Francofolies Montréal, Maison symphonique, june 2017

Pierre Lapointe invited me to take part in the staging of a show in 2015.  I knew very little about it except the dates, place, a few of the team members, the director Sophie Cadieux, the organist Jean-Willy Kunz, Etienne Lepage… and that it would take place during the FrancoFolies of Montréal in June 2017, at the symphony hall, and that the organ would be a central element of it.

In response to this working hypothesis, I proposed a workshop with the students of the UQAM in Montréal.

The specific features of the place, the symphonic hall, in fact required that the décor had to be the full stage with no curtain possibilities to hide the elements.

The object of the workshop was to take a framework I proposed and determine schemes for using modules.

The work notes of 22 December 2015

Pierre mentions the fact that the project is short-scripted but it can stage two parallel worlds:

He wants something dizzying that builds up as we go along.

At the outset, we must not understand what is being built; but at the end, this becomes obvious.  We could start out with an abstract scène; but there would be something strong at the end.

A hybrid world between the real and the imagination, between pop and avant-garde.

There will be no musicians on stage.

There can be sound effects, micro-contacts can be integrated into the system.

One of the solutions for the space is to work with modules.

One sees a pile of bulk material on stage, such as naturel matter.

At the beginning, one sees this raw material on the one side and a metal structure on the other, which evokes an end-of-the-world atmosphere.  The structure is more aggressive and is not aesthetic.

Then, little by little, the battens are taken from the pile to be placed on the structure, a foundation for a landscape.

Not only does the space build itself, but must be built differently at the various phases of the show, forming, one after the other, different complementary universes to form a succession of pictures.

To give a mental image, I speak of a lamp project that I created from two wooden battens in tension that are placed on a metal base and can therefore generate different shapes.  We realize that the shape must of course play with the light, but also that colour should also play an important role, to give other levels of reading that can develop in different parts of the show.

This direction interests us because, after some searching, it provides a concrete basis for a workshop with students.

As the module becomes a sort of pixel module, we can also make a 3D modelling and change the décor with differing parameters.  It would have to be seen with the overseeing teacher if we can add two or three media students to the group, who might help us programme that.…