L'Oratorio d'Aurélia

Last night Adrien and I saw a really unique theatre piece at the Alexandre Dumas theater in St Germain-en-Laye.

It was called L'Oratorio d'Aurélia (or-a-lee-a) and it was awesome! Aparently the grand child of Charlie Chaplin, Aurélia puts on a mostly non speaking visual fantasy of a play. The main story line (if there is any) follows Aurélia on a dream like voyage of random events where her paths meet often with her male counterpart who seems to be persuing her. There are numerous radon bits of backwardsness like when she puts cut flowers in a vase upside down and then carefully arrange the stems or when a kite is flying her. There's acrobatics, tap dancing, puppetry, dance, illusions, and a great musical score.

Here are some of my favorite scenes:

• The male actor is often dancing and fighting with clothes that seem to have lifes of their own. At one part the coat beats him up so much that it needs to carry the actor off stage
• There's an exclellent blacklight sequence all done in white behind a curtain of sheer printed material. At one moment a small monster catches hold of a loose string on her stockings and gobbles up her leg that she then needs to reknit.
• Aurélia and the guy each wear one leg of a pair of pants and one arm of a jacket and dace together as if they were a whole man.
• There were so many moments where they climbed the curtains, crawled in them, slipped down them, swang around in them etc. All super cool.
• The opening scene in the dreeser drawers (seen in the pic) was one of my favorites and arms and legs go in and out of various drawers getting ready for the evening and then Aurélia finally climbs out fully dressed.
• The and scene has a toy train going around a track right through her stomach!

If you want to hear more just ask!

For French speakers, here's the theatre review:

Sans fil narratif logique et sans parole, Victoria Chaplin a créé pour sa fille, Aurélia Thierrée, une série de séquences visuelles libérées du contrôle de la raison Dans la famille Thierrée, issue du monde circassien, l’étrangeté est une marque de fabrique, initiée et transmise par les parents • Au côté d’un autre personnage, Aurélia traverse, avec une certaine mélancolie, un espace-temps où la matière est devenue vivante et omnipotente

• Tranquillement, elle vaque dans l’absurde, arrose le linge qu’elle vient d’accrocher, prend un bain de neige, s’échappe dans les airs, tenue par son cerf-volant

• Son détachement atteint son paroxysme lorsqu’elle voit son corps se détricoter et disparaître • Patiemment, elle rattrape le fil et reconstruit sa silhouette

• Aurélia n’est plus de notre monde, elle est devenue une image fragile, aussi volatile que la neige, le vent ou le sable, l’incarnation d’un rêve intime et fugace..
Impossible d’échapper à cette quête fantasmagorique d’un extrême raffinement. L’Oratorio d’Aurélia est un pur moment de grâce, une féérie malicieuse, un vagabondage onirique revigorant.