The future waterborne creation
by the group ilotopie.

Aquatic Oxymores

For Spring 2009

1. Foreword

Very often cities are borne of water, the presence of a spring, a river or a natural harbour.
With time and history the urban has little by little built itself in increasing defiance of water: canalisation, protection, fortification, draining. Today water in cities is enslaved, transformed into baths of illusions or residential moats, alibi for the landed and disfigured into romantic peephole, encircled city space or liquid wasteland.

And yet rivers, lakes, seas and ports are, along with forests, our reservoirs of the imaginary. Water surfaces live as the unbuilt-upon breaths of the urban, fragments of horizon or corridors of immensity which carry away the city-dweller as do the fringes of the jungle.
But where goes the water?

Urban banks and breaks
Here, in the Carconcrete, the smallest gutter is a border, and every quayside an elsewhere.
Throughout the world, now is the renaissance of urban waters;
Stretches of water become places preserved from motor vehicles, and their perimeters are improved, environmentalised, architectured and landscaped, the pedestrian and the bicycle replace the banks of cars, the city rehydrates itself. The city dwellers install themselves with their feet above the mirror, lulled as the water laps its waves' thoughts, breaths of space between two streams, between two screens, between two streets.
New collusions grow on the urban shores.

Working on the new themes growing upon urban shores, Ilotopie, a company of island based artists, set out six years ago to “play with water”, on those liquid and often untouched stages to be found at city's' crossroads.

And it is today, using humour and the absurd, that we arrange our next meeting with water, in a show which no audience can imagine, to be played in Spring 2009, different from its predecessors “Narcissus Reflects” and “Water Fools”, which are still there to play on water.

Our way to water is via man made image in his setting, the human well alive at the centre of the landscape, outlined as the worlds' decision-maker, the unique carrier of utopias.

For several years we have been experimenting on water, portraying lakeside habitats, floating islands and marine myths, and we have learnt that individuals isolated on water have astounding presence and that if we choose so, an aquatic space becomes a gigantic theatre, and that by allying ourselves with water we open up new playing fields.

Theatre is our tool upon a path which passes through cities and images. With a little technology the actors of Ilotopie have become masters of their liquid stage, water pedestrians and players-out of fantasies, drivers of dreams or nightmares, obsession transfers and convulsive profiles, carrying out life and action as if on an ordinary stage.

An out of the ordinary aquatic event for an extremely large audience.

2. Writing for water

Water is a public space

Working on the common ground of the public place right from its start in 1979, the company Ilotopie has built itself up over its shows into a strong fixed team. This human energy has allowed for the realisation of works on an important scale which “sweep away” the spectators.

Anchored to an island, and rooted in water, the group has been working for several years on a project of water theatre, in the image of street theatre.

Of course, with theatre on water, we lose the closeness with the audience which so pleased us in our terrestrial interventions, but it seems of interest to us to delve into the city's virgin waters.

Today the elected, ecologists, city planners look upon metropolitan water as space to renew. Become prime stakes in society, these stretches are as yet untouched by art, and for that very reason they give place to flows of thoughts and dreams. : Urban emptiness written onto the heart of the saturated city.

3. Our story on the water

Already in 1985, the company devised a large waterborne show, “The Isle o'Topies” a three-day epic set on a floating island which toured throughout Europe.

“Narcissus Reflects” followed on swiftly and, created without production in 2000, took two years to develop into a technically fully-fledged show.
Another creation, an exceptional collaboration with the Group F, “Water Fools” was built over time using vampirised details from previous works.

For this new water-borne production, which we will call “ Aquatic Oxymores”, work began in 2006 with a view to play in spring 2009, in order to leave all the time needed for writing, research, partnerships, budgetary preparations, the direction and rehearsals.

In the same way that the Street didn't really have its own theatre before the advent of Street Theatre, apart from marching bands, majorettes and carnivals, rivers lakes and the sea are still enrobed in a certain artistic folklore, with sea jousts, old sailing ships and firework displays.

To write for this new stage is the goal we set ourselves today, with an urge to bring out from the hearts of city's a sparkling and topical new creation, an urban challenge, and we are certain that the spectators will be there meet us on the quaysides.

4. The stage

On Treading aboard
And for us our boards are an acre and a half across, around 80 metres wide and 60 metres deep. The other deep, the water deep can vary from 70 centimetres to over 30 metres according to the location (and it's when there's not enough that problems arise).

In certain cases the depth of the stage becomes a real pleasure when darkness blends the sky and the water into deep black, opening the way for unbelievable apparitions and disappearances.

Despite these landscaped dimensions, and because landscape it is, that is to say a space that exists only through the human eye, the exact location of the audience as image receptor is primordial in defining the location of the stage, not forgetting that calling people out to look at water is not without making them think of its elemental importance for the future.

Thus installed, we nevertheless find ourselves in a reasonably traditional theatrical context, albeit with an open stage particularly adapted to several thousand spectators!

Of course, these water boards have their own particularities: winds, currents, tides or waves can each perturb the show enough to render it unplayable, but more often than not these atmospheric or situational constraints can add another dynamic to the overall vision.

Here, the show and the audience are, for us, in the same boat and it's port and starboard that hold sway over stage right and left in order to sustain this space of bionic and naturalistic floating structures, sensitive architectures fighting the amorphism of a stretch of water.
The air/water interface is an opportunity for this show and the strict separation between these two fluids asks only to transposed, riven.

If it is engineering that of course auto-motors each actor individually, electrically, our research also turns towards waterborne sculptures of imbalance, their metamorphosis worked upon by the actor, unbalance and reversal, peacock tails of water spouting transformations, compressed air used for invasions and deflations of image- volumes, and more besides…

From the surface, the stage carries with it its' hidden underwater side, magnificent secret wings for the actors and spectators.

5. The Actors

The actors are this water-theatre

Human stature alone, placed on water, draws attention and fascinates.
What is left is the writing of the action and the transfer of emotion despite the distance.
New codes are to be found among the theatrical classical know-how, for not everyone is naturally actor on water, a navigactor.

Little by little the company takes possession of the water, a slow domestication, in order that at the end the audience forgets the prowess and feels only the gesture, the addressed act, simply from actor to spectator.

Our work and rehearsal period in 2007 and 2008 will be systematically made up of both the technical and the practical. Within Ilotopie actors and inventors have a pact, and it is closely together that they develop living images and open up the dramatic vein. Our non-narrative shows draw their legibility from a succession of image/scenes from which the audience weaves its own interpretation across time, space and subjectivity.

The navigactor is almost always self-lit during his movements.
Distance magnifies him if he knows how to enlarge his gesture.
In the same manner the water carries his voice if his use of it is clear, precise and concise.

The nautical machines being in general assistants in displacement, the actors' movements are drawn up like choreography.

The rehearsals of these movements are first carried out on land, in real space and time, and then confirmed on water, and so on.

The learning of the role, the machine, and the choreography are at first carried out separately, then together.

Of course, the wind conditions and/or currents can create serious difficulties for the actor. It is easy to understand that with this type of work an actor is irreplaceable, and it goes without saying that only a solidly composed theatre troupe could be capable of playing the piece for a sustained period.

In “Aquatic Oxymorons” the population of floating actors preside over the transfer of wonder to the audience, and over its desire to be caught up within the heart of the show.

6. The music

The water carries the sound to the shore

Having worked with a large variety of sound installations, we have opted for one in which the music comes out across the water, and sometimes with its help.

The air and water become generators of sound in themselves, thanks to a system of tubes and reeds, lips and mouthpieces.
Taking their inspiration from the sea-cow, the actor-musicians will play their mechanical floating instruments using the compression of air on water.
A kind of aquatic bagpipe will also be tested out for the show, in a search for acoustic power.

Amplified musical waves will be sent out on and from the water using emergence and submersion, as part of a composition created by Phil Spectrum, who has invented most of the music for our shows.

7. The framework

Our choice, via this creation, is to devise a show which will not only be a milestone for the company, magic and almost shamanic, but will also carry in its belly the caustic values that we each defend, humans that we are, in our contemporary society, windows onto possible choices and a panoply of utopic fragments slashed through with acid images of the current world.

Water, a space rich in the romantic, does not lend itself easily to the incisive, and finding the way to be cutting on water is a vital part of our quest.

This man that we place upon the water is not in social conflict, he's looking for the reasons for his thirst and his dissatisfaction. He has not yet taken himself apart. He remains an individual, an archetype built in part of myth and recent learning, scientific, philosophical, political and emotional, put to the test of the planetary world.

This man is in the actors of our theatre, ceaselessly.

Aquatic Oxymorons is yet to be written, but for us the field of its content is already marked out by our experiences and our desires; today it is the combined creativity of the company which will breathe life into the centre of this new show.

8. The Team and the Cast

“Aquatic Oxymores” is a collective creation by the company ilotopie.

The artistic direction and writing guidance will be principally carried out by Bruno Schnebelin and shared by:

Sylvain Ohl, Pascal Wyrobnik, Andras Hadju, Stéphane Pigeyre, Maryse Jaffrain and Manu Fleury in the surprising machines and marine architecture department.

Ann Wiliams as set and costume designer.

Phil Spectrum as sound designer.

And already on the water : Lucile Boissonnet, Valérie Cartier, Fanny Decoust, Françoise Léger, Daniela Luna, Dominique Noel, Arnaud Poupin, Pierre Tardif

9. Partnerships in progress

The partners in « Aquatic Oxymores » confirmed as from 2007 :

- L'Abattoir in Chalon sur Saone
- The city of Amiens
- Le Théatre des Salins, National Theatre of Martigues/ Martigues
- « In Situ » european platform for the creation of innovatory urban shows
- La Coursive, National Theatre of La Rochelle/ L'Astrolabe, Cultural Centre of La Rochelle

Research for co-producers and pre-sales is in progress, the construction of this show needing two residential periods, one for writing and one for the actors.

Financial aid for the creation of “Aquatic Oxymores”

- Beaumarchais writing grant SACD 2007
- DMDTS Ministry of Culture and Communication
- ADAMI SPEDIDAM (in progress)

ilotopie is grant-aided by the Ministry of Culture, the DRAC PACA, The PACA regional council, the General Council of the Bouches du Rhone, the ANSEC, Ouest Provence, the DIREN, the town of Arles, the town of Port Saint Louis, Cultures France.

10. Provisional Planning