Dear public,
After forty years of creation with the Théâtre Zingaro, nourished by our travels around the world, our encounters, our discoveries, our singular aspirations… a hectic life, the confinement in 2020 put a stop to this crazy Zingaresque ride. The time had come for us to moor our vessel at the Fort d’Aubervilliers, to make it the heart and sole receptacle of our creations… at the same time, the time came for me to write, a form of writing that has gradually crept into Cabarets de l’exil, until it occupies a central place in this new creation. It will revolve around Cantiques du corbeau*, a suite of songs that offer a fantastical account of the origins of humanity, a poetic meditation on man’s place among the living; brief lives told in the first person by a protagonist who is neither gendered, nor described, nor geographically situated, perhaps not even human yet. Each actor will play the role of a song, delivering his or her story like a confession before disappearing into the spectator’s memory.
For the occasion, the Zingaro tribe will be joined by a Balinese gamelan, the Pantcha Indra group, which will revive the word and offer lines of escape.
In parallel with this emergence of text, I want to radically change our conception of equestrian work, to try to rethink the horse and rider from a new angle… They will no longer be the carriers of exploits, or even, by their mere presence, the affirmation of a shared grace. I would like their appearance to be like a vision captured by the eye and the mind; a plastic gesture rather than a choreographic one.
I’m always on the lookout for new forms that fall outside any established category, and I’d like to invite the audience to share in a bold sensory experience, free of technological artifice, a veritable inner journey guided by a demanding ear for words and music… a staging whose canvas verges on chaos…
You have been loyal to us for so long, and I invite you to follow us on this new path we are trying to blaze…
Aubervilliers, 13 June 2025
* Les cantiques du corbeau was published by Gallimard in the Collection Blanche in 2022 and will appear in Folio in October 2025.