Better Tomorrows

À Demain — Better Tomorrows
Peddling utopia in public space

Dear friend, I’m sending you a little piece of work of which it would be quite unjust to say that it has neither head nor tail, since everything, on the contrary, is both head and tail, alternatively and reciprocally. Just think what admirable advantages such a combination offers to everyone, to you, to me, and to the reader. We can interrupt wherever we wish, I. my reverie, you, the manuscript, the reader, his reading; for I am not tying a reader’s recalcitrant will to the unending thread of a superfluous plot. Remove one vertebra, and the two halves of this tortuous fantasy will have no difficulty in reuniting. Chop it into a number of fragments and you will see that each can exist on its own.

Charles Baudelaire, Prose Poems, trans. Nicola Jane Santilli.

Imagination
Struck by the sad pessimism that rules our visions of the future as shown by an omnipresent literature of dystopian totalitarianism and an overwhelming cinematography of ecological apocalypse, the Grandes Personnes took to heart to invent a new theatrical creation which figures out optimistic futures, maybe still within our reach, being intimately convinced that human curiosity, and social, political or ecological imaginations are too seldom appealed to.

Brevity
For Better Tomorrows we have chosen a group of short intimate formats lasting a few minutes, created to be shown and played to group of people small enough to be able to look into the carried box, two couples, a family a small group of passersby. Each box is its own world and works on its own, but all of them constitutes a whole which can be discovered in several orders. The challenge of this aesthetic of brevity, with a single theatrical gesture, an animated sculpture and a short text proved to be quite interesting..

Boxes
Better Tomorrows is about opening a breach towards positive futures. Each performer carries a surprise box and offers in one or two minutes the apparition of a utopia. The whole show comprises up to ten boxes. Some contain architectural dreams, other open like flowers or like oysters. Even if the experience is most interesting if you see them all, each one can play on its own, and the order of the discovery creates a variety of experiences.

Time Travellers
The performance offers a series of short shows, nevertheless the peddlers of utopia are also a group dressed with custom designed clothes, all different but with common characteristics. They are time travelers, coming from the future. Indeed, they are first amazed or a bit frightened by the old new world in which they arrive, they soon scatter to show their findings and meet again to discuss their encounters.

Public
While street theatre brings the show to meet an audience that rarely steps into a theatre, thanks to its lightness, mobility and brevity Better tomorrows, proposes to reach even those people who don’t have the time, who don’t feel concerned, and who don’t stop on the street. Creating a tiny ephemeral scenic space in a magical box, the actors want to share a poetic and artistic minute or two, full of hope, with passers-by or people running errands. It can be performed at the market or for people waiting in a long queue or while taking public transportation. And with a bit of luck, the experience of sharing a very accessible subject around a utopian box will make them want to see another, then another, and that might encourage them to see other shows. Finally, the poetic texts of each box provide extensions, variations in case spectators want to lengthen the experience or come to see them again.

History
The envisaged scheme is based on one of the oldest and least-known street theatre traditions, that of “curiosities” shown by the Savoyards as of the 18th century.

Utopias

Some of the utopias peddled in boxes by our time travelers

• The eloquence of touch
“Touch turned out to be an efficient and universal language, the Esperanto of the future.”

• Talking with ghosts
“Some ghosts even give advice and counsel as translators of forgotten languages, detective in familial enigmas, prompters of knowledge, reverser of unhappiness.”

• Dreams revealed
“It happened at last. Tomorrow, the obscure meaning of dreams can be read like an open book.”

• Wide open
“Deep down, we are not made to tolerate walls. Partitions are upsetting. We are born for space. Outside, it’s the Eldorado, Java, Cythera.”

• With the insects
“After the great reconciliation, crickets became our scrupulous ambassadors to the other insects.”

• The concert of ages
“You see, it’s neither tomorrow nor the day after, but one of the following days that was erased the frontier which separated people according to their age.”

Idea and direction: Christophe Evette
Additional direction: Evelyne Fagnen and Eric de Sarria
Texts: Jean-Baptiste Evette
Costumes, Solenne Capmas with Bérangère Pivot
Cast: Pauline de Coulhac, Benoit Hamelin, Sévane Sybesma, Raphaële Trugnan and Nicolas Vullier.
Sculptors: Nicolas Vuillier, Virginie Chevrier, Christophe Evette, Solenne Capmas, Laure Bouchereau, Matisse Wessels, Izimi Konaté, Yabako Konaté, Maëlle Lignier, Valentina Torres
Builders, Frank Oettgen, Lucie Taralo, Jean Martin, Stefano Emili
Machines: Nicolas Vuillier
Paints: Virginie Leforestier
Video: Quentin Blondel