Je vous écoute

Produced at the National Theatre of Strasbourg, Je vous écoute draws its script from anonymous calls to a suicide prevention hotline. The director, Mathilde Delahaye, says she wanted to render audible the intimate confidences of marginalized moments, to collectively share past moments of solitude with strangers. The archival and verbatim nature of the text, scrupulously respected while performatively interpreted in musical form, contributes a spectral dimension to the piece, accentuated by the flooded stage mirroring ghost-like reflections of the performers, wavering and upside-down, like the flip side of consciousness. The set design, signed Hervé Cherblanc, creates the immersive and captivating atmosphere of having entered a nightmare that belongs to someone else, yet which feels hauntingly familiar.

The rain falls then pours in the darkness of suicidal angst and solitude as the stage slowly drowns. Yet these tales of desperation have been set to rhythm, and music can be heard piercing through the obscurity. “I am listening to you” becomes a pulsating response that reverberates across the space separating actors and audience.

The water is highly operative in inverting, distorting, and doubling the scenic elements, transporting them into another visual dimension. Other non-humans occupy the space: a car carcass, a magnificent cow, tree branches floating among shipwrecked debris. At one point, an athlete attempts to lift a massive dumbbell that splashes to the floor in a poignantly poetic staging of crushing weight that cannot be carried alone. The embodied, enchanted performances of these desperate confidences, accompanied by live cello music composed and executed by Gaspar Claus, collapses the distance between then and now, them and us. We are all part of this symphony, carried along upon the waters that connect us through time, space, and sound. – A. Street