FESTIVAL DE CAVES - Underground theatre

The Festival de caves runs from 9 May to 20 June in the cellars of Bisont. At the same time, it is criss-crossing the roads of Burgundy-Franche-Comté, creating a complex geography lined with ramifications, junctions, crossroads and sudden forks in the road. The 2024 programme of the Festival de caves seems to be driven by the idea of nomadism, movement and travel, and the creative projects and choice of themes and stories reflect this.
"Make rhizomes, not roots" said Deleuze, inviting us to discover geographies - of thought - that are more open and extensive, freer and more flexible. This year, more than ever, the Festival de caves seems to be staging artistic proposals that respond to each other, bringing together anti-conformism, fluidity, exploration, travel, emancipation... on stages and through writing that is as intimate as it is social or historical... A committed season, then, in the sense that mobility is on the side of commitment, making the inertia, the over-established sedentariness, the experiments of a thought at a standstill, too fixed and without question...
Like every year, the Festival de caves will take place in the spring. It's the time of pollen, the time of sowing; the time when nature gives itself, in addition to the roots that keep it alive, while condemning it to remain in place, the possibility of spreading at the whim of the winds or the flights of insects...
"Unrooted" could be this movement - and ours!
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To begin the journey, let's lift the ink with Balbuzar, the 'all-ages' hero inspired by the children's book of the same name by Gérard Moncomble (illustrated by Frédéric Pillot), who has chosen to sail the seas; and what better way to get unrooted than in the company of a pirate, a figure of non-conformism and political emancipation.
Emancipation is also at stake in Le Jeu de la Chèvre, written by Vincent Tiran, a 'dangerous' retelling of Alphonse Daudet's La Chèvre de M. Seguin (Mr Seguin's Goat), chained to its post; a metaphor for the power games and relationships of manipulation and domination that are played out in the intimacy of certain relationships.
Yet another example of emancipation: that of the woman Marie-Pierre, formerly Jean-Pierre, who accompanies her elderly father every Tuesday to help him in the shops. Tuesdays at Monoprix by Jean-Pierre Darley.
Another nomadic female figure is Medea, a raging poem, a myth captured in Jean-René Lemoine's contemporary writing.
Ctrl-X, by Pauline Peyrade, is the original writing of a porous identity, which is composed and decomposed, revealed in fragments, both defeated and conquered, where snippets of the self and the Other are knotted, changed and blended, in a world where traces of reality and fiction coexist.
In Cathédrale des cochons, Jean D'Amérique delivers, in a single sentence, the cry of a Haitian prisoner, a cry of revolt, courage and poetry.
Finally, the character of Tahrir, written by Paul Schirck, confronts his family history through storytelling and music, after discovering letters from his ancestors, colonists in Algeria.