Le Fou & la Marotte

Creation planned for 2028

The project

The Fool arrives with his theatre, a small castle, a castelet. In his hand he holds a marotte with whom he speaks, with whom he plays. This play leads him to set the Marotte on the castelet. She comes to life.

La Marotte finds herself in the middle of a chessboard where all the pieces are ready to face the opposing field: pawn, knight, king, queen… Each follows the established rules and stays well within its squares. La Marotte cannot find her place, she cannot stay in place. She is caught in the game but, through her madness, she is unable to follow the logic of its codes. Lose, win, fight, flee, or go to the end of the board? Should she overturn it?

She meets one by one all the inhabitants, the pieces of this geometric world. Her seed of madness opens the doors of the imagination and allows one to gain perspective, step outside the frame and traverse extraordinary situations: doublings, changes of scale, magic tricks… until the breaking point where the real and the absurd shatter, and finally moving from the status of piece to the status of player.

The Fool

A liminal and carnivalesque figure that spreads across Europe from the Middle Ages. The fool escapes fixed assignments. He possesses a social mobility that no other holds, and for him, transgression is permitted. Jester and troubadour, he shakes up hierarchies, utters disturbing truths under cover of madness. He wears a hood with donkey ears and a cockscomb, a motley outfit, bells. In his hand, he holds a marotte, a stick with a grotesque head, a parody of the sceptre, a miniature double of himself. To play the fool on stage today is to push the limits of play, of codes, of the fantastic potential that puppetry allows. It is to grant this collective freedom. We sow the seed of madness, and the audience is caught in this ritual.

Characters and staging

• The Fool: a human character played by Léandre, actor and minstrel. He occupies the space, addresses the audience, dances, gestures, plays instruments, improvises.
• La Marotte: first a marotte carried by The Fool, becomes a glove puppet when placed on the castelet.
• The Castelet: a small two-towered castle, reproduction of the earliest archival image of a puppet booth, illumination by Jehan de Grise c. 1338–1344.

Chargement…