At the Avignon Festival, the Franco-Catalan company Baro d’evel presents its show “Qui som?” – “Who are we?” – until July 14. With their acrobatic games, they make us slide towards humor and beauty. Their improbable gestures broaden the field of possibility. Their tambourine dance makes our hearts beat. Their little dog reveals the human in us. When they get lost, we find ourselves. When they dive into burlesque, seriousness appears. Masters of transformation and metamorphosis, Camille Decourtye and Blaï Mateu Trias, founders of the Franco-Catalan troupe, play with the spectators.
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RFI : Your show Who are we? ? integrates many artistic disciplines : acrobatics, clowning, dancing, singing, music, even pottery, plastic arts… But it all starts with humor. Is this the ultimate starting point of your approach?
Camille Decourtye : Maybe.
Blaï Mateu Trias : Yes, one of the fundamentals of our languages is humor.
Camille Decourtye : We need that. We see it as a form of dignity. Knowing how to make fun of oneself. And then, there is also a surge towards others. We like to laugh “with”. And it is also a great way to resist. It is often said: making a paranoid person laugh is putting them back in the present. It is also a way of sublimating one’s life, of staying anchored in one’s body. So for us, humor is quite serious.
In your play, the characters slip a lot, fall a lot, fall a lot. As you are experts in this field, explain to us: why do we laugh so much when we see the other fall? ?
Blaï Mateu Trias : It’s a bit of a clown’s principle: the misfortune of others makes us laugh.
Camille Decourtye : It’s also what escapes. It’s a lot about what escapes us. We really like all these notions: humor, the fall, there are things that are stronger than us, that inhabit us, of which we are not even aware. There is also the fact how the body, at times, finds the solution to an accident, how the body finds the solution.
Blaï Mateu Trias: After all, not all falls make us laugh, that’s not true. That’s the whole art of how it’s done. How we make this fall so that we can laugh at it.
Camille Decourtye: Because our group is virtuoso enough and comfortable in its body to have fun falling.
► Who are you? by the Baro d’evel Company. Show in French, Catalan, Spanish, English, Portuguese and Mandarin, until July 14 at the Avignon Festival. July 19 and 20 at Fourvière, followed by a tour in France and Europe. A recording of the show is also available for free online at arte.tv.
Read alsoAlso listen to: the interview with Baro d’evel in the VMDN show: Avignon, artists cook identity in the plural