Human and Territorial Explorations
La Compagnie des Lumas traces a project which is both artistic and citizen oriented in direct contact with real subjects in society.
With a desire to question the porosity between fiction and reality, the Lumas explore radical situations, excluded figures, often at odds with social consensus that the forbidden word liberates.
Mobilized by a local theatre, La Compagnie try to bring about a unique relationship with the audience/spectators, integrating them in their spaces of creation, alternating meetings, public rehearsals, research laboratories, workshops, interviews, studies and shared creations.
Their time for experimentation, rehearsal and play take place in theatres as well as outside the walls: prisons, psychiatric hospitals, cinemas, flats, factories, hotels...
ANGÉLIQUE CLAIRAND
Angélique Clairand acts and at times directs shows in the Lumas Company. Born into a family of farmers, in her creations she questions her link to the language and her origins. At the drama school of Saint Etienne, she met Eric Massé with whom she created the Lumas Company and acts in the majority of his shows.
She directed with him the last show of the students of the National Drama School of Saint Etienne.
From that time, she directs her work in 2 directions: She creates some solo performances la bête à deux dos ou le coaching amoureux by Yannick Jaulin, le pansage de la langue (show in the Vendeen dialect) of which she is the author and more recently Tupp’ ou la coupeuse de feu by Nasser Djémaï, and she places concerts with narration: Natalie Dessay & Didier Sandre.
As an actress, she has been a member the Comédie de Valence artistic collective where she has worked under the direction of Richard Brunel. She has also acted with Gilles Pastor, Karelle Prugnaud, Jean-Claude Berutti, Stanislas Nordey, Fréderic Fisbach, Julika Mayer, Renaud Herbin, Robert Cantarella, Annie Lucas, Alain Sabaud and Georges Bécot.
ÉRIC MASSÉ
After training as an actor at the CNR de Bordeaux and the École de la Comédie de Saint-Étienne (under directors such as Robert Cantarella, Adel Hakim, Ludovic Lagarde....) he has performed in atypical productions mixing different art forms directed by Agnès Coisnay, Dusan Jovanovic, Hervé Dartiguelongue, Sophie Le Garroy, Eva Doumbia, D' de Kabal, Nathalie Veuillet, Bouffons de Luxe collective and the Comédie de Valence artistic collective. He has taken part cinematographic projects such as Goya: pintar hasta perder la cabeza by Emilio Casanova.
In parallel to this he began director's training at the Unité Nomade at the CNSAD de Paris (including traineeships at the TNS, the Festival d'Art Lyrique d'Aix en Provence, and with Jean-Pierre Vincent, Kristian Lupa...) and embarked on a career as theatre director with his company: Les Lumas, created with Angélique Clairand.
In his productions he tries to bring about a unique relationship with the audience, integrating them into the playing space (theatres, flats, factories, prisons, psychiatric hospitals, cinemas...).
As a recipient of the Cultures France de la Villa Medicis Hors les Murs award, Éric Massé travelled to Taïwan during 2010 for a two month-long residency at Treasure Hill Artist Village in Taipei, to carry out research on « absent presences » – ghosts, apparitions, and phantoms.
Since few years Éric Massé is a member of the Comédie de Valence artistic collective – Centre dramatique national Drôme-Ardèche – and to the Scène Nationale 61. From 2016 to 2018 he will also be associated to Théâtre de la Renaissance (Oullins - Lyon).
PERFORMANCE : CREATION & TOUR
DE L'EVE A L'EAU
Angélique Clairand et Eric Massé
Born in western rural families of France, Angélique Clairand and Eric Massé have always felt, because of their rural origins, a feeling of exclusion. They feel the need to acquire " a culture and language " to liberate themselves from their own landscapes of childhood. This bilingual creation - in French and parlange (dialect from Poitou *) - approach the problems appropriate to the renegades of class, the emancipation and the servitude of the characters, and the importance of language.
MUJER VERTICAL
Elisabeth Badinter, Andrée Chédid, Virginie Despentes, Catherine Millet, Florence Thomas, Simone Veil and a quotation of Simone de Beauvoir…; Testimonies of the actors
Eric Massé compiled the testimonies of Columbian women who were caught up in the tumultuous events in their country’s recent history during a visit to Bogota. In Mujer Vertical Massé continues the work he began in 2013 with Femme Verticale (Vertical Woman) and shares the stage with four women, each of whom are have strong commitments to the history of Columbia : a telenovela star and figurehead of the feminist movement and fight for LGBT rights, one who lived with the FARC in the jungle until she was fifteen years old, a victim of the civil conflict, and a demobilized and now disindoctrinated paramilitary member. Today, armed with their stories and their talents, they relate their experiences to the public.
TARTUFFE – nouvelle ère
Molière
Tartuffe – new era will question faith and the downward spiral in a anxiety-producing society, where sects and gurus are plentiful. Through this family tragi-comedy Molière carries us into a satirical social reflexion which brings out the fascinations which are born facing speeches and characters qui reassure by promising a better life through sheltered values.
LES MOTS QU’ON NE ME DT PAS
Véronique Poulain
Born to deaf and dumb parents, Véronique Poulain who can hear, had to learn to evolve in two worlds. She tries to make them enter into communication and lift a number of taboos relating to this ‘handicap’. Between a story of initiation and adolescent rebellion, a duo of actresses-musicians-singers drive the public into the world of the deaf : history, intercultural quizzes, sexual rudiments, ABC of non-verbal communication.
LIGHT SPIRIT
Voltaire, Sade, Julie Binot, Emanuel Campo, Céline Déridet & Eric Massé
A theatrical and musical creation about the spirit of Lights in two artistic proposals:
- Battle of Slam and Lights: Voltaire’s texts damaged by a slammer. This battle confronts us with insolence regarding current problems in society: the rise of political extremes and religious fundamentalisms, but also love …
- Sade’s short stories, 3 intimate, joyful and provocative performances, in unexpected places, where the public meanders from one proposition to another.
TUPP’
Nasser Djémaï
Whilst many of her kin face the crisis with the back-up of door-to-door selling, Angélique Clairand goes, with her team, to meet the anonymous sellers, instructors or dealers at the heart of a leading company in the sector. Tupperware! She confides the words collected by Nasser Djemai, who uses them to write a story for today, both funny and cruel. Tupp’ leads us in the footsteps of an almost ordinary woman… who dreams of an extraordinary destiny.
FEMME VERTICALE
Nelly Arcan, Elisabeth Badinter, Geneviève Brisac, Andrée Chedid, Virginie Despentes, Nancy Huston, Catherine Millet, Anaïs Nin, Simone Veil, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Marie-Olympe de Gouges
After reading in Le Deuxième Sexe by Simone de Beauvoir that one is not born a woman but one becomes one, Juliette decides to take charge of her destiny. Played by Éric Massé, this beauty, barely made up and wearing high heels, finds her way through the words of those who dare to transgress all taboos. From her setting made of books and of video images, she disconcerts the borders and the public who becomes his partner.
« Tragic and funny. Éric Massé literally embodies the texts and delivers them with touching truthfulness. » Ouest France
MALENTENDUS
Bertrand Leclair
Malentendus tells the journey of a man born deaf in a family who are not deaf. As a child, he is forbidden from using sign language by his father. Isolated, he invents his own languages then flees from the family home.
His return will take place in 2000, when he finds his brother and his sister, to judge questions relating to family inheritance.
To offer this story, the cast is composed of talking and signing actors, who are deaf and non deaf.