“The starting point for this creation was my desire to talk about what is taboo and what we don't want to look at, what we don't watch. Very often, when you talk to someone about pedophilia, you realize that people don't listen or forget. »: for her fifth piece, “Daddy”, Marion Siéfert propels Mara, 13, onto the Internet.
The kid has her pockets full of dreams, and believes she's making them come true with Julien, who offers her, after much flattery, to move to the “higher” level. The sorcerer is obviously much older than the young girl. A perilous subject, which Marion Siéfert first approached by meeting victims of sexual predators. This allowed her to understand that the suffering was no less when the abuse took place virtually: “It creates an equally strong impact on the psyche,” she assures. These interviews followed a double responsibility: the play had to live up to the stories heard and the fiction had to express reality without distorting it. “Daddy” is also a virulent critique of a dangerous digital world, exposing the phenomenon of predation on social networks and the Internet more generally.
Drive space
On stage, a place of physicality and performance, reality and cyberspace merge. No screen: virtuality is represented by bodies: “We are in the space of impulse, in an imaginary place and the piece speaks of something very concrete but not in a naturalistic way,” explains Marion Siéfert . The public is the audience of this physical metaverse.
The prophetic unease of the spectators, aware of the danger, contributes to the fear. A fear all the more trying because the young girl, despite a few bursts of resistance, navigates blindly, intoxicated by her dreams. As gripping as Perrault's tales where children, while knowing what is going to happen, fear the reality. The wolf here is a character that Marion Siéfert wanted to be “very attractive, manipulative and therefore sunny”. “His versatility makes him completely fascinating. He's really someone you want to follow. I wanted people to understand Mara. »
This is not the first creation by Marion Siéfert in which children or adolescents appear. “The Big Sleep”, his second play, already portrayed a very young girl and dealt with the way adults look at children: “I think there is something about this age which is fascinating for adults, a sort of morbid subjugation for these adolescent bodies. » “Daddy” is his fifth creation, in collaboration with filmmaker Matthieu Bareyre. Both claim this four-handed writing, which allows them to explore more artistic fields.
Bordeaux. “Daddy” directed by Marion Siéfert (text by Marion Siéfert and Matthieu Barreyre), from November 27 to 29, at the TNBA, 8 to 26 euros. For those under 30, for every place purchased, the second is free.
