Maud Blandel - PREMIERE Lignes de conduite — Arsenic (Lausanne) | 17-22 April 2018

Published on 09 April 2018

LIGNES DE CONDUITE | PREMIERE — 17 > 22 avril 2018 at L'Arsenic - Lausanne

TUE. 17 APR 19:30 | WED 18 APR 21:00 | THU. 19 APR 21:00 | FRI. 20 APR 21:00 | SAT. 21 APR 21:00 | SUN. 22 APR 19:00

IN GIRUM IMUS NOCTE ET CONSUMIMURIGNI 
“We go round in circles in the night and we are swallowed up by fire.”

 

Throughout history, each culture managed to invent its own trance rituals so as to free the captive souls of a community. Regardless the fictional system of the ritual, it is in any case a crossing: an ecstasy, or the possibility to stand out of oneself, for a limited period of time. 

For her second play, Maud Blandel chooses to investigate one of these rituals: tarantism. A South Italian popular healing rite combining Christianism, magical practices and musical catharsis, such a phenomenon does not just demonstrate thwarting systems implemented by a society, it accounts for an entire segment of the evolution of cultural power struggles. From its telluric origin to its sacred expression, tarantism is nowadays used by a fierce party/touristic industry. 

Lignes de conduite will endeavour to dissect how such a possession phenomenon was stripped of its initial sacred nature, through a folklorisation process.  

Therefore we will try to grasp what these new forms of possession originating from such a profanation could be. What language and what ecstatic techniques has it developed? Who does it try to be in communion with, even maybe to communicate with? And finally to what extent is the sacred entertaining, and the other way around?