Avignon OFF: Cuts at La Scala Provence
The breaks designate the hiatus between elected officials and their constituents. At La Scala Provence, the play by Paul-Eloi Forget and Samuel Valensi explores the fantasy of total democracy in a spectacular staging.
The opening of La Scala Provence is an event
In the brand new theater of the Scala-Provence the room Cuts settles in happily. La Scala Provence is four rooms that can be transformed into performance spaces, rehearsal sets, recording studios, workshops, and an amphitheater. It is also four recording studios with acoustic variables because one of the particularities of the place will be its label: Scala Music! The four rooms will become four recording studios of various sizes with variable acoustics that will meet all expectations of classical or contemporary music, jazz, electro, pop or rap. Finally, there are residential studios for French and foreign residents.
This ambition is experienced by the public through a luxurious welcome and service, the troops through modern and first-class technical panels. In a nutshell, La Scala Provence killed the game ; it sets a new standard.
Cuts is an event
The play Coupures embraces the bias through a new staging and scenography, worthy of cinematographic productions where one can play, replay, cut or edit the scenes between them. The spectator experience consists of a continuum of inventions and dramatic motifs that amaze. Paul-Eloi Forget and Samuel Valensi, like La Scala Provence, respect their audience with a demanding approach. The absolutely magnificent goldsmith scenography is current. It creates a new standard. The staging glued closely to the text while the music of a violinist on the stage directed like a character in its own right achieves a remarkable immersion in the play. The spectator experience is intense.
The play recounts the journey in a small town in what are called the territories of a far-left ecologist farmer mayor who will join forces with peasant hunters who are rather far-right atavistically against progress. They will lead a fight against 5G antennas.
The collusion of the two obscurantisms will confront pragmatism and its common sense, songs of conflicts of interest and the administrative apparatus which knows how to smooth out the extremes, precipitating them into extreme voting, abstention or yellow vest-type violence.
We discover, bitterly comment democracy reputed to be just is built sufficiently imperfect to stem those who abuse an attitude of opposition or hostility to progress by erecting a barrage made up of administrative procedures and assumed lies in the alcove of the cabinets of the prefects.
The strength of the piece consists in laying bare the making of those left out of democracy. The public applauds wildly in front of the beauty of the piece and its interpretation. He leaves the room with two questions: what should a dignified and fair democracy do with the voice of its dreamers, who are a little conspiratorial, but full-fledged citizens. And why (esoteric power of the number 5?) did 5G decree what 2, 3 or 4G did not cause?
A must-have piece.
All the articles of the editorial staff in Avignon can be found here.
Cuts, written and directed by Samuel Valensi and Paul-Eloi Forget, With June Assal, Michel Derville, Lison Favard, Paul-Eloi Forget, Valérie Moinet and Samuel Valensi, Duration 1h30, La Scala Provence, from July 7 to 30 at 10 a.m.
Visual: Poster