• For “La Coulée Douce”, Opéra Pagaï transformed the Carré des Arts theater in Saint-Médard-en-Jalles into a place invaded by nature.

  • With the help of hundreds of inhabitants-sowers recruited during the confinements, an extraordinary garden has also emerged in front of the theater.

  • The artistic stroll offered to the public from this Thursday evening, takes us from the garden to the theater by candlelight.

Like others, the artistic project of “Cité Merveilleuse” could not see the light of day because of the health crisis.

But it is perhaps one of the few who knew how to use the successive confinements lived during eighteen months, to transcend himself, and lead to another project, which ultimately goes further than the initial idea.

The “Cité Merveilleuse” has indeed become “La Coulée Douce”.

This performance will be inaugurated this Thursday evening at the Carré des Arts in Saint-Médard-en-Jalles near Bordeaux, and will continue to be presented on Friday and Saturday, marking the end of the Bordeaux Métropole Arts Festival (FAB).

"We went down to the public square with pots, seeds and potting soil"

The result of an association between the Opéra Pagaï company and the Carré-Colonnes national stage, "La Coulée Douce" is an artistic stroll, by candlelight, which leads us to an "extraordinary garden" created from scratch opposite at the Carré des Arts, to the bowels of the theater transformed into a country place, with eggs, chickens and sheep ...

“Initially, the Cité Merveilleuse project consisted of transforming the Square into a place of nature in the city center, with a plaice and a vegetable garden on the roof, beehives, a greenhouse, to tell the utopia of living together different ”explains Cyril Jaubert, director of Opéra Pagaï.

“It was canceled, but during the confinements, we decided to continue working inside the Square, then very quickly we wanted to meet people again, which was not possible in the theater, so we we went down to the public square with pots, seeds, potting soil, and we offered to the people we met to sow with us.

"

Weekly "Lettuce News" sent to sowers

"We really wanted to recreate the link with the inhabitants and make it grow," continues Sylvie Violan, director of the Carré-Colonnes national scene and of the FAB, "which is why we asked the people who sowed to write their names on the pots. . It was their plant double, the idea being that if they couldn't enter the theater, the seedlings could. The hall was thus transformed into a seedling greenhouse with 750 pots. Then Cyril created a weekly "Newslaitue" that we started to send to each sower, to give them news of their seedlings and tell them fictions, legends… ”

It was then necessary to plant these seedlings in the ground.

The city of Saint-Médard then proposed a vacant lot, located just in front of the Square.

“With the help of visual artists and a gardener that we recruited, we transformed it into an extraordinary garden.

Today we have 1,200 sowers, it has become a community of people very attached to the garden ”insists Sylvie Violan.

Earth pots turned into fire pots

It was finally last June that it was decided to tell this adventure through a new artistic project. To give it a touch of poetry. “La Coulée Douce was written by Cyril Jaubert in recent months,” explains Sylvie Violan. The story is told of a theater team that continues to work but is invaded by the living. And on top of that comes another layer of fiction, which is that the Coulée Douce would be an ancestral meeting place for garden musicians, in the land of Jalles, which has existed since the dawn of time and the creation of the city by Médard ... "

The Place du Carré des Arts will be transformed this Thursday evening into a stake, with the inauguration at 6.30 p.m. of the “first medoc high altitude blanket” on the roof of the theater, followed by the opening of the fire trails from 7.15 p.m.

The earthen pots used for seedlings have in fact been transformed into fire pots with candles, and will illuminate the path to "La Coulée Douce".

This is how the initial idea of ​​a "fictional transformation of a theater into a place of nature" led to the creation of a real garden.

And the story is not over.

"This creation is at the same time an end to this overwhelming period, a moment of calm and gentleness, and a starting point for other adventures", promises Cyril Jaubert.

Free show offered from 6.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday

Bordeaux

Bordeaux: A tightrope walker will soar 35 meters high from a tower in the city of Benauge

Bordeaux

Heritage Days in Bordeaux: Dancers offer an aerial ballet, suspended on the Méca

  • Covid 19

  • Coronavirus

  • Art

  • Confinement

  • Aquitaine

  • Culture

  • Bordeaux