Introduction
DSN - Dieppe Scène Nationale invited La Boîte à sel to design a project for a creative residency for young audiences in Tourville-sur-Arques.
We are Céline Garnavault, director of performances and Thomas Sillard, creator and sound artist and we decided to take advantage of this wonderful invitation to conduct a new artistic research project around our specialty: the animation of living sound objects. With the particularity of sharing our creative process with children, while also opening the backstage to interested adults from the community.
We are accompanied by 4 professionals from the performing arts: set designer Olivier Droux, builder Daniel Péraud, children's author-illustrator Gauthier David, as well as human beatbox musician L.O.S. who will join us for the last week. In total, we will be 6.
Specifically, we will - children and artists - try to create living sound objects, test them, play with them, and this research will feed into the beginnings of a future professional young audience show that will come to life in about two years.
We place great value on the creative process, that is to say, all the journey that a performance takes (sometimes several years) before it is born, and it is this exciting research phase that the public never sees that we wish to share with children: a true research approach alongside us, when we venture into the unknown, trying, discovering, experimenting, allowing ourselves to be surprised, sometimes failing, starting over, accepting not always knowing how it will end.
Because often in our company, the best discoveries are those that come unexpectedly.
That’s the project “Les invité.es”.
Les invité•es - poem read during the opening of the great party of the invited ones
In the beginning, we know nothing
The story is a vast blank page
A vertigo
An invitation
Around a coffee and chocolates
With Thomas, we meet Laure, Alice, Julie, Ludivine, Alexandra
They are not afraid
Of the unknown
The adventure can begin
Entrance on stage of Gauthier, Daniel, and Olivier
An improvised workshop
In the community hall
At school, we read books,
We search, we search, we search…
Ideas, shapes, sounds
The wheels of emotions turn
Riding a rumbling tractor
The city agents
Deliver us an old lamppost
We will make it a solar star
We open the doors of the workshop
The residents are all our invited ones
Timid rocks awaken
A mountain slides and resonates
Suddenly everything accelerates
New entities join the banquet of things
The children guide us in this cosmos
They enlighten us:
Volcano, meteorite, sun
Potato, peanut, cuddle stones,
Rock, earthquake
Alignment, secret, mystery
With their words
They trace the constellations of the menhir
With their emotions
They color sensitive maps
The rest flows by itself
With a lot of elbow grease nonetheless
But gently
And in trust
Our clumsy penguins
Learn to walk
We are moved, we feel inspired
The idea of a future show may have been born
In the beginning, we know nothing
The story is a vast blank page
A vertigo
An invitation
Today is the great party of the invited ones
A celebration in our way
To say thank you
Thank you for the invitation
Testimony from Céline Garnavault – artistic director of Cie La Boîte à sel
This project is rare. This support is precious. I had free rein. No pressure. No constraints. No expected results. Except: Sharing and workshops with children and the community, a final restitution, and anticipation. Such was my commissioning framework. A blank check in short. With the total trust of the management of DSN – Dieppe Scène Nationale and their partners. And something essential and particularly impressive in this project, a considerable budget to finance:
- The work of 5 people for 5 weeks (6 people the last week)
Significant purchases of materials for the construction site and workshops- To feed and transport the entire team (and the materials by truck) from Quimper, Bordeaux, Poitiers, Montélimar, and Angers.
And what a welcome:
- The Mayor of the town gave us the keys to Tourville-Sur-Arques
- The entire educational team told us: “you are at home here” and they also gave us the keys to the school Les P’tits Mots Passants.
- The municipal agents were always on the line or at hand with a tractor to provide us with what we needed.
- The DSN team (Bergamote, Valentin, Chlotilde, Asdis, Angèle, Philippe, Fabrice, Nicolas, Pierrot…) was there like a sun to accompany us, and to bounce flexibly on all our ideas and changes in direction. They were also a great support for the multitude of essential details to manage for the final stretch and a reassuring and joyful presence.
On the creation side, with my team we were able to develop a true research, based on sound-vibration and the autonomous movement of objects, and if it was able to unfold it is thanks to this long time that offered us the necessary perspective to seize ideas on the fly, test multiple scenographic paths, and capture each of the sparks that shone on our way.
I am delighted to see that our unique research process has so well met this format of territorial creation-mediation residency, since presumably, the foundations of a future young audience show are laid: a poem of unusual, strange, mineral, moving living objects… It will be called OUAT (what watt)
Happy too, because the teachers, the Mayor, the children, and the parents of Tourville-Sur-Arques experienced our creative process from the inside: this great “I DON’T KNOW” from the start, with its doubts, its hesitations, and of course its discoveries and epiphanies.
All of them witnessed week after week an empirical artistic research, and were able to see how ultimately creation is a concrete work made of craftsmanship and desire, that it is difficult but also playful and above all that creation can be shared from its beginnings and create a common ground, and that already it is writing a story that connects people.
We are therefore pleased that all participants in this territorial residency project agreed to embrace/ignite this spark with us! They will accompany us throughout the development of this project and we look forward to returning to present to them in Dieppe the creation that will result from it.
DETAILED PROJECT CALENDARPreparatory meetings - December 2022
- Meeting with the municipal team
- Visit of the community spaces
- Meeting with the educational team of the school
- Meeting with the municipal team
- Visit of the community spaces
- Meeting with the educational team of the school-
For parents and children at the end of classes
- Screening of the documentary “Track, the echo of the circuit” by Luka Merlet
- Meeting
Residence 1 - February 2023
WORKSHOPS “Listening to sounds and materials”
- Reading of the book “An Idea” by Hervé Tullet
- Listening to the world, the class, one’s body, the school
- The idea tools (giant and crooked pencil rakes)
- The giant sheet becomes the giant ball
- “Sensitive map of the school” and wheels of emotions
THE BIG LAB APPOINTMENTS
For parents and children at the end of classes on Fridays
- Reading of the book “An Idea” by Hervé Tullet
- The parents redo the children’s workshop
- Presentation of the first living objects
- “Sensitive map of the city” and wheels of emotions
Residence 2 - March 2023 – 2 weeks
WORKSHOPS “Forms that invite themselves into our hands – small theaters of forms”
- Reading of the book “Vézovèle Tüplek” by Delphine Perret
- Instruction game created by Gauthier David
- Creation of small theaters of forms
- “Sensitive map of the body” and wheels of emotions
- Workshop “Constellation of the menhir”
THE BIG LAB APPOINTMENTS
Open house of the big lab on Saturday, March 14
- Plastic workshops
- Viewing of the ongoing research
- “Sensitive map of the big lab” and wheels of emotions
All classes of the school on the last Friday
- Viewing of the ongoing research
- Interviews with the children
- Plastic workshop “Constellation of the menhir”
- “Sensitive map of the big lab” and wheels of emotions
Residence 3 - April 2023 - 1 week
WORKSHOPS “The giant construction game for the final party”
- Reading of the book “Tonton Starlette” by Gauthier David and Claire Gastold
- The masks
- The scotch path
- Decorating the faces of the cubes
- “Sensitive cards of the giant construction game” and wheels of emotions
THE BIG LAB APPOINTMENTS
For the kindergarten GS class and the CM1 CM2 class
- Viewing of the ongoing research and interviews with the children
- Plastic workshop “Tender Duo”
- “Sensitive map of living objects”
- Filming by Luka Merlet for the production of a short documentary on the research-creation of the company La Boîte à sel.
Residence 4 - June 2023
WORKSHOPS
“Invite sounds into your body – Human beatbox and sound stickers”
- Musical reading of the book “A story” by Edouard Manceau
- Sound stickers
- Sound games and human beatbox
- “Sensitive map” of the ears and wheels of emotions
“Workshop presentation of the book of the invited ones”
- Reading of the book of the invited ones
- Discussions about the shared experience, bursts of laughter, and tears shed
INAUGURATION – June 23, 2023
- Performance “Multiple” by L.O.S / Laurent Duprat
- Reading of the book of the invited ones
- Speeches from the partners
- Friendship gathering
FINAL PARTY OF THE INVITED ONES – June 24, 2023
- Ceremony for the awarding of the Menhirs
- Show “The lab of forms”
- Giant construction game of the invited ones
- Photobooth “Menhir Head”
- “Sensitive cards” and wheels of emotions
- Reading corner of the invited ones (with all the books read in the workshop)
- Small puppet theater of the invited ones
- Plastic workshop “Tender Duo”
- Plastic workshop “The small theater of forms”
- Plastic workshop “Constellation of the menhir”
- Plastic workshop “Masks”
- Plastic workshop “The book of the invited ones”
- Shape games on the table
- Stand for purchasing and signing books by Gauthier David (20 books sold)
- Contest of “cakes of the invited ones” and awarding of prizes (cinema and show tickets from JP of DSN-Dieppe Scène Nationale and the book “Tonton Starlette” by Gauthier David and Claire Gastold)
- Listening point of the songs from the music workshop given by Élise Lavasseur from the Dieppe conservatory.
- Visit of the exhibitions of the kindergarten classes
- Friendship snack
- Filming by Luka Merlet for the production of a short documentary on the research-creation of the Compagnie La Boîte à sel.
