At the end of October, the La Chapelle theater welcomed an actress and a stage director from mainland France as its resident artists. On November 1st, 2nd, 8th and 9th, Élise Pignard and Camille Nauffray are presenting “Indélébile”, a show written during the lockdown and completed in Saint-Martin. Immersion behind the scenes of its production.
It was in Saint-Martin that everything started for Élise Pignard, so it made sense that she would choose Saint Martin to perform her first solo show. “I didn’t know it yet, but this project had to meet with Saint-Martin,” she says. Thanks to a co-funding from the Guadeloupe Cultural Affairs Department, at the end of October the La Chapelle theater was able to welcome Élise for her closing art residency to complete the creation of her “Indélébile” show.
PROFESSIONALIZATION AND BEGINNINGS
In 2011, while living in Saint-Martin, Élise Pignard discovered acting thanks to Audrey Duputié, director at that time of the Salle Timbanque. After two years of intensive theatre practice and a return to mainland France, she decided to switch gears, from teacher to professional actress. During the March 2020 lockdown, she wrote her first show.
A little later, while Élise had put aside her project, actress and stage director Camille Nauffray offered her an external look at her text. “I found that there was a very fine literary material and that we had to put on this show,” she recalls. After working on playwriting, her core business, Camille gradually began to work on the staging of “Indélébile”. The different phases of production took place during several residencies in theatres in Marseille, where both actresses live. “At some point, we necessarily need to go onto the stage, to work on the relationship between body and space,” explains Camille. “We work on the set design, we make a plan of lights to determine the lighting atmospheres, the place of the spotlights...”.
Élise and Camille have created two versions of the show: a theatrical version, “more ambitious technically”, and a lighter version to “allow the show to travel in different configurations”. “In Marseille, we often play in apartments, in lounges, in all kinds of indoor spaces”, Camille points out. The final phase of creation took place on the stage of the La Chapelle theater during the last two weeks of October. After working on the rehearsal of the texts, the acting and the stage direction, they are now ready to present the show for the first time, in front of the lucky St-Martin audience.
TATTOO AND MENTAL ILLNESS
In this autobiographical show, Élise Pignard addresses the theme of mental illness within the family. Through the story of her tattoo, an indelible mark that can be as full of meaning as it can be superficial, she tells her family story, that of “two children living with a mother who has cast off reality”. Her character evolves in a playful space made of cardboard boxes, taking refuge in her “cafoutch”, a word from Marseille which refers to a closet where we put all the objects we no longer want and which contains many memories. This absurd setting offers a double reading, also symbolizing the brain cells, memory storage and the associations of ideas. Through this show that involves both the mind and the body, Élise is telling a personal story that she is hoping to be touching, inspiring and funny so that it can joyfully resonates in each and every one of us.
Indélébile
Nov 1, 2, 8 & 9
La Chapelle Theater, Orient Bay
