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Alice, de l’autre côté

from Lewis Carroll, translated by Henri Parisot

A Charlie Windelschmidt and Dérézo adaptation.

Alice in an EHPAD (carehome)
To begin with, Alice is the rendez-vous between our team and the peculiar village that is an EHPAD. For us it was the EHPAD of Lanmeur (Finistere). We chose imersion as a modus operanti: we were to generate fiction for ourselves, but also and mainly for the residents and profesionals of the establishment. A character straight out of Lewis’ book became the "guest" of the institution. The puzzling mascott enabled the contradiction of many a cliché.

Eight boxes
Then we chose to build a variation around Lewis Carroll’s text. Delicate stage writing, aimed at disconcerting something within the codes of children’s litterature – a code we all relate to when we think of Alice.
With successive chess moves, Alice will come across seven almost monstrous old folks who will give her an ambiguous set of keys, destined to doors only she can open. Seven old folks with one mission: make Alice loose the sense of being her own self.
They pass on to young Alice ambivalent signs that hilight cliveage, failures, flaws that make our world, once we accept to be part of it. Then, what can we consider as "reality"?
A little better armed whith more mature questions, Alice can try and face her fears, i.e. not accepting this reality as such, as she’s beeen told it is, but tenderly trying to transform it.

Who to be?
Amongst other decisive phenomenons: language. Excellent place of dilemma, where Alice will start looking for clues and solutions. Because it is within language itself that something seems to be happening. A series of semantic slideslips will make the young woman understand that she is in fact under the influence of something "making her do what she’s doing".
She is the only character. Everyone else, the old folks, are actors: a balance between "being" and "pretend being" that slowly brings theatre to the stage, as a gift one can’t refuse. And a last appears the opportunity for all of us to escape theatre: through theatre.

Created in november 2019
Le Volcan, Scène Nationale du Havre (76)

Director Charlie Windelschmidt
with Anaïs Cloarec, Anne-Sophie Erhel, Véronique Héliès, Chloé Lavaud-Almar, Alice Mercier, et Valéry Warnotte
Assistant director Simon Le Doaré
Scénography Camille Riquier
Costume designer Maela Le Chapelain
Sound creation Guillaume Tahon
Light creation Stéphane Leucart et Chloé Biet


Partnerships
Le Volcan, Scène Nationale du Havre(76).
Le Quartz - Scène Nationale de Brest (29).
Le Manège, Scène Nationale de Maubeuge (59).
L’Archipel, Scène de Territoire à Fouesnant les Glénan(29).
Théâtre de la Tempête, Paris (75).
Avec l’aide à la diffusion de la Ville de Paris
Avec le soutien de la SPEDIDAM
Avec le soutien financier de Spectacle vivant en Bretagne