“One, two, three: is the microphone on?” Is the microphone on? » The phrase is repeated over and over again. On the set there are wigs, fuchsia pink sweaters and Prince of Wales pants, humans who look a little lost. But where are we then? In a show by the British group Forced Entertainment that, for forty years, has been dismantling the mechanisms of theater to reassemble them so that they continue to be useful for turning the gears of the society of the spectacle.
And to squeak, squeak, in this new creation titled signal to noiseof dizzying virtuosity. On the set, six people are in charge of preparing a television program, a concert or a play. They move furniture and green plants, they change at full speed, rummaging through the racks full of clothes that surround the stage, they try to adjust their microphone. And, from the beginning, the machine goes crazy: the situations, which have no interest, unravel barely outlined, the voices heard spin in a loop, without us knowing who is speaking: “Is the microphone on?” Is the microphone on? »
lip sync
It is a vertigo that Tim Etchells, the brilliant director of the company, orchestrates: the vertigo of a humanity that no longer knows who it is, that no longer knows what reality is, and although this reality still has importance, in the face of the unstoppable rise of artificial intelligence. The creatures that move around the set and change identities at full speed, in crazy costumes and ill-fitting wigs, make absurd comments and speak in strange ways.
And with good reason: Tim Etchells chose to base his entire show on the principle of lip syncing. That is, the interpreters mimic pre-recorded texts with voices generated by a computer, and where fragments of idiotic jokes, weather reports, considerations on global financial developments or catastrophes are mixed without hierarchy. They talk, they talk, in a polyphony that quickly becomes cacophony, repeating words that have no meaning or effect. Before, suddenly, they see an existential abyss open before them: “Is that my voice?” Are these my words? My face? My eyes? »
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