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Hubert Amiel

The Memory of Trees

LOD & Cie Artara / Fabrice Murgia & Dominique Pauwels
Thu 12 Sep - Tue 5 Apr
12 Sep
-
5 Apr

The third part of the Ghost Road cycle will focus on the Russian city Oziorsk, formerly called Tsjeljabinsk-65. The city was built near the end of WWII, in the height of the nuclear arms race. A few years later, the city would be struck by the third biggest nuclear disaster in history.

Newest creation in the Ghost Road-Cycle

Part of

And the secret to keep an entire city at bay. Not a ghost town because life animates this mysterious city. However silence envelops not just its schools, its parks, its hospitals, but even its name. And it spreads to its fields, its river and to its children’s laughter.

In the heart of this place not found on any map, thousands of people are forced to maintain this enormous secret. And those who present even a shadow of treason pay for it with their lives. Others, manipulated, are convinced they are protecting the country by supporting the lie. Together they preserve a vast industrial state and keep quiet about an unheard of environmental catastrophe.

One could think this story is straight out of science fiction. But it isn’t. This secret city and its abuses are part of our world. Even if humankind tries to muzzle the truth, the memory of the trees remain, those of the consciousness that rises and denounces this heavy decades-old screed.

Travelling is an integral part of Fabrice Murgia’s art. The Ghost Road cycle has taken him to singular places where camera on his shoulder he has recorded faces, testimony and encounters. The Memory of Trees (GHOST ROAD III) is part of this process. The show’s team has walked these hostile lands and with Josse De Pauw as story teller/historian and composer Dominique Pauwels, it offers us the unmentionable in music and poetry.

The trees, they have been through everything, seen everything. Maybe it's not a bad thing for them to see all human presence gone.

Dominique Pauwels

Credits

LOD & Cie Artara / Fabrice Murgia & Dominique Pauwels
Création Studio Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles

concept, text & direction Fabrice Murgia composition, installations & live music Dominique Pauwels with Josse De Pauw, children translation & interpreter Tatiana Mukhamediarova in collaboration with Tatiana Stepanchenko assistant translation & direction Olya Tsoraeva assistants dramaturgy Nadezda Kutepova, Cécile Michel light design Giancinto Caponio, Fabrice Murgia video Giacinto Caponio scenography Anne Marcq research Virginie Demilier interface programmer Quentin Meurisse choir (recording) Choeurs d’Enfants et de Jeunes de la Monnaie Bruxelles choir direction (recording) Aldo Platteau musical execution (recording) SPECTRA sound technics Brecht Beuselinck light technics Virgile Morel, Jannes Dierynck stage technics Wim Piqueur video technics Mohammed Sassi video editing Dimitri Petrovic set & costumes Ateliers du Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles props Noémie Vanheste technical coordination Nic Roseeuw production manager Kristel Deweerdt production LOD muziektheater & Cie Artara coproduction Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, KVS - Koninklijke Vlaamse Schouwburg, Théâtre Jean-Vilar de Vitry-sur-Seine, Théâtre L’Aire Libre Saint-Jacques de La Lande label création Studio Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles with the support of Wallonie-Bruxelles Théâtre Danse (WBTD) & the Tax Shelter measure of the Belgian federal government tax shelter partner Flanders Tax Shelter with thanks to Gilani Dambaev, Garifulla Habibulin, Gulshara Ismagilova, Gosman Kabirov, Fatima Kobzhasarova, Lubov Lebzina, Natalia Manzurova, Sergueï Kuprienko, Esther Denis, Moussa Benchaoui, Victor Hidalgo, Wout Clarysse, LOGOS, Dada Studios photo Wynn Bullock, Child on Forest Road, 1958 © 1958/2019 Bullock Family Photography LLC. All rights reserved