Whispers

Birth of Phantoms

On stage, a lone woman. Alone or perhaps not. It appears that the space is inhabited. An expression of furtive presences, muffled sounds and finally phantom-like figures that appear suddenly here and there, occupying the space more and more, whispering in our ear, rising up into the image like the guardians of a secret.  Are they not the lost souls that endlessly wander, disturbing our present with their irreparable past?

A woman is there, a woman who cannot tell what is speaking in her; if it’s her own experience or that of her ancestors.  She tries to decipher the murmuring that so furiously resembles a conspiracy against the living. How to escape the chain of generations - and by which exit? How to live a dawn not marred by the night?

Whispers, a clinking of souls, a rumble of recollections and the ancestors who stumble onto the scene.

In previous performances Nicole Mossoux has already explored the different forms of interaction possible with marionettes, shadows and object manipulation. This time she is in engagement with the world of sound that echoes her haunted movements.

In the centre of the stage a silhouette borrowed from one of Vermeer's tableaux, tirelessly leaves and returns to the same point in space, bringing along animated silhouettes that seem to emerge from her own body: impetuous ectoplasms or gangly spectres appear suddenly, inopportune, with intentions that are at the very least unclear. The use of live sounds give them a paradoxical consistence when the living character is supplanted by the phantoms she created.