Ismène
10/10/2008
, 
23:00
11/10/2008
, 21:00
Text Yannis Ritsos
Conception Marianne Pousseur, Enrico Bagnoli
Space, light and direction Enrico Bagnoli
Dramaturgy, collaboration on the direction Guy Cassiers
Interpreter Marianne Pousseur
Original music Georges Aperghis
Sounding and sound settings Diederik De Cock
Production Khroma Company
Coproduction Théâtre de la Place, Grand Théâtre du Luxembourg , Théâtre de la Balsamine.
Avec l'aide du Ministère de la Communauté française Wallonie-Bruxelles, Théâtre et du Commissariat Général aux Relations Internationales de la Communauté française.
ABSOLUTE PREMIERE
french performance with italian surtitles
length 1h 15’
Ismene is the original creation of a work by Georges Aperghis, based on the homonymous work by Yannis Ritsos. A work for a sole voice, a sort of inner dialogue, a performance for a body and the natural elements. It invites the audience to see and listen, to fathom the weaving of a visual installation and a vocal work in an absolute bareness.
Enrico Bagnoli, for years a close collaborator and lighting designer of Thierry Salmon, creates this performance along with Marianne Pousseur, one of the major interpreter of contemporary music, with whom he founded Khroma Company.
Ismène is based on the music composed for the occasion by Georges Aperghis that, knowing the shades of Marianne, has created an original work for voice, where the singer, totally plunged in a tub of water, sings taking the shape of an inner dialogue.
The dramaturgy and the direction collaboration see involved Dutch Guy Cassiers, one of the most important director, able to create on stage evocative and refined images.
Ismène cultivates the sensitive contact with the elements of her youth, in loneliness. A thought, a word, a vision, built with slowness and serenity, spring from her attachment to little things, in contrast with her sister Antigone absolutism and with the cold magniloquence found in the house of her father Oedipus. This movement created by a woman at the end of her life, who brings her fund of experiences and violence, turns into a long meditation, both perceptive and lyrical, that makes Ismène a universal character, unique and full of tenderness.
The only amusements are a squared space, that becomes tenuous personification of the mental universe, and a water basin, where Ismène costantly plunge herself reminding the gardens fountains, the desert palace, the place where she’s going to die.
Only the voice, hold in a delated body, becomes sound, sense, going far beyond the skin. An amazing soul mirror.
