Crossing the Line project: Residency at l’Oiseau-Mouche
Written by Crossing the Line / January 25, 2016
Artists
Compagnie de l’Oiseau-Mouche workshop took place from January 18th to Thursday 21st 2016. The company wanted the partners to explore three fields of work:
– Contemporary dance with Sarah Nouveau who explored during one day the themes and exercises she used in C.O.R.P.uS., l’Oiseau-Mouche’s latest dance performance;
– Contemporary theatre with Julie Chaubard who offered to work on a piece by Vinaver. A demanding proposition but also a very promising one;
– Audience development activities. Compagnie de l’Oiseau-Mouche offered the partners to test an entire day of audience development activities with three guest artists and three l’Oiseau-Mouche actors leading the workshop.
If the two first parts were quite traditional, Compagnie de l’Oiseau-Mouche really wanted to give the artists a taste of audience development in the third part. L’Oiseau-Mouche often organizes “special days” during which an identified group (students, employees, pupils…) go through different stages of theatre-making. With a consistent approach on how a body moves on stage, how one’s voice echoes in a theatre room or how improvisations can quickly lead to a coherent artistic gesture., l’Oiseau-Mouche can reach out to a very large audience, whatever their level of artistic practices might be.
In this perspective, l’Oiseau-Mouche has built an ambitious programme to bring its ensemble to lead these activities. Making professional acting accessible to persons with learning disability is the heart of l’Oiseau-Mouche’s activity. Supporting these actors so that they can share and pass their knowledge and skills is a territory l’Oiseau-Mouche is progressively conquering.
Organisations
In parallel of the workshop, Compagnie de l’Oiseau-Mouche, Moomsteatern and Mind the Gap have resumed discussions on the partnership and have evoked some valuable case studies that could be used to enhance each structure’s knowledge of the others.
This last workshop also offered a good opportunity to share two of l’Oiseau-Mouche’s latest performances. The partners attended the premiere of Euphoria / What of the flask, if wine intoxicates? and saw an extract from C.O.R.P.uS..