The call of the mutants

Dans le Jura, where Lucile grew up, folklore is very present. We dress up, we sing, we dance, we savor local specialties. But when it comes to talking about essential things in life, unspoken things invite themselves to the table… Alone on stage, Lucile Charnier starts from her intimate story – the silence around a loved one’s cancer – to explore the place of denial within family dynamics. With a gentle, lucid, and sensitive look, she reveals the unspeakable love that hides behind the taboo. Between performance, dance, and singing, L’appel des mutantes is a joyful and poetic autofiction where eras, places, and beings, living as well as dead, cross paths. From the love we don’t say to unsuspected forms of language, this solo show explores everything that is played out on the periphery of words when they have been confiscated, out of modesty or tradition. It breathes into us the urgency to reinvest new imaginaries to look at illness with gentleness and better integrate it into our lives. Before the show, Lucile Charnier conducted workshops around the voice at Institut Bordet, with patients in oncology. L’appel des mutantes is a tribute to their voices that mingled, making the experience of cancer resonate with beauty and joy. By having fun with our escapism and our little arrangements with reality, the author, director, and actress whispers to us that, faced with the difficulties of existence – the fear of death, grief – there is always the possibility of laughing. As part of the CRUSH festival.