The Compagnie La Boîte à sel seeks to create representation devices that allow spectators to transport themselves into its creations. We imagine for this open forms – transversal to theatre, music, puppetry, and associated arts – and constructed as pathways for the projections and imagination of the public.
Whether spectacular or installational, our projects engage scenography, sound, and techno-homemade objects and experiment with renewed relationships with the public: sensory, immersive, interactive, or extended through spaces for meeting and play, each of them offers a global, generous, and memorable experience.
We often find in our shows the question of "mastery" and "non-mastery" which juxtaposes the relationship of the child and the adult to a world they do not control much, and that of the performer who also finds himself confronted on stage, to a world that resists him with elements as random as puppet, plastic, and sound mediums (forms, figurines, technologies, shadows, materials, sensors, machines) and the public.
We like to transpose this issue on stage and say: no, we do not master everything, but we are, we live, we play, we exist, we create, we grow by embracing this instability, this trouble, and this random part of life.
BIRTH OF A NEW SCENIC LANGUAGE
In our creations sound is the driving force of play, it is a concrete material just like the objects and materials with which our universes are constructed. In this approach, we call on technology to invent our own tools in service of the dramaturgy.
So that sound is palpable, manipulable – like a unit of a construction game - Thomas Sillard, sound plastician, invented a system of connected objects that fit in the hand: wireless speakers that react to movements, whose first generation led to the show "Block" with a device composed of 60 of these objects.
This invention born from the meeting between the puppeteer practice of Céline Garnavault and that of sound creator Thomas has opened the way to a new scenic language, in constant development, which we now call " theatre of techno-homemade sound objects".
It is a theatre made from objects that the company brings to life through technology and sound, in a way of thinking close to DIY, in the sense of making do with what is at hand, empirically, with curiosity and a sincere attention to the objects and what they offer us. The result is shows that are like experiences, between puppet arts, sound arts, theatre, music, digital arts, and immersive installations to invite dialogue and play!
In 2021, for the show "Track", the company developed a second generation of sound modules, with an innovation, allowing this time the live multi-diffusion of the voice of the human beatbox performer: L.O.S.
It is during the laboratories "Bad Block" that this research takes a new turn, with a third generation of objects designed specifically to be activated and manipulated by the public within collective tableaux such as sound and light generators, musical instruments, or living entities interacting with their humans. With this unprecedented project, the company addresses adults and adolescents in a renewed performance format privileging immersion, interaction, and sensory experience.
The future projects "Anatomie" and "OUAT (what watt)" will go even further in animation by working on a increasingly strong autonomy of the objects that will be endowed with movement.
* Fanny Lederlin "Praise of DIY - caring for things, caring for the living and freedom to act" - PUF Editions
LISTENING TO THINGS / MAKING ASSEMBLY
Our artistic research is traversed by the question of animation, that is to say by the act of "giving life to" and considering what is potentially already animated in everything that surrounds us. In our shows, this translates into the invention of tools-objects and living scenographies-installations (notably thanks to sound and new technologies) that constitute separate worlds.
These worlds, these microcosms, we grant them autonomy and we listen to the networks that weave between the imagination of each (artists, spectators) and the objects. And it is precisely in this particular regime of attention to objects that the entire poetics of our theatre is elaborated: to listen to things to better listen to the world.
We defend the idea that innovation, artistic excellence, and the renewal of forms and aesthetics must be accessible and shared by all audiences from the youngest age, just as by those most distant from cultural offerings. That is why a large part of our shows are designed as autonomous devices that can perform both on large theatre stages and in rural or neighborhood community halls in an immediate proximity relationship with the spectators.
In this approach, the relationship that forms around the work is central and the work of addressing specific audiences is a political issue for us: we pay renewed attention to the choice of tools we implement to carry such a narrative, such an artistic journey, or such an experience to the audiences. And if we integrate this question of address from the start of writing a project, it is precisely so that it displaces it, that it shakes its form and reinvents for each proposal new ways to provoke the encounter (capacity, device, immersion, participation).
We believe that in a world that resists and escapes us, it is necessary to take the opposite of the prevailing cynicism and deploy, like small protected ecosystems, all possible spaces where we can - artists and residents of the territories - make assembly to live together something that elevates us a little above ourselves (1). For we are convinced that everything that confronts us with our plural identities, everything that evokes empathy in us, connects us and gives us strength, hope, and control over our lives.
(1)Julien Brunneau "Worlds/assembly - an introduction" COI Review - No. 5 November 2022
