Cie P.P. Dream & Gilbert Peyre (France)

“Cupidon, Propriétaire de l'Immeuble situé sur l'Enfer et le Paradis”

MARIA MATOS TEATRO MUNICIPAL
17 and 18 May at 9.30pm (Friday and Saturday)
FIMFA Lx13 Festival opening show!

Concept, direction, sculptures and scenography: Gilbert Peyre Texts: Yves Garnier and extracts from "Song of Songs" Music: "Mes béatitudes" by Gérard Pesson (extract), "Mi par d'udir ancora" by Enrico Caruso, "Temps arrêté" by Raphaël Beau, religious hymns Performers: Jean-Yves Tual (Cupidon), Marie De Oliveira (The Bride), Gaëlle Fiaschi (The Housekeeper) Soprano: Lydie Morales Voices: Achille Orsoni, Corinne Martin, Gwénola de Luze, Olga Nikolaeva Manipulation of electronic table: Juliette Zanon, Bachir Sam Stage manager: Loïc Guyon Assistant stage manager: Antoine Mary, Nicolas Gérard Lighting design: Flore Marvaud Sound design: Fabien Caron Dresser: Gaëlle Fiaschi Electronic engineer: Robert Breton Costumes: Morgane Olivier Technical adviser and scenography assistant: Vikonte de Bartholin Script: Elsa Bahia Photographs: Krzysztof Wojcik Participants in the construction: Anne Pinguet, Virginie Chevrier, Claude Orsoni, Claude Cottet Production: Cie P.P.Dream – Laurence Alfieri Co-production: Achille Orsoni, LE CENTQUATRE Supports: Loupi Electronique and Robert Breton, Théâtre de la Marionnette à Paris, Théâtre de la Commune-CDN d'Aubervilliers, Ville de Pantin Technique: Electronic pneumatic electro-mechanical sculptures For audiences over: +12 Time: 60 min. Language: French with Portuguese translation

“The cosmos of Gilbert Peyre is at the same time a museum of Arts and Métiers, an engine room, a funfair, a music hall, an opera, a spectacle of conjurer or magician, a phantasmagoria, a ceremony, a liturgy, a cavalcade, a procession, a zoo, a circus, an orgy, a mechanical comedy, a comical apocalypse.” - Gilbert Lascault

The visual artist Gilbert Peyre, creator of installations/performances called sculpturOpéras presents his latest creation that will amaze everyone by its bizarre imagery.

For an hour we are immersed in the surreal world of this artist, in an opulent feast of electromechanical sculptures created directly from the fertile imagination of anelectromechanical-maniac...

A surreal allegory on Love, this sculpturOpéra by Gilbert Peyre blends opera, visual arts and technology with an erotic text by Yves Garnier, interpreted by the soprano Lydie Morales singing to a soundtrack in which religious sounds and songs are combined with the compositions of Gérard Pesson, Enrico Caruso and Raphaël Beau.

In this tragic and delirious comedy, electromechanical sculptures stand side by side with live figures, and the audience is introduced into the peculiar universe of Cupid,played by Jean Yves Tual, the keeper of the house, half man half woman, who lives surrounded by both angelic and diabolic dolls. There, among the sounds of music, strange sounds and half-spoken words a rabbit appears along with a bride dressed as a princess (Marie De Oliveira), a wardrobe which jumps around and bounces off objects, a pig in a fiery crown and a mechanical kid with a video head. By retelling the story of Adam and Eve, Peyre plays the game of surprising people with the fantastic elements of the world they live in. In the artist’s peculiar imaginative world you can laugh along with his cheeky, playful characters and, at the same time, think of the truth that Peyre hides under the various theatrical attractions. We will leave the theatre confused, full of questions but also pleased that we let the artist manipulate us.

Lyrical, full of humor, magic, chaotic... this installation/show illuminates our smiles and asks us about what can be love and life together: Hell and at the same time, Paradise... An amazing show!

“Gilbert Peyre is so bizarre; what he does is completely in contradiction to any principle; it makes one think of the work of Joel-Peter Witkin and the Quay Brothers.” - Jean-Pierre Jeunet

"An extraordinary show... a fantastic mix (and successfully) of live and mechanical actors..." - Thierry Voisin, Télérama Sortir

   
  

BIO
The French artist Gilbert Peyre (born 1947) is impossible to classify: artist, inventor, D.I.Y. genius, mechanic or in the words of Ben Vautier a ‘Realist Tinquely’. But Gilbert Peyre really has nothing in common with any artistic movement at all. Since the beginning of the 1980s he has enjoyed himself by endowing sculptures / objects with the ability to move which he shows in the window of his Montmartre studio before exhibiting them, for example, in the provinces, Paris (Centre Georges Pompidou, Halle Saint Pierre) and Berlin.

In his own sculpturOpéras as well as in his visual art installations Gilbert Peyre makes alive his wishing, tender, fragile, affecting machines and denounces with a humour tinted with surrealism the ridiculous agitation of our society, which does not stop taking itself seriously. Successively Visual Artist, Stage Director, Visionary, this unclassable artist is mixing with grace the technology, the drama, poetry, the absurdity, and with nothing, says all to us.

His outrageous animated sculptures deliver outstanding performances in which ordinary objects reveal an improbable life of their own. In the bizarre world that Peyre’s imagination conjures up, chairs wrestle, mechanical rats rap-dance and clothing suspended from hangers sways in time to music.

We can see his amazing sculptures in the movie "Micmacs à tire-larigot", by Jean-Pierre Jeunet. The director falls under the spell of his works when he discovers them in Halle Saint-Pierre, and for them to be part of its movie he creates especially the character Petit Pierre.

Currently the installation "J'ai froid" by Gilbert Peyre takes part of the exhibition "HEY! Modern Art & Pop Culture / Part II", at the Musée de la Halle Saint Pierre in Paris, organized by the museum director Martine Lusardy, and Anne & Julien, creators of the revue HEY!