2023-06-28 04:58:00
The Philip Venables-Ted Huffman duo is surrounded by fifteen artists to bring the multiplicity of queer voices to the heart of the Festival in a show close to musical theatre.
All united to bring the singularities of queer voices to a lyric art festival? Chick. The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, a small form atypical in its structure, presented in the room of the Black Pavilion inaugurated last year, is inspired by a work by Larry Mitchell published in 1977, which aggregates in short chapters, without really embodied characters, songs, texts, militant phrases, illustrations… “This novel reflects an opposition to a standardized world managed by white men in oppression to the rest of the world. Very funny to read, very political, it tries to translate the creativity and the freedom which are expressed outside the norm”, explains Paul Briottet, deputy director of the Académie du Festival, which is in charge of this production. whose composer, Philip Venables, as well as the director and librettist, Ted Huffman, once passed through this structure.
The duo’s third work after 4.48 Psychosis (adaptation of the play by Sarah Kane) and Denis & Katya (inspired by the amorous escape and death of two Russian teenagers in 2015), The Faggots… prompted Venables and Huffman to develop a form of different cooperation. If the subject remains militant, writing and aesthetics evolve, in a radically collective sense. About fifteen artists take part in the project, coming from various universes, such as the lyrical – of course – but also the theater, the performance, the classical, the jazz… Moreover versatile, they combine the hats: singers-actors, dancers -musicians, etc.
Between opera and cabaret
“This creation was also designed in a form of democracy,” underlines Briottet. During the working sessions, all the artists debated and discussed the heart of the text, its militant meaning. Each one brought ideas, attempted scenes, transposing into the musical world a writing on the stage that one usually only finds in the theater. “For example, during one of the first sessions, Philip Venables had started the composition and had presented himself with about forty pages… he crossed out three quarters of them when he left,” continues Briottet.
“What’s interesting about this work is that its queer character is evident, as well as the celebration of joy, of homosexuality, of sex… all these questions are approached in a very open way”, notes Ted Huffman, on the Festival’s website, explaining that “if there were queer operas in the 20th century, notably those of Britten, none, [s]as far as I know, presented the related subjects in such a positive way”. On an open stage, “benevolent and not in confrontation with the room”, as Briottet describes it, this succession of songs relating to musical theater, halfway between opera and cabaret, is also crossed by a collective word carried by artists. An explosive digest of queer effervescence, the show also offers the originality of placing itself musically in an interval between baroque instrumentarium and pop language. Surprising all the time.
The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions, July 7-9, 5 p.m., Black Pavilion
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