Press Review

There is the show Track, created in November 2021 by Cie La Boîte à sel, which has been touring a lot since – and will be in Gironde between April and June 2022, at Carré-Colonnes, at Larural, at the Chahuts festival. A documentary, L’écho du circuit, has now been added, through which one becomes a privileged witness to the creation of the show, a very nice mediation tool. From the meeting between a creator and sound plastician, Thomas Sillard, and you Céline Garnavault, director and puppeteer, was born what you call a theater of connected sound objects within La Boîte à sel. What happens there? Our company works with sound, play, and objects. Manipulating sound is an inexhaustible engine of creation. For Track, I wanted to materialize the sound loops, the repetitions, with miniature electric trains. Thomas Sillard designed the connected modules to carry the sounds on board. The barriers, signals, level crossings, also come to life. Laurent Duprat, L.O.S, actor and human beatbox, creates with his voice the sounds he records and manipulates. His character, Monsieur Héron, installed inside a railway, embodies a strange station master, an attentive switchman, an inventor who gets carried away by the universe he has created. In the documentary L’écho du circuit directed by Luka Merlet, we follow the company in creative residency, it’s fascinating. It shows from the inside the scope of the project… We create a lot for children, and the idea of this film – L’écho du circuit – was to share with adults all this formal research work, the fabrication. Nothing is simple in this project. Moreover, if we knew how much, we wouldn’t go! I found it a shame not to share these stages. Here, we show the process from A to Z, the darkest aspects, the advances, the multitude of problems to solve, the team at work. Ultimately, it tells a pretty beautiful story, of people who care. Or how this long and big project results in a 40-minute solo! In the film, you confide: At the beginning, the technique takes precedence over everything. Then later, we witness the creation of the narrative. I like that we see this journey. Showing the creation in action, the gestures of the team, it bonds, it re-screws, Daniel says Dada, the builder who elevates the railway. And the crafting of the dramaturgy: the beginning, found one morning on stage, but I still don’t know everything it tells, and in the evening I write a new piece that will nourish our storyline. I let things happen, I work by experimentation, by free association, surprises will come. It is in this particular attention that the poetics of the company is developed. There is one scene in particular, that between the station master and an automatic barrier, we completely share the research work. That sudden moment when the barrier blinks and snuggles against the character's shoulder… The character builds himself in his relationship with objects, as children do when inventing through play. After a while, the team gives autonomy to the objects. When Alizée, light creator and train manager, says: “Don’t think about the controls, you have to be the locomotive,” she becomes a puppeteer. In the documentary, it’s visible, everyone becomes porous, slides towards writing. One can say that in my shows, objects, sound, and humans share the responsibility of the story.