Blogger
By Francesca Serra, Titiou Lecoq, Camille Kiejman, directed by Camille Kiejman.
With Kristina Chaumont, Céline Esperin, Prune Derriennic, Adrien Durmeyer.
From October 17 to December 29, 2010 at Manufacture des abbesses.
Sundays, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays at 9pm.
Paris, November 11, 2010,
Taking advantage – for my taste – a little too much of the cybernetic wave, I immediately felt like taxing the title of the piece with a “can do better”. But criticism is easy, art is difficult, and after a good 5 minutes of reflection, I couldn’t manage to do “much better”. My few options:
- Sacred texts from a geekette,
- Writing is an art 2.0,
- Me, this interactive young woman.
There are three pretty girls on stage (go and see, you’ll see), but in the end Paola is typing away on her keyboard. A simple split personality, in itself, nothing very exceptional. Paola taps away at her keyboard because she has a blog: ” a website made up of a collection of posts agglomerated over time and often arranged in antechronological order” (thanks to the old Wiki).
Dubious keywords or not in the stats, Paola’s blog is – all the same – referenced on Google. On her blog, she talks about her daily life, & her life, & her existence. All that, all that. And all for us. EShe also recounts the euphoric effect and intoxicating force of her very first comment. Because it’s Paola’s blog, and of course nobody arrives there by chance.
She also gives seduction lessons to help men achieve copulation, or even a quiet romance. Unbelievably accurate and hilarious advice. Thank God, as far as we’re concerned, few men are in on the secret. In fact, Paola’s advice works so well that the character of Max, “the” best friend, who reads her blog – needless to say – ends up hooking up with a girl that very evening.
Elle.
After the exhausting vodka-and-whipped-cream sex, Max posts an explicit status on his Facebook wall about the night before. And then the drama begins. Humiliated and – what’s more – furious at so many thumbs up (“you stupid bastards…”), Paola strikes back, hitting where it hurts, forgetting one small detail: she’s the one blogging, not Max.
Paola’s blog also features episodes that send us into a state of acute hilarity, revolving around a first Krav-Maga session, a stereotypical Paris where the slim, well-dressed Parisian woman has a habit of crying in the metro, a vacation in Corsica where the grandmother, who still hasn’t figured out what exactly her granddaughter does with her daily life in Paris, invents for her a life worthy of the best of Pretty Women, using references from the small screen.
“Poetry is but the formal exhibition of consciousness that suffers and loves and apprehends the world.”
Jean-Guy Rens, Excerpt from Death of the Coyote
Questions for Celine Espérin (actress):
EP/If you had to find another title for the piece, what would it be?
CE/Journal électronique d’une jeune femme (dé)rangée.
EP/Why three girls to direct one Paola?
CE/Camille Kiejman wanted to avoid the monolithic form of the one-man show.
EP/Do you resemble Paola in any way in “your” life?
If so, in what ways?
CE/My life is so far and so close to Paola’s: I have more than two friends, I don’t have a blog and don’t really see the point of having one, I don’t like computers… On the other hand, I fell in love with the text immediately, which means that I recognize myself in her: not necessarily in terms of experience, but in terms of sensitivity, humor, quirkiness…
EP/What do you think is the moral of this contemporary play?
CE/Perhaps real life finds a stronger path than virtual life…
Elisa Palmer
Photo credits: La Manufacture des Abbesses
www.manufacturedesabbesses.com
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