CADAVRE EXQUIS
by Pierre Byland and the company
directed by Pierre Byland
assisted by Mareike Schnitker
with Dante Carbini, Carmen Götz, Gerardo Mele, Kate Weinrieb
directed by Pierre Byland
assisted by Mareike Schnitker
with Dante Carbini, Carmen Götz, Gerardo Mele, Kate Weinrieb
An undertaker, Dante, prepares a dead body, Gustavo Perotto, to receive his family. Enter a woman, Carmen Götz, who comes to pay her respects to the deceased. She loved Gustavo, who drown while trying to save a baby fallen in the water. Unfortunately, Gustavo didn’t know how to swim, but at least the baby survived.
To our surprise, a second woman, Kate, appears with her baby. Like the man who recently died to save him, the little one’s name is also Gustavo. Kate comes to thank the dead man, and we discover that she also loved Gustavo, and that the baby she holds in her arms is their son. Carmen doesn’t believe her eyes: she is stupefied. At this point, the two rivals are face-to-face and ready for anything, including murder...
The Puppet Cadaver: The Absurd Game that is Both Disconcerting And Moving
We have seen many shows with life-sized puppets. We know the particular capacity of these creatures, doubles of the living, to disturb, to expand the scene, heightening the reactions of the spectators, inducing both laughter and great emotion.
But in “Cadavre Exquis” by Pierre Byland, who also signs off as the director of this show presented at the Teatro del Cerchio - with excellent actors, Dante Carbini, Gerardo Mele, Carmen Götz and Kate Weinrieb – everything acquires a quality that is ultimately amplified because that ambiguous and disconcerting presence, moved by the hand of an actor/puppeteer, is in truth a person! Better yet: … a corpse!
In a crescendo of hilarious situations, full of great torments, clowning and gags, a sort of absurd and comic narrative line develops involving a man who, even though he didn’t know how to swim, threw himself into the waters of a lake to save a baby. He succeeds in the effort, but dies for the infant who turns out to be his son, born to the sweet and sensual Kate. While in the mortuary we also find a bereaved Carmen, who has many shared memories with her beloved and deceased husband Gustavo…
Everything appears a bit mad, with Dante who wrestles with the puppet/cadaver, moving him here and there, dressing him, speaking to him from time to time, changing his posture, in a sort of comic acceleration that continues with the arrival of the two women and the newborn in a carriage…
Carmen has her obsessions. “They are all dead,” she repeats several times, listing names and grotesque accidents, only to be strangled in the end at the hands of Gustavo after she stabs the enchanting Kate from a distance…
The performance is continually rich with surprises, between the high notes of Carmen and the delicious distractions of Kate. When Dante finally is asked to bring the soul of the deceased - who speaks on a television screen - closer to the body, we discover that the man responsible for the mortuary seems to have his own aims: he will be the executor of the last will and testament. He will become the legal guardian of the little one in the carriage?! One thing is certain, he will always be able to insure a future for the child: in his business, there is always work!
The performance was met with very long and enthusiastic applause from the large audience at the Cerchio. * * * * * Valeria Ottolenghi “Prime del Teatro”, Gazzetta di Parma 2/21/2011
We have seen many shows with life-sized puppets. We know the particular capacity of these creatures, doubles of the living, to disturb, to expand the scene, heightening the reactions of the spectators, inducing both laughter and great emotion.
But in “Cadavre Exquis” by Pierre Byland, who also signs off as the director of this show presented at the Teatro del Cerchio - with excellent actors, Dante Carbini, Gerardo Mele, Carmen Götz and Kate Weinrieb – everything acquires a quality that is ultimately amplified because that ambiguous and disconcerting presence, moved by the hand of an actor/puppeteer, is in truth a person! Better yet: … a corpse!
In a crescendo of hilarious situations, full of great torments, clowning and gags, a sort of absurd and comic narrative line develops involving a man who, even though he didn’t know how to swim, threw himself into the waters of a lake to save a baby. He succeeds in the effort, but dies for the infant who turns out to be his son, born to the sweet and sensual Kate. While in the mortuary we also find a bereaved Carmen, who has many shared memories with her beloved and deceased husband Gustavo…
Everything appears a bit mad, with Dante who wrestles with the puppet/cadaver, moving him here and there, dressing him, speaking to him from time to time, changing his posture, in a sort of comic acceleration that continues with the arrival of the two women and the newborn in a carriage…
Carmen has her obsessions. “They are all dead,” she repeats several times, listing names and grotesque accidents, only to be strangled in the end at the hands of Gustavo after she stabs the enchanting Kate from a distance…
The performance is continually rich with surprises, between the high notes of Carmen and the delicious distractions of Kate. When Dante finally is asked to bring the soul of the deceased - who speaks on a television screen - closer to the body, we discover that the man responsible for the mortuary seems to have his own aims: he will be the executor of the last will and testament. He will become the legal guardian of the little one in the carriage?! One thing is certain, he will always be able to insure a future for the child: in his business, there is always work!
The performance was met with very long and enthusiastic applause from the large audience at the Cerchio. * * * * * Valeria Ottolenghi “Prime del Teatro”, Gazzetta di Parma 2/21/2011
Die Laughing
Between Samuel Beckett and Achille Campanile? Between nonsense and clowning? Cadavre Exquis (The Exquisite Cadaver), created by Pierre Byland and the Company Les Fusains under Pierre Byland’s direction assisted by Mareike Schnitker, made it’s world premiere Friday night at Stalker Teatro’s Residenza Artetransitiva in the former Pria Woolmill. The show is a tragicomic exercise in the drama of everyday life. It entertains, presenting its audience with the revolving absurdity of life and death when the two extremes come together in the home of an undertaker. Byland relies on the creative possibilities of improvisation, creating a show (still a work-in-progress) in which poetry and black humor blend with the chemistry of the versatile actors, putting a new twist on a classic technique by using just the right amounts of technology and actor’s craft.
Bravo to the Italians Dante Carbini (an undertaker who transforms the cadaver into a macabre, animated marionette without strings) and Gerardo Mele (the cadaver, deadpan and malleable hero against his will), as well as to the Swiss Carmen Götz (the wife, perfectly grotesque), and the American Kate Weinrieb (loveable lover). Applause for all: numerous and well deserved.
Renato Ianni (Eco di Biella, June 30th, 2008)
Between Samuel Beckett and Achille Campanile? Between nonsense and clowning? Cadavre Exquis (The Exquisite Cadaver), created by Pierre Byland and the Company Les Fusains under Pierre Byland’s direction assisted by Mareike Schnitker, made it’s world premiere Friday night at Stalker Teatro’s Residenza Artetransitiva in the former Pria Woolmill. The show is a tragicomic exercise in the drama of everyday life. It entertains, presenting its audience with the revolving absurdity of life and death when the two extremes come together in the home of an undertaker. Byland relies on the creative possibilities of improvisation, creating a show (still a work-in-progress) in which poetry and black humor blend with the chemistry of the versatile actors, putting a new twist on a classic technique by using just the right amounts of technology and actor’s craft.
Bravo to the Italians Dante Carbini (an undertaker who transforms the cadaver into a macabre, animated marionette without strings) and Gerardo Mele (the cadaver, deadpan and malleable hero against his will), as well as to the Swiss Carmen Götz (the wife, perfectly grotesque), and the American Kate Weinrieb (loveable lover). Applause for all: numerous and well deserved.
Renato Ianni (Eco di Biella, June 30th, 2008)
"A haunted and marvelous enchantment...
Cadavre Exquis is a mysterious and most entertaining comedy, reminiscent of
Edgar Allan Poe, brilliantly performed by four talented actor-comedians" - Bernie Schürch (Co-founder of MUMMENSCHANZ)
Cadavre Exquis is a mysterious and most entertaining comedy, reminiscent of
Edgar Allan Poe, brilliantly performed by four talented actor-comedians" - Bernie Schürch (Co-founder of MUMMENSCHANZ)
Cadavre Exquis: love & death, the eternal story is all for laughs.
An unfortunate and haunting hero evokes the melancholy and indestructible Buster Keaton. Armed with the precious complicity of Gerardo Mele (the Exquisite Cadaver), Dante Carbini plays the role of a disastrous yet poetic undertaker. He carries almost one hour of the show by himself while preparing in detail the explosively timed outbursts of two widows, the hysterical and menacing Carmen Götz, who enters dressed in mourning, and the vaporous Kate Weinrieb, caught halfway between the lights of Broadway and the epigrammatic theater of Tadeusz Kantor.
The show, built on daily improvisations by the actor-authors under the maieutic direction of Pierre Byland, is a fresh and incisive exhibition, displaying a fully conscious, ironic mix of styles spanning theatrical genres from mime to melodrama. The show offers a menu that is capable of surprising variations thanks to the masterful mixing of ingredients and ideas, in homage to the authentic style of the great European school of contemporary clown founded by Jacques Lecoq and Pierre Byland.
The provocatively farcical plot of “Cadavre Exquis” allows the jugglers on stage to winkingly demolish the clichés polluting Western imagination, turning the supreme social taboo of death into a victim on the stake. The show tears this cultural scandal to pieces with touching generosity, applying the old tricks of Commedia Dell’Arte and transfiguring them into work that is profoundly alive, current, and experimental. Where the everyday masks of horror we see on television and in film crumble to pieces, nullified. The future (in the form of a newborn baby/puppet) remains in the inexpert hands of the only survivor, Buster Keaton, the tireless bungler with a bewildered gaze and a big heart.
Giorgio Cattaneo (www.libreidee.org, December 13th, 2008)
An unfortunate and haunting hero evokes the melancholy and indestructible Buster Keaton. Armed with the precious complicity of Gerardo Mele (the Exquisite Cadaver), Dante Carbini plays the role of a disastrous yet poetic undertaker. He carries almost one hour of the show by himself while preparing in detail the explosively timed outbursts of two widows, the hysterical and menacing Carmen Götz, who enters dressed in mourning, and the vaporous Kate Weinrieb, caught halfway between the lights of Broadway and the epigrammatic theater of Tadeusz Kantor.
The show, built on daily improvisations by the actor-authors under the maieutic direction of Pierre Byland, is a fresh and incisive exhibition, displaying a fully conscious, ironic mix of styles spanning theatrical genres from mime to melodrama. The show offers a menu that is capable of surprising variations thanks to the masterful mixing of ingredients and ideas, in homage to the authentic style of the great European school of contemporary clown founded by Jacques Lecoq and Pierre Byland.
The provocatively farcical plot of “Cadavre Exquis” allows the jugglers on stage to winkingly demolish the clichés polluting Western imagination, turning the supreme social taboo of death into a victim on the stake. The show tears this cultural scandal to pieces with touching generosity, applying the old tricks of Commedia Dell’Arte and transfiguring them into work that is profoundly alive, current, and experimental. Where the everyday masks of horror we see on television and in film crumble to pieces, nullified. The future (in the form of a newborn baby/puppet) remains in the inexpert hands of the only survivor, Buster Keaton, the tireless bungler with a bewildered gaze and a big heart.
Giorgio Cattaneo (www.libreidee.org, December 13th, 2008)
If you want to bring this show in your Theater
Info e Contacts:
www.cadavreexquis.it
info@cadavreexquis.it
Info e Contacts:
www.cadavreexquis.it
info@cadavreexquis.it
Photos: Stafano Fusaro