Yvan & Else, bank of God - Le Théâtre-Poème
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Yvan & Else,
bank of God
Structure
DROITDANSLEMUR
Laurent Plumhans
Rue d’Angleterre 39, 1060 Brussels
Company number : 0607944926
IBAN : BE37 0017 5559 6128
droitdanslemur.beDROITDANSLEMUR 2
Brief description & dates of performance 3
Statement of intent 4
Distribution, co-production & support 5
Bi-trilingual 6
Laurent Plumhans — Biografie 8
Yvan & Else — bank of God P.!1DROITDANSLEMUR
DROITDANSLEMUR frames the artistic work of Laurent Plumhans and Emilienne Tempels. This legal
structure has been designed to address their need for sharing and collaborating, while respecting their
own autonomy and singularity.
"I conceive my artistic work as a way of critically challenging the contemporary world and the links
existing between its socio-economic organisation and individual intimacy. To do so, I address
multiple key themes such as the value of labour, administrative rationalisation, and the «
financialisation » of human relationships.
My first two plays, C'est quand la délivrance? and Que reste-t-il des vivants? discuss mass
unemployment and the « financialisation » of our existence with a similar approach: from the social
phenomenon (macrocosm) to the intimate one (microcosm). They propose a sensitive dissection of
their mutual interaction while remaining as close as possible to the audience, their realities and their
daily life."
L.P.
Yvan & Else — bank of God P.!2Brief description & dates of performance
Yvan & Else, bank of god is about love and contempt. In the continuation of my previous work, I
choose to highlight connections between intimacy and society from the point of view of a break-up:
intimate break-up, social break-up, break-up of worlds. The intimate relationship is the starting point
of the broader rupture, dictated by the balance of our contemporary world.
The connections between dependence, or rather, the oppression of the human microcosm by the
structural macrocosm are central to my first two projects: the massive unemployment of the young
generations (C'est quand la délivrance?) and the financing of our existence (Que reste-t-il des
vivants?).
With Yvan & Else, bank of god, the opposite occurs. Starting from a couple, from the "amputated"
individual, I zoom out to the socio-economic world that surrounds all of this. Starting from the
evocation of the story of Creation, Yvan and Else appear as the Adam and Eve of the 21st century,
lost in their own individual attitudes, said to be the consequence of our “choices”.
At Théâtre Poème 2, 30 rue d'Ecosse,12-30 September 2018
Wednesdays (in French) at 19:00, Thursdays (in English) at 20:00, Fridays and Saturdays (in
French) at 20:00, and Sundays (in French) at 16:00.
Yvan & Else — bank of God P.!3Statement of intent
In May 2015, my ex-partner and I separated after more than 6 years. Or rather, she left me. It was
May 4th. Ten days later we dissolved our legal cohabitation. She had met someone else. "It's an
opportunity that doesn’t come around often," she said. At least she was being clear. A French expat,
engineer or banker, she never really specified. I didn’t want to know either. Better than an artist in any
case, whose uncertainty equals the obsession with a hypothetical career, which in the best case
leads to an entanglement of indefinite duration.
For 18 years she was expatriate to Moscow, with all the material comfort that that implies. Was she
overtaken by her "historical conditioning » ? In any case, it was time to stop muddling around : buy a
car, buy an apartment (a bit outside of the city) and have a child. It would be hypocritical to claim that
it was only that. But still, a little.
Even then, I also knew that the lack of shared "future prospects" had driven us apart. Or rather, we
no longer agreed on the meaning of the words "future" and "prospects". Our visions of the world
were increasingly different. The relational disturbed the phenomenal, the intimate and the
contradictory socio-economic reading. I thought the relationship was at it’s strongest, until...
I had changed, she had changed. The world had changed us. Her work, mine (at times, the lack of
work). Our view of each other, the vision of others about what we should be doing at this moment in
our lives and what we just did not do: lead a stable and conformal life. The stability we longed for at
times and which we fled at other times. In short, it was a mess. And we chose to flee.
Yvan & Else — bank of God P.!4Distribution, co-production & support
Interpretation : Yannick de Coster, Sophie Delafontaine, Florelle Naneix and Berdine Nusselder
Playwright and Director : Laurent Plumhans
Assistant director : Britt Roger Sas and Charlotte Ballenghien
Dramaturgy : Karolina Svobodova / Nathanaelle Vandersmissen
Music : Sophie Delafontaine / L. Plumhans
Music interpretation : Daniele Cappucci, Gonzalo Rodríguez Díaz, Armando Luongo, Francisco Leal,
Edward Wallyn.
Sound engineering : Joachim Glaude
Scenography and costumes : Johanna Daenen
Lighting design : Michel Delvigne o ignored
Video creation : Britt Roger Sas / Camille Debonhome
Choreography : Rémi Hollant
Translation and adaptation (EN) : Britt Roger Sas and Jessica Walker
Stage management : Benoît Francart and Alexandre Chardaire
DDLM / DC & J production
Co-production DC & J / DDLM / POEME2
With the support of FWB - Theater Services (project development and research grant), Cocof, La
Fabrique de Théâtre, La Halte, LookIn'Out Festival and Villa Libitum, La Chaufferie - Act 1 and CED-
FWB. With the support of the Tax Shelter of the Federal Government of Belgium.
Acknowledgments: Théâtre National et Théâtre Le Public, and the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Arts
live performances)
Yvan & Else — bank of God P.!5Bi-trilingual
The idea to rework the text in English was born fairly quickly. The musicality of theatre is ideal to
consider this step. Or better, a variation. To study its relevance, I chose to work with bilingual or even
trilingual actors: French, English, Dutch.
Dramaturgically, the choice for bilingualism presupposes that one of the two persons of the couple
expresses herself in a language that is not her mother tongue. This obligation is a source of
misunderstandings, frustration and too much nervousness. The english language also evokes the
dominant language of the financial world; a structural macrocosm referred to elsewhere in the text.
On the other hand, the usage of Dutch and French, exposes the "internalized" schizophrenia of our
country.
The fact that a Dutch-speaking actor shares the stage with a French-speaking actress evokes a
much broader confrontation than the break-up. By creating a dialogue between one culture and
another, this project attempts to open the community. In my opinion, it is time that this dialogue
takes place.
Choosing to shape this text with different languages means that a specific distribution plan is needed
on the medium and long term, inside and outside the Brussels Region. But the issue of reaching a
varied audience merges itself with this proposal. The first preparatory stages allowed us to "test" this
aspect with some success and various favorable results.
I therefore believe that this kind of variations are pertinent and have a true future in Brussels.
We foresee to perform this play in three languages :
French, English and Dutch. For the time being the production in Brussels (September 2018, Théâtre
Poème 2) is planned to combine 15 dates, of which 12 will be in French and 3 in English (every
Thursday evening between September 12th and September 30th).
Yvan & Else — bank of God P.!6Yvan:
And on the morning of the first day
the Banker Creator of the universe created man
and on the afternoon of the first day
he created woman
it was on the morning and on the afternoon of the first day
and man and woman
he created them
in his own image
which doesn’t augur well for the following days
the following days
the Banker Creator of the universe created water air and light
and all those elements that barely make us stand
on four legs
on two
then on three
the following days this is what he created
and not so long after
stock markets
rating agencies
and to please his conscience
European Institutions
Yvan & Else — bank of God P.!7Laurent Plumhans — Biografie
After his studies at the Royal Conservatory of Liège and an aggregation at the Royal Conservatory of
Brussels, Laurent Plumhans works with l'Orchestre du Luxembourg, la Chapelle Reine Elisabeth,
Garret List, Fabrice Murgia and Joël Pommerat.
C'est quand la délivrance ? His first dramatic text, was selected by the Festival Texte En Cours /
Jamais Lu, in Montpellier and the Festival Propulse (2016). Presented in steps at Théâtre Varia, at
Théâtre de Poche and at Théâtre National, C'est quand la délivrance ? was created in October 2015,
in co-production with the DROITDANSLEMUR, Théâtre Le Public and Théâtre de Liège.
After a first work stage at La Fabrique de Théâtre, in the context of Mons 2015 - European Capital of
Culture, Que reste-t-il des vivants ? got selected for the Prix des Metteurs en Scène du Centre des
Ecritures Dramatiques de la FWB and was created in February 2017, in co-production with
DROITDANSLEMUR and Théâtre de la Vie.
Superresident at Tas de Sable (Amiens) and at Théâtre des Doms (Avignon) in September 2016,
Laurent Plumhans participates as author in the first polyvocal writing workshop, at the Tarmac scene
international (Paris) in light of the program EU Collective Plays ! He also collaborates with le Quatuor
Mp4 and Le Bow Quintet on the adaptation of the music of C'est quand la délivrance ?, in co-
production with the label Cyprès records and le Center Henri Pousseur.
In June 2017, Laurent Plumhans is received as an author-resident at Le Center d'Ecritures
Dramatiques de la FWB and in residence at the workshops of Théâtre de Liège. The same year, he
was invited as author to the Festival Quartieri dell'Arte and at the Festival Intercity (Italy).
Associated with Cie Art&Tça and the Maison des Cultures of commune Saint-Gilles, he currently
works on the conception and the writing of Jeunesse précaires, travailleurs de demain / Where we
are.
From May until June 2018, Laurent Plumhans will be speaker at the ULB (Master in Arts live
performances) and he will be invited as a writing resident at la Chartreuse (Centre National des
Ecritures du Spectacle / Villeneuve les Avignon). His next creation, Yvan & Else, bank of God, will be
created in September 2018 in coproduction with DROITDANSLEMUR and Théatre Poème 2.
Yvan & Else — bank of God P.!8You can also read
