Our performer's laboratory invites you to mnemonic research into the transformative gesture specific to what we call the figure - the primary, high-performance unit of the character-building process. For ten years we have been working on creating the gestures of Antigone - gestures of radicalism and refusal to compromise. Antigone is the name of a character. We will be working on Sophocles' text. The Antigone who buries Polynices and the Antigone who disowns her sister are figures - they ask the question of how, that is, what to do and why. The answer to these questions, if it is not imposed by the vision of a director, lies in the filigree that weaves itself between the text and the memory of the performer during the reading - not a private memory but an aesthetic and material memory, no less affective. Our task will be to open up gaps in this memory and to dig the bed so that the sensitive material that pours out can be channelled into it in the form of intuition. The gesture of radicalism and its necessity will emerge from this work.
We are emphasising the collective nature of these dramaturgical tools, which apparently contradicts the nature of the character of Antigone, a solitary heroine whose radicalism has been a problem for centuries. In a world that constantly asks us to adapt to the detriment of our convictions, the figures of Antigone will be an opportunity to work on the question of radicalism, certainly, but in the bath of the link that engages, at the antipodes of the solitude to which we are condemned by the neoliberal system and its echelons of visibility. By way of example, the gestural score of Judith Malina's Antigone in the Living Theatre creation is an update that proves how we can show the strength of the collective while recounting the solitude of radicality - this tension in turn becomes a figure. From its own ghost, the updated figure generates a pure performative present by injecting new lymph into the history of its metamorphosis and into the forms of History.
We therefore invite you to construct the character through the montage of decrystallised figures open to interpretative variation, through their actualisation and destabilisation in the present and shared time of the stage.
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The mutualist horizon : The circulation and pooling of ideas around aesthetic experiences that bring us together and/or separate us is one of the tools we share and mobilise for training and artistic creation; but we also wish to act on a wider scale, by putting ourselves at the service of the creation of a movement that considers the pooling of attention and working time as the most reliable way of combating the vulnerability of the vast majority of artists in our societies. The figure, with its transformative gesture, and visual thinking applied to artistic research, enable us to translate our experiences into regenerative intuitions and open up the question of the performer's autonomy in his or her creative work. What do we mean by autonomy? As we know, anyone working within a performative horizon needs to identify where they are conditioned and acted upon by their own aesthetic memories. He or she must identify the frictions between his or her cultural persona and his or her political persona. The latter seems to us to be the condition without which we cannot become active in our own right, and contribute our own intelligence, all the more so in a world that claims not to wait for creation to improve its health. But for this work to be fair and effective, we need others. This is the reason for the figure, which emerges from shared memories and conditions the collective imagination and our own workings. In order to identify and decrystallise the figure, the plural gaze is fundamental - during a time when the performer advances along his or her own singular path, but in the sharing of a space, a network of questioning and attention committed with/by the group.​
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Profile of participants : This work is aimed at actors and actresses, both experienced and those in training. As a work that provides reading keys for approaching existing works while proposing tools for composition in the performing arts, it is also aimed at playwrights and authors who would like to brave the game, and at any artist who juggles performance and narrative.
 
Description : A small group of people interested in the dramaturgy of performance, the construction of the character and work on the figure are invited to take part in a minimum of one weekend, or a maximum of two. The process, led by playwright and researcher Sarah Di Bella, is based on alternating periods of discussion, artistic research and action. Working in tandem with her, actress and director Giuseppina Comito provides extra support for the work on stage.