A woman dresses her little boy in an astronaut’s suit to take him to the other side of a black hole where she tells him that there is a planet covered in forests. The child then finds himself millions of light years from Earth, in this other world and leaves, accompanied by an old man and a forest ranger, in search of a legendary country where no neither violence nor devastation and which his mother calls “the innocent country”.
In this new project, Samuel Gallet asks: What new stories face this feeling of losing the land? How can we express the irruption of this disproportionate threat with which we do not know what to do? How the current period is disrupting in many places our conceptions of what we
calls nature, biology, culture, future? How can we understand our future today, invent it, in the face of catastrophe? What can we make that could possibly be a resource for those who come?
An ecological fable, the innocent country will speak of a possible rebirth and real and imaginary alternatives to ambient catastrophism and ecological devastation.
This show is part of this search for a theater between dream and reality combining several literary and theatrical forms (stories, dialogues, poems, fragments) in constant dialogue with musical creation, composition and sound creation. The stage work will be located at this place of friction between the real and the imaginary, between the social and the dreamlike, between what we decree to be reality and madness. We will work theatrically to gradually completely blur the spaces, between imaginary, real and symbolic. The three ecologies that Felix Guattari speaks about, mental ecology, environmental ecology, social ecology, are major axes to nourish this writing and allow me to perceive how – to paraphrase Annie Le Brun – the devastation of the Amazonian forest is linked to the deforestation of our imaginations. Social questions, impoverishment of our sensitive experiences, will be present. The innocent country will question both the relationship we have to origins and descent, to what we project of ourselves into the world that comes and our attempts to continue to invent spaces of struggle and lives, in a standardization of our lifestyles.
The innocent country
Text and direction: Samuel Gallet
With Gauthier Baillot, Fabien Chapeira, Olivia Chatain, Caroline Gonin, Nadia Ratsimandresy, Mathieu Goulin
Music: Nadia Ratsimandresy and Mathieu Goulin
Son : Fred Bühl
Scenography and costumes: Aude Vanhoutte
Light: Ivan Mathis
Lighting Director: Martin Teruel
Dramaturgy: Pierre Morice
Administration et production : Marie KermagoretText published by Éditions Espaces 34 (October 2024)
Winner of National Aid for the Creation of Dramatic Texts from ArtcenaPRODUCTION Collective Eskandar
CO-PRODUCTION Les Quinconces Et l’espal (National Stage of Le Mans), Dsn (National Stage of Dieppe), National Stage of Le Creusot, Group of 20 Theaters in Île-De-France (2023 Winner), Le Théâtre De Rungis, Theater Des Bergeries (Noisy-Le-Sec), Houdremont (La Courneuve Cultural Center), (in progress)
WELCOME IN RESIDENCE Les Quinconces Et l’espal (National Stage of Le Mans), Dsn (National Stage of Dieppe), National Stage of Le Creusot, The Rungis Theater, the Assembly, artistic factory / Cie du Bonhomme (Lyon), 34 rue de Bretagne in Caen
WITH THE SUPPORT OF DRAC Normandie, the Normandy Region, the Calvados department and the city of Caen.
October 16, 17, 18, 2024 – Les Quinconces & l’Espal – national stage of Le Mans
November 28, 2024 – Rungis Theater
December 3, 2024 – TMG – Théâtre 145, Grenoble
January 14, 2025 – André Malraux Theater, Chevilly-Larue
January 17, 2025 – Théâtre de Châtillon
January 24, 2025 – Courneuve Cultural Center, Houdremont
January 31, 2025 – Théâtre des Bergeries, Noisy-le-Sec
February 6 to 14, 2025 (release on the 11th) – TGP – National Drama Center of Saint-Denis
February 20, 2025 – L’Arc – Le Creusot national stage
May 7, 8, 9 and 10, 2025 – Théâtre Joliette, Marseille
May 15, 2025 – (DSN Festival) at the Dieppe National Stage
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