Encyclopédie de la parole / Joris Lacoste
Suite n°2

French theatre-maker Joris Lacoste translates language playfully and humorously into music to put a different perspective on our everyday communication.

How can you put a sound archive on stage? Joris Lacoste began by sifting through his extensive audio collection for interesting material: news items, interviews, sound poems, sports news and political speeches. He then proceeded to process these items not only by playing with language, but also musically and rhythmically – finally creating “Suite n°2”, a kind of theatre for listening.

The Encyclopédie de la parole group founded by the French theatre-maker Joris Lacoste, a collective of artists from different genres, commenced the ambitious cycle of “Suites Chorales” in 2013 with the aim of exploring language and, at the same time, of translating it into music. Whereas Suite n°1 – “ABC” – was a choral oeuvre dealing with speech as such, be it political or literary, in “Suite n°2” five performers make up a virtuoso polyphonic choir to present forms of expressing language in the form of chamber music. The focus is on speeches that can be considered as acts. Words that invoke, promise, declare or poison love, that may even spark off wars and be deadly.

In collaboration with the composer Pierre-Yves Macé, Joris Lacoste creates a polyphonic text consisting of more than fifteen languages, a text that you may not always understand, but that is incredibly entertaining and allows us to hear language in totally new ways.

Konzept / Idee: Encyclopédie de la parole
Regie: Joris Lacoste
Komponistin / Komponist: Joris Lacoste
Musik: Pierre-Yves Macé
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Vladimir Kudryavtsev
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Emmanuelle Lafon
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Barbara Matijevic
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Olivier Normand
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Nino Lucas
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Elise Simonet
Lichtregie: Florian Leduc
Video: Florian Leduc
Kostüme: Ling Zhu