En manque – Holland Festival

Vincent Macaigne’s theatre is intense, brutal, and loving. After many ground breaking productions – Requiem 3 was performed at the Holland Festival in 2012 – he can no longer be considered an enfant terrible. Not that his work has become any less radical. His latest performance, En manque, is about people struggling with loneliness, love and despair. Four characters go in search of pure and radical love, fighting against the world and against life, but for desire. Programme

Vincent Macaigne returns to the Holland Festival with En manque, a play about loneliness, depression and the pain of unrequited love. En manque centres on a woman who is wrestling with depression. After a childhood spent in poverty she married a

rich man and used his immense fortune to found a prestigious art gallery in the valley in which she grew up. But she experiences great social and mental loneliness. This desperate person goes through life as if she is carrying her own dead body with her. Longing for pure and radical love, nothing less will satisfy her. Only her daughter can break through her depression after she has fought her own internal battle.

The extreme theatrical universe of Macaigne is intense, brutal and yet loving. Visual art, physical theatre, soundscapes and text combine in violence with an undertone of humour. Macaigne’s work is an effort to uncover the moral ambiguity of existence, often via a radical deconstruction of classical literature and theatrical texts. This is a method that he previously used in Idiot! (2009, a free interpretation of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot) and Au moins j’aurai laissé un beau cadavre (2011, a free interpretation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet).

En manque offers no insights into the underlying psychological drama. It also offers no sociological explanation for the situation. With his four actors and 10 extras (consisting of actors, dancers and circus performers among others) the only thing he does show us is a convulsive effort to recapture the lust for life.

As he writes: ‘The play is not concerned with reality but with our deepest-seated darkness and light. Our love and intimacy in the world. Our fury and anger about the future. Our guilt and the paths that have led us to where we are. Not in order to resolve the paradoxes or contradictions but to exceed our limitations.’

Macaigne made his debut at the Holland Festival in 2012 with Requiem 3: an aggressive and darkly humorous take on the feud between biblical brothers Cain and Abel. En manque is his most recent work. The play had its premiere on 13 December 2016 in the Théâtre de Vidy, Lausanne.

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text, direction, scenography Vincent Macaigne collaboration scenography Julien Peissel light design Jean Huleu props Lucie Basclet sound design Marianne Pierré, Jonathan Cesaroni stage manager Sébastien Mathé voice Machteld Vis Direction assistant Salou Sadras set design Ateliers du Théâtre de Vidy administration Compagnie Friche 22.66 AlterMachine Camille Hakim Hashemi, Elisabeth Le Coënt cast Liza Lapert, Sofia Teillet, Clara Lama-Schmidt, Thibaut Evrard figuranten Alisse van de Ven, Amarante Nat, Gwen van Beersum, Berith Danse, Chuday Goncalves, Marina Kopier, Hilde Valentijn - Keune, Violeta Valatkaite, Laura Laman, Harry Kraaij, Anne-Friné Steiger child Elea Bluekens, Ivanka Bluekens production Théâtre de Vidy, Compagnie Friche 22.66 coproduction Théàtre de la Ville - Paris, La Vilette - Paris, TANDEM - Scène nationale, Holland Festival with the support of Théàtre de la Ville - Paris, La Vilette - Paris, TANDEM - Scène nationale, Holland Festival with touring support of Swiss Arts Council, Pro Helvetia, Institut Français

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