Interactive game CD-Rom
Artistic director Brigitte Cirla (CV)

"La Cantatàpied"

In October 2000, simultaneously, in 3 European countries, the children have tempted an adventure: to write, play and sing a children opera.
Three countries, three languages, three stories:

• in France, it is the long march of one group of children looking for a magic instrument. They will cross mountains, rivers, and forests.
• in Germany, they will face the monsters of the fear in order to reach the courage in the context of an hospital.
• in Italy, through conflicts and games they will discover and meet the other, the aboriginal, the stranger.

They wrote the words on the melodies of Béla Bartok and Zoltan Kodaly, they wrote the texts of the piece, they repeated and repeated the texts, the songs, the scenes, the march, the fights, then they put on their costumes and they arrived to the theatre, in the lights in front of the spectators.

In May and June 2001, they played « La Cantatàpied », « Opération Chair de Poule », « Allegro Barbaro » in France, Germany, and Italy. What remains from a performance, a melody, a voice, a children opera when the last performance is accomplished? Images, sounds, scraps of rememberings, traces, songs, words, ways, a working method, a certain listening, a complicity.

The challenge was to invent games inspired by the excercises used by the students-actors/singers, to create other spaces using the principles of theatre rehearsals. The three performances spoke about quests, fights, meetings and reunions, about constructions of cardboard, about the strength of a group, about fears, languages...