Alès: “When the whole city is on the opposite sidewalk”, a poignant work offered at the Cratère

For two performances, this week at the Cratère, the theatrical work of the writer Jean Cagnard, “When the whole city is on the sidewalk opposite”, directed by Catherine Vasseur with the company 1057 Roses, is linked to a writing residency at the Therapeutic Center for Drug Addicts of Blannaves, in the town of Branoux-les-Taillades. This work resonates through the voice of a resident in an institution and that of an educator, who will go through a very long day, perhaps infinite, thanks to the hard-hitting language of Jean Cagnard who deploys a succession of unusual and disturbing landscapes. , where life has the need to reinvent itself, sometimes in a funny and comical way despite the suffering. As the author writes: “It is a free and disturbing interpretation of the earthly condition. And then as often behind appearances, it is the human machine which is quite simply in action. . “

Duo in the next room

How do you get out of it when you’re a drug addict? How do we see the world? How does he see us? Are we ever sure to wake up and in what state? The text does not have a narrative structure as such. It is more of a succession of paintings, brought together to rub shoulders with each other and which ends up forming a unique landscape in a therapeutic center for drug addicts. Evoking different moments in the life of the resident vis-à-vis himself or the educator, the final stake is to be definitively free from the product and the addiction. Like life itself in these places of care and combat, the text is fragmented and carried by different writings, dialogues, prose, poetry: it speaks, it shouts, it thinks, it rehashes, it lies, it ruminates, it Said, it hides, it suffers… Strong and impactful moments carried by two striking actors.