LACHEZ TOUT/ENOUGH ALREADY in EDINBURGH

LACHEZ TOUT/ENOUGH ALREADY  in Edinburgh, Summer Hall
By Justine Blundell


Francois Sarhan’s Enough Already is a theatrical revolution. In this multi-arts/media revelation, each one of the many art forms employed, down to the last detail, matters decisively. Merging music with language and visuals, Sarhan pushes hard against the boundaries of our artistic assumptions and, in doing so, reveals the enormous potential of theatre.

The musicians of Red Note, one of Scotland’s leading contemporary music ensembles, inhabit the borders of the stage area. Two Foley artists stand in one corner: their job is to create everyday sound effects; the swishing of clothing; the rustle of the pages turned in a magazine; footsteps. Usually added to a film during post-production to enhance the sense of reality, they are overtly performed during this production to enhance the effect of a created reality. This is a clever twist that adds layers of meaning as the production unfolds.

The centre of the stage is a muddle of anglepoise lamps and cluttered shelves, a dowdy sofa and barren clothes rail that collectively constitute the home of the endearing and menacing protagonist, Bobok. Taking up the whole wall behind, is the faded image of a page from the fictitious Professor Glaçon’s imaginary encyclopaedia; a book that takes an obsessive hold of Bobok’s fanatical imagination.

Glaçon’s is a wonderfully whimsical world where one can examine the sound memory of objects and in which the attempt to understand time by listening to the ticking of clocks, is logical. Bobok is determined to make this world a reality and soon exits the theatre (through a side door) and steps into a silent black and white film of fantasy.

Garreth Brady

As though entering the pages of Glaçon’s encyclopaedia, the image of Bobok strutting down the street appears projected onto the faded backcloth. What follows is a surreal series of events as Bobok tries to create Glaçon’s world, using his encyclopaedia as a manual. The strange, stilted yet straightforward silent-movie sections are interspersed with scenes of Gillian-esque improbable and impossible stop-motion cut-outs, sometimes fast-forwarded with bizarre results. Presented in a dream-like free-association order it resists, as do dreams, any attempt to catch and pin-down a reasonable or logical narrative.

Simon Smith

Red Note Ensemble

This playing with forms and time and place, creates unexpected juxtapositions that are illogical and startling, but produce great emotional power and poetical reality. The deliberate revealing of what is usually deliberately hidden in producing the film illusion - the musicians performing the atmospheric sound-track (and often non-sequitous voice-overs), the Foley artists performing the (eerily realistic) sound-effects – both creates and destroys the illusion. Sucked in to the performance, then thrown out again, continually confronted with the fact of its artistic construction, mirrored by Bobok’s creationist endeavours, it encourages a critical thinking that Brecht would have admired and applauded.

 

 

Céline Bernard & Julien Baissat

Collectively, these artists have produced an unforgettable, eye-opening exploration of the art of theatre and its potential, without pretension or hierarchy, but with bags of energy and skill. An astonishing experience.


first published in Edinburgh Guide :
http://www.edinburghguide.com/reviews/film/enoughareadysummerhallreview-1406

LACHEZ TOUT !/ENOUGH ALREADY almost finished

the show LACHEZ TOUT !/ENOUGH ALREADY, to be premiered in Tramway, Glasgow on the 7th of november is almost done.

This show is produced by LOD, in Gent, and Red NOte (Scotland). 

Here some pics :

the movie, in black and white. Here, Claudio Stellato.

the stage, seen from the mixing desk.

 Magdalena Steinlein as a blind singer

the movie projected on the painted back drop.

LACHEZ TOUT (shooting II)

This room full of works, an installation room indeed, was made by Hans Langner, German artist.

He started his artist career in 1990-1994, and has a commercial background.

He has a huge body of painted works, but this room is more of a assemblage of used objects, which are literally packed.

The room is quite small, about 15 m2, but it is totally full.

 

  

  

This wonderful work can be seen at the Ghislain museum, Ghent.

A scene of LACHEZ TOUT ! was shot there, thanks to the authorization of the direction.

These costumes were created by Astrid Michaelis, under the influence of the rural carnavals as shown by Fréger in his book Wildermann.

 

These pages are from an animation about the bankers.

This text is available on wikiglacon.org

Magdalena Steinlein and Claudio Stellato in LACHEZ TOUT !

LACHEZ TOUT ! (first steps)

A new show, to be premiered in november 2013 in Scotland.

Includes a long movie, animation, music (Red Note is playing).
LACHEZ TOUT is the story of a man (Bobok, played by Claudio Stellato) who reads the Encyclopaedia, and who takes it very seriously.

 

His readings leads him to build a bomb, and to place it in strategic location.

 Wannes Gyselinck as clock shop worker.

Bobok reading the Encyclopaedia hidden.

Perfect strangers provoked by the reading of the book.

Claudio Stellato entering his Wunderkammer.

Animation and photos shooted in Nirox Foundation South Africa,

This animation movie will use a personal interpretation of a Sade text.

Magdalena Steinlein (to come !)

and some friendly people met in various locations.

It is produced by LOD

Arjuphe Bisbiphe

This is a movie shot in South Africa and in Paris, describing the mysterious life of Arjuphe Bisbiphe.

Thanks to Odile Podpovitny for enhancing the photo.

Ô Piano

Joséphine en soi

Joséphine Glaçon, by Odile Podpovitny

© Odile Podpovitny

BLIND DATE in Gent, with Ictus

A few questions by Wannes Gyselinck

Remember: the exaltation in your youth when a lot of very good music (Goldberg Variations! Morton Feldman! Zappa! In a silent way! Scelsi!) was still new to you. Unheard of. Remember when this newness still had a physical impact – lying on the bed with headphones on / paralyzed by sound / literally transpiring because of esthetical shock).

- Do you still have access to this maiden-experience? (Do you envy young people’s sincere enthusiasm for aforementioned names?)

Yes i remember very well these moments, where #2 by Soft Machine, or Roxy and Elsewhere by Zappa made me sweat and jump and cry. However, i don't have it anymore with these music (the doses must be more intense now, so i need more of a full length Tristan & Isolde to have this sort of enchantment), and i don't know any youngster who has shocks with these musics. Which is perfectly understandable, they have other fascination subjects.

Is the following correlation one that applies to you (and one that frightens you): the more you know about music (or: the more music you know), the more exclusive your taste becomes, in short: the more you know, the less you like (proportionally). Also: the better you understand, the more cerebral listening becomes.)

No i don't believe in that. It can be true if there is no fresh blood, or no input, but i don't think intellect and passion and tastes are contradictory. On the opposite, i think that obsessional temperaments, people who collect and think a lot about their passion (like me) are very emotional with it, although they also are very rational and intellectual.

I suppose that getting older, the tastes are more narrow, but i'm not sure it's a musical question. If the environment or the life and so are narrowing, then the tastes will get the same.

about intellectual and emotional listening,  some  experiences are instructive ; for instance one can be amazed by a piece, having a clear intellectual picture of the structure of this piece, little by little. And the amazment disappears. 

On the other hand, in the case of other pieces, the structure never gets clear, (it's the case with Beethoven, for instance), and the amazment never ceases, because the intellectual absorption of the piece is never completed. 

Ictus in Handelsbeurs

Some good-old epistemology: since it is said (but do you agree?) that music does not refer to anything but itself, music is devoid/free of significance (music can only resemble other music or sound, but cannot comment on it <or can it?> or develop a discourse about it <or can it?>).

i suppose that there is a continuum : on one extreme, music is completely understood, integrated, so narrow in signification that one can say that it is translatable. On the other side of the continuum, music as self refferring, free of significance and so, does exist. Every piece of music has a different position on this continuum, and some have a very wide span. 

In any case, we all pretend, and that's the most important.

When you compose: do you create something that needs can only work when you listen to it repeatedly? Or should it be able to have ‘the’ experience (emotional/intellectual/physical?) during the first run?

there is no first run. everyone has a different first run. No one is virgin in music. if you are used to the same music than me, your first audition of a piece of mine will be much more familiar than if you are a R&B listener. and the other way around. So how am i going to expect ONE good listener ? expecially ONE  FIRST audition ?
That's the reason which makes talks about "The Audience" in general, necessarily demagogic.

The predicament of predicates: which predicates do you use the most often when you talk (appreciatively or disapprovingly) about contemporary music: interesting / beautiful / challenging / confronting / boring / imitative (or even worse: epigonal) / pure (unlikely, but still: it had some centuries of fervent use) / (sth. else?)

depends on the music !

But i can say that there are terms i never use : boring, challenging, confronting. 

And what do they reveal about your esthetical criteria (when do you say: ‘I like it’)?

i say 'i like it' when it looks like mine, but in a better way !

In short: while listening to a piece for the first time, when you like/dislike it, do you measure it against any explicable criteria of quality? Or do you ‘simply’ know good music when you hear it?

there is no good or bad music ; there is music which matches your criterias or not. I suppose i can explain why i like some things and why i don't, but i'm also very cautious : there are external factors ; the quality of the performance, the quality of the sound, the order in the concert, the people you are with, all that has an influence on concentration and emotional response...