A man runs and his steps mark his way. He has fled his home. His family. His past. He doesn't know where he's going. Is he panicked? Lost? Delusional? Dumb, maybe? ...

He often feels like a penguin. A penguin, yes. Encumbered by his tall, lean body, his long, slender limbs. A foreign body. Encumbered by his presence in the world. What do you do with yourself when you feel out of place? When we are too much. Still too much. Too big, too small, too smart, too cheeky, too effeminate, too macho, too reckless, too bossy, too shy, too not-enough ...

This man is hiding; he is hiding in his memories, in his dreams, in his nightmares. Unless he is a prisoner?

On the way, he meets people. Are they real or does he encounter his ghosts, his doubles, a play of his illusions?

One day - why that day? - on the way, he looks, he listens. He understands, he accepts. He has the right. To be there, quite simply. Without a mask. At the center of the world, at the center of the stage.

He can hit the road again. Free of any ties.

 

A dark scene. A black box, like a cranial box. We are in this man's head, and on his path. As close as possible to his perception, his illusions and his wonders. In the flow of his thoughts and feelings. In the process of his discoveries, his revelations. In his mental theater.

 

Binding together scenes which are dreamlike, fantastical and real at the same time: an aesthetic of rupture or slippage. An aesthetic of chiaroscuro, made up of flashes, appearances and disappearances along the way. An aesthetic of vibration, echo, ricochet. An aesthetic of movement, the zany, the fragmentary, the falsely chaotic and perfectly calibrated subversive patchwork. A delirium of late childhood, funny and absurd. Between latino baroque and arte povera. Without complexes and out of order.

 

What makes the strength and beauty of "On the way" is its lack of judgment, its unique way of never slipping into an unhealthy complacency, or into a blissful sanctification of those we do not see most often. The monsters, not like the others. The ugly, the deformed, the counterfeit. The quirky, the marginalized. The Penguins.

In this show, no compassion, nor condescension. Just bodies, magnificent, elusive, unclassifiable, multiple and unique presences. Like life. Our life.

 

Philippe de Pierpont