could be a sunset, a moment spent with a lover or her lover, with family, when we see snow falling – we will say : “ it was a suspended moment, it was magical. “. Magic is linked to the emotion we feel. It is not linked to the magician discipline. Because it is everywhere: in a film, being in the love stories that we are told; in a lived moment, in a restaurant, in a café…
As for emotion… When people ask me if people of different nationalities react differently, in fact, I think humans react to emotion. It’s universal. In any case, people are sensitive to magic, because magic is emotion. People want to experience an emotion. By being bombarded by visual stimuli, we no longer feel things: we only perceive them. You just need to close your eyes for a minute to realize that you start to feel lots of things that you don’t feel with your eyes open. It’s contradictory because magic is first and foremost a visual discipline; However, it is emotion – and therefore the non-visual – that must be worked on. And that’s what I like to try to work on.
You are both a magician and a mentalist; you practice close-up, the stage. To take a sporting analogy, if you were a top tennis player, you would play from the baseline, at the net, on clay, grass, cement and synthetic. How do you manage to reconcile all of these disciplines?
That’s a very good question and a good analogy…until you said they were different disciplines. In fact, it’s the same thing. People often think that mentalism, magic, the grand illusion are different things; It’s part of the profession, the discipline of magic and I find it important to mix it all up. Because today people have a need for variety and difference — maybe we get bored more quickly or we are very stimulated all the time and have less patience.
I find it interesting to have a moment of mentalism, another more rhythmic and visual – or perhaps a little more poetic; an interactive moment… Each time we surprise them and get them into a rhythm; we create a rupture. Surprise or humor comes because there is a break in pattern or tempo. If we do mentalism for an hour and a half it can be interesting but can be a little boring. I like to mix everything up so that people are constantly surprised and… entertained.
But it requires constant work to be a little good in all disciplines! (laughs) in all styles. That’s also why I waited: I’m in my forties, I didn’t start performing in my twenties when I had offers and requests. I wanted to wait to be able to offer something that seemed original and worth it.
It was therefore not linked to any fear of losing direct proximity with the public…
It was in fact less linked to a fear than to a desire: to be able to leave, escape, and travel the world with my suitcase. Go and discover different countries, different cultures… I was in an international high school when I was young with many different nationalities in my class. I have always been very attracted to the foreign world — The Stranger being, between us, one of my favorite novels — even if it is not exactly about that.
Meursault in The Stranger doesn’t feel anything, that’s really the paradox…
It’s completely the paradox, it’s also part of the beauty of this book that I reread not so long ago; it’s incredible how modern, transgenerational, current it is still… In this case I love foreign countries not just for the books but for the cultures, the people… If I had launched straight away into a career in scene in France, I would have gotten a little stuck in France, I think. Deep down I had this feeling of having things to tell.
I always saw in books artists who traveled the world and returned to their countries with lots of experiences to share; I found it quite poetic — to use the word — as a way of life to return with adventures from abroad. Experiences to tell and share with the French public. Afterwards, since I was very little, I have always had in my sights a show stage, whatever happens. I had different opportunities to do it and at one point the stars aligned. And it’s happening now.
Mosaic addresses the viewer directly by asking them about their dreams. To resume this time not Camus but Shakespeare, “ We are the stuff dreams are made of” what fabrics did you sew from Mosaic ?
Ah, excellent, I love it! Mosaicit’s this idea of having a kind of accumulation of different pieces that have nothing to do with each other and that we can group together to create a harmonious shape, that two different people with the same pieces would arrive to a different result — proof that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
Finally, what allows a mosaic to exist? It is the pieces themselves that make the mosaic rather than a pile of pieces; it’s the space, it’s the cement between the pieces And this cement, I like to think that it’s what connects us to each other. This emotion that connects a group who goes to dinner together; which connects spectators who go to see a show together because they all want to vivre a moment. Without this cement that binds us, there is no mosaic. There is nothing. In addition, I have always been fascinated since I was a kid by mosaics, Italian floors, frescoes etc.
Everyone can see their interpretation in the show, it’s very open. Because a mosaic is full of small parts so we are all a small part, all independent… I don’t want the literal side Besides, I hardly explain anything in the show; but I mention everything. For example, I do an act with a child: I don’t say if this child is little me — or if I am what the child will become. Or if it’s my son…
I leave the doors open, people interpret what they want. Some will project themselves; others have the impression that it is the image of a father with his son. There are too many films or plays where we are told what we should feel with a bunch of violins at the moment when we should feel the emotion like if or that. And we are not free to interpret emotions.
It is the mentalist who refrains from directing the thoughts of the spectators…
In this case the mentalist must direct it but I do a mix between the two: I do it so that my acts work. But at the level of symbolism and feeling, I leave it open.
There is a number of the show which is very interactive: every evening, the finale is different because it is linked to the choice that the spectators will make. Because I wanted people to be able to leave with a little key for themselves, a little something extra. When we go to see a show, we can have a great time, we come away with a good memory, but what is left, ultimately, other than just the memory of having a good laugh? I wanted a moment where the viewer could be led to think about it in a light and playful way. And let him leave with the idea of giving a little time to what he loves – we all have dreams that we have decided to either pursue, abandon or put aside. If at the end everyone leaves with a dream, I will be very happy.
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