Célébrations

" CELEBRATIONS "- is in line with the aesthetics of postdramatic theatre as described by Hans-Thies LEHMANN. Aesthetic that I discovered and synthesized, in theory, during university research during a Master II "Performing Arts and Humanity" and that I experienced with joy, for 10 years with my theater company by introducing certain stylistic elements of this aesthetic into my personal creations.

Thus, as a Performance art :

● " CELEBRATIONS "-stands out from some of the traditional components of dramatic theatre. Its linguistic text, which I wrote in 2020, is not a role text. It is not a question of incarnating a character or creating the illusion of a fable. On the other hand, it is the real that is summoned to the stage. And if there is no "dramatis personae", it is because the performers speak in their own name, committing themselves to their responsibility as beings and taking position on their wish for other ways of being-in-the world to emerge. The first part of the linguistic text, in fact, proposes a questioning as to the practices still in force today in the way women and the feminine are treated, in France and in the world. It is then a question of raising awareness about the obvious need to modify patterns of representation based on iniquitous and discriminatory valency systems, which belonged to the old paradigm of patriarchy. (femicides, violence, genital mutilation, honor killings...). To truly bring about a society of care, a society of human responsibility and a balance between "doing" and "being", this first part has this interest-besides its obvious universal political value-, that the staging choice invites participants to experience a process of individual transformation, and, in mirror image, to spectators, of course. Based on quantum theory that opens the door to phenomena where past-present-future intertwine, I propose to the Collective that accompanies me to enter the scenic space as if we were coming directly from a line of the future. A future where the practices of the current world addressed seem so archaic that, when they are uttered from our future mouth (if I may put it that way) they open up a distance and a breathing allowing for a true conscious action since outside the emotional body. This requires a tremendous mastery of one's inner self for the participants. This emotional intelligence (or its emergence in any case) is gradually implemented during the 5 days preceding the performance. During this slow time of workshop and preparation for the Performance, at the same time as writing about celebrating their own resilience and self-authorizations, I propose to the participants explorations in guided movements and free dance. This, so that confidence, congruence and a flexible self-mastery gradually arise thanks to the organic pleasures of a dancing and creative body (and thus thanks to the scrambling of certain emotional programs). Sensory explorations, upstream, so that everyone, ultimately, is ready to enter the process of representation.  To know also that, during the choices of staging of the linguistic text, well aware that "Celebrations" is a laboratory of individual and collective changes and that change requires time – many – as much as reinterpretations (of old versions of oneself) and regular integrations to establish the new cognitive, behavioral, and relational practices per se, I imagined, during the first part of the performance, time-spaces that can be experienced as "relapses". Overtaken by the heaviness of the state of our world as it is today, the performers forget the new version of oneself coming from the "future" that allows them to perform the desired act of consciousness. Then opens the possibility of expressing, through free dance, emotions that are traversed to transmute and alchemize them. What is then experienced, there, concretely, on stage, in front of the spectators-witnesses who also experience it, since they are co-present and co-innervate the body, is how greatly free dance, a fertile ground for creation and re-creation of oneself, is a fabulous agent of transformation.

● " CELEBRATIONS "- is thus experienced as an event, a theatrical advent that combines and transforms into dialogic art "our concern for the world in its dysfunction" and "our most intimate personal changes in our modes of production". The closing of the first part invites, in a full consciousness and self-control, to say with Angela DAVIS: "I no longer accept the world that I cannot change; I change the world that I no longer accept." Starting from the evidence that the only way to drive change is, as Mahatma Gandhi recommends, to change oneself. And to implement these changes. Hence the sayings and celebrations of "revolutions of self" that are shared with the

audience in the second part of the Performance.

● " CELEBRATIONS "- thus invites, by my side, a dozen or so amateur performers to whom the artistic project, its issues and operating methods are presented and who wish to register. For these participants, it is both a matter of engaging in a process of self-knowledge (what permissions to oneself, in light of the new gendered codes, have I allowed myself? What deconditionings? From there, what celebrations?) as well as in an artistic process that allows them to implement with me an experimental theater that introduces "postdramatic" components into its "text performance."

●"CELEBRATIONS"- thus proposes a theatrical language as a meeting point between the arts. The linguistic text certainly proposes a macrostructure and an operating method but does not have any primacy. Consequently, close to concrete theater, the language, the body, the address to the public, the playing space, the sound space have an autonomous reality on stage and are significant elements in their own right.

● The art of performance - then aims to put them in dialogue and at the service of the transformative aim of "CELEBRATIONS". More than a representation, it is a presentation that is a quest, that is to say, a device for experimenting with the art of presence. To bring about the emergence of other logics of perception. For a going-beyond of rational mental processes. For both a dive into the unconscious and, at the same time, the advent of an expanded consciousness where unconscious self-fabrication patterns can precisely be uncovered within oneself. In this perspective, a large part is given to the spontaneous expression of the subjective impulse, that is, to the improvisations of free dance. It should be noted that this presence calls for a co-presence in the spectator’s reciprocity. It is their "see-skin" that is being solicited. And the term "spectator" is no longer really appropriate, since it is no longer just a matter of being seated in front." Rather be with, in the same breath, in a self-observation where one notes one’s mode of reception of the Performance: "Listening to the world as it is today, am I prey to my emotions "? " Do I feel like not hearing ? " Do I dissociate ? " " May I, with full clarity and

openness, welcome this suffering world and transmute it to bring forth another consciousness ? " " Am I able to harmonize my frequency with the one on stage so that I too can taste this way of becoming an agent of transformation... ? »

● Another aspect of "CELEBRATIONS " - because of the theater that I like : Hans-Thies Lehmann, in his theoretical work, concludes that "postdramatic theater no longer believes in a community that recognizes itself by a form lived in common and prefers solipsistic tendencies". For my part, nourished by the invigorating thoughts of Edouard Glissant and other re-enchanters of the horizon such as Patrick Viveret, Françoise Héritier, Thomas d'Ansembourg, Zvetan Todorov... I like to explore other conjugations on stage (and in life) and open up spaces where in intimacy, our beings-to-the-world in order to share singular experiences of importance that then allow, perhaps, to access a universal that connects and to make the concrete collective experience of a World "One and Multiple" at the same time.

● " CELEBRATIONS "- , starting from these considerations, is like a living process. As the participants, the topics of deconditioning and self-authorization, the explorations of free dance, the dialogues between the different "dramatic materials" will vary depending on the countries and audiences visited, the cross-border tour will give rise to a Performance " Celebrations " which will be about the same and different "." A way to continue the artistic and anthropological value of this project.

                                                          Sabine STOURBE - septembre 2026