Petit Traité Pop du jardin botanique

Photos Nicolas Joubard

Listen to more tracks from the album Into the Green (Musea/Gazul 2017)

Petit Traité POP du jardin botanique

Premiere in July 2004 in Arras and at the Festival: Tombées de la Nuit, Rennes
A show for two solo voices, four musicians and a few accessories

At the beginning, a daily approach to the garden and the kitchen garden, an attention to the details of the species and the blooms, an inspection of the zinnias, the rugosa roses, the veronicas, the spireas, the hebes, the water lilies and the St. John’s wort, the lavender, the willows and the hydrangeas, a certain look… Exploration of a garden, stories of botanical discoveries that are transformed by the magic of a scene into little musical miniatures, a series of “pop-songs”, in the tradition of Brecht and Weill. A game of analogies, similarities, crossed worlds and words. And what if it were to form a whole? The garden is a closed place whose limits can be seen with the naked eye, like the stage of a theatre or the duration of a song. An assembly of species, trees, essences and classification, like contrasting musical miniatures, stylistic exercises, a sequence of plans, perspectives and paths. Relation, verticality, harmony, symmetry and rhythmic asymmetry, musical exoticism, borrowing, refinement… Importation, mixture of the technical and the natural, the local and the distant… Analogies in abundance for those who are willing to put themselves on a level with the world, to revive perspectives. “Le petit traité pop du jardin botanique” is a journey where Buffon and the Beach Boys cross paths, a succession of short stories with contrasting sequences, songs and acoustic or electric sequences, hybridisations of timbres. Can’t “pop” be worked like a garden, a culture that mix the popular and the scientific, emotion and erudition, quotations and innovations?

Concept: François Ribac and Eva Schwabe
Music, direction and lighting: François Ribac
Livret, set, costumes: Eva Schwabe
Texts : Martin Newell, Eva Schwabe, William Blake, botanical treatises
Assistant director: Sotira Dhima
Plant Sculptures: Claire Girard
Set construction: Laurent Semelier and Olivier Poupard
Stage management: Laurent Semelier
Sound: Charles Frossard
Lighting director: Stéphane Boisumeau
Administration: Thierry Boutin
Press: Anne Gueudré

Singers: Eva Schwabe, Cathal Coughlan

L’Herméneutique Combo Orchestra
Rémy Chatton : double bass, violin and pruning shears
Bruno Desmouillères : percussions and watering cans
Laurent Hestin : guitars and garden sprayers
François Ribac : piccolo guitar and bass
Eva Schwabe : musical saw and keyboard

Production

Théâtre d’Arras (as part of Lille 2004), Les Tombées de la Nuit (Rennes), Maison du Théâtre et de la Danse, Épinay sur Seine, Cie Ribac Schwabe, La Maline-ARDC, Conseil général de Seine-Saint-Denis.
With the support of the Fondation d’entreprise France Telecom, ADAMI, SPEDIDAM, Fond de Création Lyrique and the participation of the garden departments of Stains, Epinay sur Seine, Rennes, Niort, Quimper, Saint-Herblain, Saint-Ouen and a number of nurseries.

Set built in the workshops of the Moulin du Roc/Scène nationale de Niort.

Winning project of the 2003 programme “en quête d’auteurs” of the AFAA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs) and Beaumarchais (SACD)

Press

Ouest France, 8 Juillet 2004

Festival les Tombées de la Nuit

Le Petit traité pop du jardin botanique is one of the highlights of the Tombées de la Nuit festival. Something between a concert and a show, between English pop and a series of precious paintings. Even the nose takes pleasure.
A small garden hut, groves trimmed in the French style, a neat pond… The set of Le Petit Traité POP could accomodate a Marivaux without making the flowers that dot it blush. But it is indeed musicians who enter the stage. In gardening overalls, yes, but musicians. Moreover, when they unleash their pruning shears and sprayers, they’re even very good at serving up well-crafted pop songs, or even an angry “green-core” version (obviously!)

It’s velvetian (Underground tendency) in the music and wilsonian (Bob’s) in the aesthetics. Aesthetics that are never forgotten. The proof is that the drums, such an ungainly instrument in a garden, are locked in the shed and broadcast via a TV in the hydrangeas. A TV on which Bowie suddenly appears for a wink. Conversely, the watering cans are clearly visible. They even become drums under the influence of the drummer. Moreover, everything ends up being transformed as the basin itself becomes a vinyl turntable and the lawnmower a saturated guitar.

Isn’t this all very clear? No matter. You have to see it to believe it. And even smell it, since all these plants end up tickling our noses. Not to mention the pleasure of the ears. And that’s not a detail with singers like Cathal Coughlan and Eva Schwabe, musicians like François Ribac, Rémy Chatton, Bruno Desmouillières and Laurent Hestin. All this is as fresh as a park after a rain shower, as funny as a lunch on the grass between friends and as sweet as a beautiful pop song.

Gilles Kerdreux

7 juillet 2004

Feature by FR3