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Coeur d'Acier
Magali Mougel
Coeur d'Acier
DR
 
Actes du théâtre n° 87.

Coeur d’acier is a story about a valley. It's the valley where Doris and Joseph live, along with their children Anna and Bobby, and everyone else. It could all have turned out differently, but they've got to put up with the unremitting silence due to the closing of the last blast furnace in the valley. While no one in the rest of the country could care less about the affair, they're still fighting there, holding their heads high and trying to keep on questioning the public authorities. Things don't calm down when a former union leader, now a Euro MP, comes back to make an announcement. The industrial site is slated to become a holiday resort.

Why a woman playwright?
"For several years I've been looking to plays for the playwright's ability to give voice to the inexpressible, the things that can't be spoken, that lack words. Pauline Sales's Le Groenland is a confidential matter, Nina, c’est autre chose by Michel Vinaver is one huge Freudian slip, David Greig's Lune Jaune is about restoring speech.
Speaking is a choice, an act, and speaking in the theater has to be an essential act. Let's be clear, it's not about rhetoric or anything extraordinary, just what's
essential. It's not the time frame of news or journalism, but rather that of
hindsight, of sociological, philosophical and political analysis.
Théâtre Exalté's partnership today with a woman playwright is about gaining a better understanding of what it takes to have a voice, and a public voice at that. By drawing inspiration from various events that have led to acts of dissidence, our intent is not to recount what has been said but to tease out what hasn't and which is hiding in families, offices, corridors and on the fringes of classical theater.
The project may be the end of a cycle or the beginning of a new one; a desire perhaps to bring our company toward an even more collective approach, to gather together our concerns about performance and writing, to make the choice to take a public stand and to share in that responsibility."
Baptiste Guiton


Opened November 5 - 6 at the Théâtre de Vénissieux; November 13 at the Centre culturel de La Ricamarie; December 8 - 9 at the Château Rouge in Annemasse; March 8-11, 2016 at the TNP in Villeurbanne. Director: Baptiste Guiton. Set design: Damien Schahmaneche. Original score: Tommy Luminet and Sébastien Quencez. Lighting, video and stage management: Benjamin Nesme. Sound and stage management: Clément-Marie Mathieu. Costumes: Aude Desigaux. Choreography: Pauline Laidet. Props and sets: Quentin Lugnier. Cast: Antoine Besson, Olivier Borle, Émilie Chertier, Baptiste Guiton, Jérôme Quintard, Tiphaine Rabaud Fournier. Piano Jeanne Garraud, Guitar Sébastien Quencez, Lap-steel Tommy Luminet.

Characters: 2 women - 4 men - + Piano, Guitare, Lap-steel

JOSEPH Do you know how many birds I've collected in this dovecote, Doris ? Doris, do you know how long it's taken to amass the birds from all over the world in this dovecote? I don't differentiate among breeds. They occupy my world, they shape my world. I watch them and feed them like I would never had fed anyone. Their feathers and sweet songs are like a string of lives / Some of them were raised to fly over the earth transmitting their messages far and wide. Now they serve no purpose. Now they're what you cook, Doris. Rare birds that won't end up in a taxidermist's jar because we're eating them, Doris. I slit their throats, you pluck them, and we eat them. Rare skylarks on our plates, Doris. I never thought we'd get so much enjoyment from making goulash of them, Doris. Doris, did you know that I'm destroying all the eggs laid by these ladies? I'm the horrid midwife. I take the eggs and throw them in the garbage. That's where the smell comes from in the dovecote. It's the smell of corpses rotting in their shells. And to top it off, Doris, for the past week maggots have been hatching in those killing fields. I want to stop feeding my pigeons since their stillborn babies found the best way to produce a mouthful for their mothers and fathers. That wriggling mass, Doris / It's fascinating, isn't it? Don't be afraid, silly. Look. Come closer, I want to show you something. Here / See I think the garbage has turned into an incubator. Yesterday I came in here and there was a little noise like a dying kitten coming out of that garbage. He's not very handsome our little survivor. He's actually rather terrifying with those eyes hidden behind a membrane of skin. Doris, the fairest thing would be to just smash the unnatural little monster against a wall. But who am I / I'm still human, aren't I Doris?