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Penser les arts vivants à partir de leurs traces

Marie-Christine Lesage

La trace, une notion polysémique

Louise Frappier and Nicole Nolette

Archives, archivage, surtitrage : la pérennisation d’une pratique théâtrale en contexte minoritaire

Nicole Nolette, Ariane Brun del Re and Léa Rousseau
The research team for the project Le surtitrage : génétique, conservation et utilisation received a fonds of documents pertaining to theatrical surtitling from French to English in Toronto. Following this donation, the team composed of a scholar in theatre translation, an archivist and a student in knowledge integration asks who is responsible for the duty of memory pertaining to performing arts in Canada’s minority communities. They examine the important distinction between archiving and the discipline of archival studies that blurs the conception of the “archive(s)” they are called upon to create. In this article, they provide a detailed account of the technical, managerial and social aspects that characterize their archiving approach. In so doing, they describe a concentrated experience of archiving performing arts artefacts from minority communities in the digital age, highlighting its technical and social possibilities, as well as the limits of applying certain data management principles.

Les plateformes numériques consacrées aux archives des arts vivants : geste mémoriel ou outil de légitimation ? Le cas de Somim

Géraldine Moreau
This article presents a case study of Somim, a digital platform dedicated to the Mimos Festival (Périgueux, France). This point of entry opens onto a broader reflection on the issues of memory, mediation, and cultural legitimation inherent to such virtual objects. Situated within French public digitization policies since the 1990s, digital platforms devoted to the performing arts bring into tension questions of preservation, use, and the mediation of audiovisual archives. By examining the case of Somim and looking at five similar platforms, the article shows that these digital systems contribute to the construction of a collective memory while revealing the economic, technical, and symbolic fragilities of contemporary processes of patrimonialization of the French mime arts in particular, and of the performing arts more broadly.

(Re)constitution du dossier génétique d’une création collective et contribution à la transmission du patrimoine culturel : le cas de Moé j’viens du Nord, ‘stie

Johanne Melançon
The research Moé j’viens du nord, ‘stie – 50 ans was developed with two goals, namely the constitution of the genesis (or genetic) file to document and analyze the creation process, then the presentation of this research to disseminate the results to the widest possible audience. The scarcity of institutional archives has led to the consultation of private archives but also to the use of “fabricated” archives (Denizot, 2014), in the form of testimonies. This approach led to a reflection on the notion of archive and the integration of metagenetic documents into the genesis file and the exhibitions.

Les expériences théâtrales sont-elles reproductibles à partir de leurs traces ? Le cas des Laboratoires Crête

Pierre-Olivier Gaumond
The “documentary” text Les laboratoires Crête (2008) presents traces of a show which could be described as a science play, since it both experiments on theatrical forms and performs the scientific method. Actor Stéphane Crête appropriated science to examine how the state of consciousness of actors affected their performance, and if altering it could enhance their work. This article analyses the relationship between science and theatre in the documentary text, which activates traces outside of a historical perspective.

Entre entreposage, exposition et réutilisation : comment conserver des traces du costume de scène ?

Roxanne Martin
Sylvie Perault (2007) describes the life cycle of a costume in three phases: its creation as a craft object, its use on stage as a theatrical object, and its preservation as a heritage object. After the performance, the costume can follow three paths: temporary storage, where it is reused for the same production; archiving and exhibition, where it becomes a collection item displayed publicly; and re-use, where it is modified for a new production, often with an eco-friendly approach known as eco-design. Roxanne Martin explores the various potential lives of the heritage object, and the challenges encountered in reconstructing its memory.

Entre débats et dialogues : les traces de La paix des femmes. Entretien avec Véronique Côté

Sophie Bastien

Des traces qui nous habitent : réflexions autour d’un atelier écosomatique

Johanna Bienaise, Germain Ducros and Alice Blanchet-Gavouyère

De l’obsolescence des traces de création : le cas d’ARBO CYBER, théâtre (?)

Lucie Fradet and Robert Faguy

La déconstruction du stéréotype dans les contes de fées de la dramaturge sicilienne Emma Dante

Clelia Paola Di Pasquale
This article examines how Emma Dante deconstructs stereotypes associated with femininity and gender in two of her contemporary theatrical adaptations of fairy tales. The analysis of La bella Rosaspina addormentata (2013) and Anastasia, Genoveffa e Cenerentola (2010) highlights the ways in which Dante replaces patriarchal models with hybrid and subversive characters. Theatre thus becomes a space of “everydayization” (“quotidianizzazione”; Barsotti, 2016) of the marvellous, from which the Jungian archetypes of the Lover and the Wild Woman emerge. Cross-dressing, non-binarity and social critique occupy a central place, making Dante’s theatre a political and inclusive tool that questions binarity and promotes the freedom of bodies and identities.

L’univers sonore du Dortoir : un oscillement entre murmures et fracas

Karolann St-Amand
This article explores the sound world of Le dortoir (1988) by Carbone 14, an acoustic landscape in which intimate murmurs, rhythmic whispers, and sudden crashes intertwine. Through an analysis of sonic layers – voices, object sounds, bodily percussion, recorded music – it shows how the performance articulates a continuum of tensions, from held breath to sonic eruption. The study highlights how this work with sound structures space, shapes scenic rhythm, and contributes to the creation of a poetics of memory, oscillating between fragility, violence, and affective resonances.

Tableau des milieux théâtraux français sur YouTube avant et après la pandémie de COVID-19

Élisabeth Viain
Before 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, major French theatres already had their own YouTube channels, but only posted short excerpts. YouTube mainly featured boulevard theatre. From the first restrictions linked to the public-health crisis onward, this boulevard-style use intensified, but the emergence of new uses of YouTube can also be observed, as the platform temporarily became a refuge for live performance. These experiments raise, on the one hand, the question of whether YouTube is only contingently conducive to theatre and, on the other hand, whether the few new performative forms that have developed there can still be called “theatre”, given that actor / spectator co-presence never takes place.

Jeu, nos 193, 195 (2025) / Théâtre/Public, no 256 (2025) / Thaêtre, no 9 (2025)

Gabrielle Boucher