The Public Service Department of the Musée Réattu, in partnership with Compagnie Khoros, carried out a photographic and theatrical creation project between November 2014 and June 2015 with the Institut Médico-Educatif (IME) in Arles ‘Les Abeilles’. Rosalba Rizzo, from Compagnie Khoros creates a show every year with IME’s company Les Têtes en Galoche. She approached the Public Service Department this year regarding a partnership, in order to create something closely linked to the museum collections.
Whilst discovering the museum and its collections, the adolescents and their teacher fell for the characters featuring in the works. They mastered these figures that were sometimes romantic, sometimes heroic, imagining their personalities, lives and thoughts…They brought these fictional characters to life in a play imagined and staged by Rosalba Rizzo, rehearsing every week between April and June. Corentin was ‘Monsieur Académie’, Kévin ‘Monsieur Quiqueran de Beaujeu’, Léa ‘Madame Grange Réattu Quiqueran de Beaujeu’, Maëva ‘Madame Madeleine Quiqueran de Beaujeu’, Maxime ‘the Griffu’, Wafa ‘Mademoiselle Vanité’, and Christian Soupène. Their teacher was ‘Monsieur Petitdoigt’.
These figures also populated the scenery that was designed for the Commanderie de Ste Luce courtyard and created by the pupils with the Public Service Department intermediary. Almost ten sessions were required to make the seven scenery panels. Each one represented the character imagined by the actor who embodied it. The bodies were created as a photogram, one fragment at a time. The choice of this technique, which makes it possible to achieve a photograph by placing an object between the sensitive paper and the light source, links the museum’s photography collection and the workshops held by the Public Service Department. These photograms were then printed on transparent sheets mounted on plastic media. Hanging from cables in the courtyard of Ste Luce, these panels were slid along in tune with the story enacted by the company.
The show was performed twice. Wednesday 24th June at 6pm was reserved for IME pupils and teachers, as well as the families of the actors. The next day a public performance was held at 8pm.
In total over 100 people attended this play, the culmination of several months’ work.
