Théâtre : LE FUNAMBULE

Philippe Torreton directs and performs Jean Genet?s emblematic text, a love song and a burning reflection on the challenges of art, in this prose addressed to a young acrobat.

Today, the famous actor ventures into the heart of the words of a poet from the margins whom he had never wanted to read, but whom he approached thanks to Jacques Maistre (known as Paillette), a former acrobat turned sculptor who knew Genet and advised him to read Le Funambule (1958). A text dedicated to Abdallah Bentaga, tightrope walker and companion of Genet, who committed suicide a few years after their break-up.

A child of the welfare system, a fugitive thief who went from prison to the Gallimard gilded heights, a hallucinatory and transgressive writer, Genet violently attacked the markers of good and evil. He was an incendiary whose writing, "by turns lyrical and prosaic, caressing and scarifying, hurts and offends" says the actor, who considers Le funambule to be perhaps the standard text for understanding Genet?s work.

In a desolate circus of deadly solitude, a ghostly musician, voiced by composer, guitarist and pianist Boris Boublil, a bedridden young acrobat who, in a suspended dream, rises on a wire, played by tightrope walker Julien Posada, and a man who speaks, elusive, uncomfortable, disturbing. Philippe Torreton gives body to his presence.

JEAN GENET
His first novel, Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs, was published in 1943, followed by Miracle de la rose (1946) and Querelle de Brest (1947)? As a poet, he wrote Condamné à mort (1942), Un chant d?amour (1946)? For the theater, he wrote Les bonnes (1947), Elle (1955) performed at the Comédie de Picardie, Le balcon (1956), Les paravents (1961)? His unpublished play Héliogabale, written in 1942, was first published in 2024.

BY: JEAN GENET
CONCEPT AND DIRECTION: PHILIPPE TORRETON
WITH: PHILIPPE TORRETON (ACTING), BORIS BOUBLIL (MUSIC), JULIEN POSADA (WIRE)
MUSICAL COMPOSITION: BORIS BOUBLIL
CHOREOGRAPHY: JULIEN POSADA
SET DESIGN: RAYMOND SARTI
LIGHTING: BERTRAND COUDERC
COSTUMES: MARIE TORRETON
ARTISTIC COLLABORATION: ELSA IMBERT AND MARIE TORRETON
CHOREOGRAPHIC VISION: DALILA CORTES

Production MC2 : Maison de la Culture de Grenoble, Scène nationale
With the support of Archaos, Pôle National Cirque

*Thursday, January 30 at 8:30pm: performance available in audio description