Paradise

Kae Tempest, one of our greatest contemporary poets, takes hold of a tragedy by Sophocles centered on the character of Philoctetes, a war hero. Except that this time, all the usual heroes have disappeared, the gods have deserted the sky, and it is the survivors, women and mortals, who heal, feed, and maintain the world. For the entire set, a beach littered with waste and chemical vapors. Yet, it is called Paradis, because where disorder grows, hope grows. God, here, is a choir of women; they heat the pot and help each other. Denis Laujol stages for the first time in the French language this visionary and profoundly human story: wouldn't it be time to exchange our male heroes who left for bloody and eternal wars for collective figures taking care of the living? Carried by ten high-flying actors, including Denis Lavant, the show is a cry of freedom and revolt. Artist and committed citizen, Denis Laujol makes this luminous staging an echo chamber for the political choices that weigh on all life on earth. Aggressive extractivism leads to climate catastrophe and gangrenes our planet. Then appear to us the images of the misery of Lampedusa, of endangered species, of the announced shortage of resources, and all are linked. Denis Laujol manages with sensitivity to transmit to us what the stories of Sophocles and Kae Tempest contain: the infinitely large and the infinitely small, the terribly cruel and the sublime hope.