Hand over the bread!

I experienced an Image Aiguë production for the first time in 2002 at Berlin’s Hebbel Theater: Curumi. In it, the stories of survival by children and young people from war zones and conflict areas were told in a disturbing and brutal way and, at the same time, full of poetry.

In 2007, another collaboration came about as part of the initiative “A Soul for Europe”. The company began preparing a European co-production, Ici la Bas (Europe is here and over there). Spanning the three EU council presidencies of France, the Czech Republic and Sweden, it involved producing a new piece with young performers from those three countries. Accompanying discussions regarding the importance of European culture and the urgently needed cultural dimension of European policies were to take place in each of the venues of Lyon, Prague and Stockholm.

The productions of Image Aiguë include performances by children, young people and adult actors from different cultural circles. The company performs all over the world and therefore integrates many cultures into their pieces. In doing so, the discovery and recognition of the Other is a central theme.

It is an ideal approach, also for a Europe that is struggling to integrate, where Brussels seems far away for people in Paris, Prague and Stockholm, and the EU comes across as an abstract thing that has little to do with our daily lives and the things that move us.

A consciousness that one’s own culture is part of a common European culture must emerge.

On Image Aiguë’s stage the performers initially claim their own space, presenting their own specific personalities, physicalities, tricks and idiosyncrasies. By observing and struggling against the other they then find themselves as fantastically choreographed figures and in touching scenes. Often it is a very curious thing and, at times, it is marked by an alarmingly naïve brutality. The tragedy hidden beneath the amusing, artistic performance only emerges after a brief delay.

Stage director Christiane Véricel and her actors narrate universal stories. Their performance displays envy, conflict, greed or joy, and addresses such topics as territory, exclusion and integration. A list to be expanded at will.

Everyone recognizes individual issues. Véricel calls on the audience to be active, independent observers. She reflects on such political topics as visa problems, and those topics find their way into her work. But to say that Europe is here and over there  is about migration and limited mobility would be stating it too narrowly.

Using images that are both very private and interpersonal Image Aiguë points us in the direction of broad themes. You see three characters fighting over a scrap of bread. In the midst of their great effort to thwart the others, no one manages to get a hold of what is right in front of them. Fixated on putting obstacles in the others’ way, they all fall by the wayside in the end. Yet, in doing so, Véricel’s performers very much engage one another, and it is so lovely and imaginative that it suddenly becomes the thing that matters most. In the meantime, the original object of their desire lies about completely abandoned.

As part of the Euroglobe program sponsored by the EU, Ici La bas is an example of how culture can support the complex and complicated process of European integration. People need images, they need art and culture to identify and better understand abstract relationships. In that respect Image Aiguë opens a door.

* An initiative of the civil society to promote the role of the culture in the development of the democracy and the European construction.