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What to play in "Les Parques d'attraction" | Installation plan of "La Toison dort" at the Generator © David Noir

Introduction to "Attraction parks".

"Playing together" | Instructions for use

In April 2013 at the Generator, II invite you to discover this universe, to come and play and evolve without any limit between being a spectator or an actor.

Don't worry; it will always be up to you to get in or out.

I invite you to come and work with me in this playground that we started to build during a first installation last year, in this very space, during the days when " The Fleece sleeps "in Gentilly, at Generator. 

Again, this time with, as a second step, the more pronounced ambition to erase as much as possible the notion of 'spectacle' in favour of the confusion of roles and the emergence of another form.

In a way, this invitation is the same one that I addressed to my partners and that I am addressing to you, the potential audience today. I put us on the same level because I too want to be a spectator as well as an actor. I want to see what happens, with you; between us. For that, it will be necessary to work and therefore to activate oneself, to use the things at hand without forcing oneself, to enter the performance through the door of quiet involvement. This is another way of entering than the totally passive way, more usual for an audience. But both ways of visiting are possible. During these few days, The Generator is in a way my room, but it can just as easily be yours. It's a room like the ones we talk about that lead to the tunnels of the burrows. My path leads me to a model of this type because today, I don't know what a "show" is. By that I mean that even if I know what it is because I have put on and performed quite a few, I no longer accept that it is 'only' that. I no longer accept that it is a space where regression is done in the "wrong way". Because you have to regress to have fun, to be free and creative, yes, but it must not be to get stuck in the terrors of childhood vis-à-vis the adults you have to please. And in the case of the show, the adults are you, the audience. That's how it is most of the time, you know that. The infantilized, submissive actors are nurtured in this perverse idea that they have to go out of their way to make you come, when they don't even know who "the audience" is. It's a bit like the boys with "the woman". It's in their heads and they know it, both of them; because "the woman", "the public", doesn't exist. It's just complacency; to get rid of the question of "me"; "what am I doing here"; "why am I doing this?

But we're used to liking this game of master and slave, so we continue to promote it even when we know how far off the mark it can be. I mean, off the mark of the living. Well, I pride myself on never having done such silly shows, if only because of the choice of those who play in them. But really, what could be more miserable than grown-ups telling themselves that there are important grown-ups waiting for them behind the curtain? Getting excited by such sad lies is a form of sexuality - because it is, or at least a reflection of it - that I don't care for; besides, people often don't like to tell each other this, but there is an atrociously false atmosphere in the wings of theatres; it's sickening. An atmosphere based entirely on that; on the excitement dependent on the "fault", the memory lapse, the line that doesn't hit the mark. No, frankly, I can't do that; I never could. That doesn't mean that I'm not interested in theatre technique; no, that's very useful to know; moreover, I teach it with absolute sincerity. It's just that it's all about how you use it, how you experience things, to feel what, for what purpose. And then it's a question of doing something other than reassuring those close to you - very often the most conventional audience - of the good order of the social march through an art that is made to stage absolutely the opposite: to make you doubt, to destroy, to tear apart everything you believe, everything you are tempted to believe in; all the time.

What to play in "Les Parques d'attraction" | Installation plan of "La Toison dort" at the Generator © David Noir
What to play in "Les Parques d'attraction" | Installation plan of "La Toison dort" at the Générateur © David Noir

No idol, no humility. You look, you go for it, you say what you have to say, you help yourself and that's it. That's the process of "playing well", of "playing healthy" for me. It doesn't prevent us from thinking of others, of you who are there, who are watching, who are hearing; but it's wrong to say that we're doing it for you, installed in this position of listener. No, you do it for yourself, in the desire for it to reach you and, better still, for you to find yourself in it a little, but first and foremost for yourself; just as you take drugs; to take yourself elsewhere. Barbarism in the service of civilisation, that's it.

So it's a question of playing, but not of fearing each other or remaining strangers, so I propose that we do it together.

As I am the one who is taking the first step, it will be done on my own basis, but you will see that they are very flexible and can be spread out quickly. This is the beginning of the tunnel that I ask you to follow in my marks. Afterwards, you are big too, you will see. I have nothing to prove; neither do you, I imagine; not at your age; not in this context. That's the difference between childish and childish. Well, I do.

So in the themes that run through the texts, the ones I've written, made available to the user, there's a kind of false mythology that runs through them and a lot of wordplay that bounces off each other; that's how I write. And also a lot of references to sex, sexual functions, sexes in action. Because I'm interested in porn-fantasy; it makes sense; it's one of the doors to one of the rooms in my burrow.

So if you want to play, you come.

David Noir

David Noir, performer, actor, author, director, singer, visual artist, video maker, sound designer, teacher... carries his polymorphous nudity and his costumed childhood under the eyes and ears of anyone who wants to see and hear.

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