Sound theater
(...) In the meantime, in Prague, the main guest of this 2023 edition is actress and director Céline Garnavault, co-director of the Bordeaux company La Boîte à Sel. While it is aimed at all audiences, her production "Block" is specifically adapted for a young audience, from the age of three.
"The show 'Block' comes from the desire to talk about the city in transformation, in constant change. I wanted to tell this phenomenon with wooden cubes and sounds. I asked sound creator Thomas Sillard to work with me. One day, he brought me a small transparent box that looked like a wireless speaker, telling me: 'I made you a 'boîte à meuh' with some city sounds.' That's how I quickly understood that our show would be made with sound cubes and not wooden ones."
The transformation of image and space thus occurs solely through sounds. This transformation is complemented by the presence on stage of a strange character: a woman wearing a hard hat who strives to control the cubes.
"We improvised a lot with these objects that gradually became alive. The staging tells several stories at the same time. First, the story of a woman who manages a plastic and sound installation that escapes her and must let go. But it is also the story of a city with its noises, its construction work, and its demonstrations. From a child's perspective, it can be something else entirely, something like a real journey; the loss of a cat that must be saved in the rain, for example. So there are several narrative threads to discover in this show."
"It is a theater in which we do not rely much on images, but rather on the imagination of both young and adult spectators. People often tell us what they 'understood' or imagined during the show when there was nothing, except sound."
The show 'Block', which is reminiscent of the magic of radio broadcasting, can be seen starting this Friday at the Théâtre NoD. The festival 'Mange ta grenouille' runs until May 27, and the program is available online at: https://www.sneztuzabu.cz/fr .
