Bacacay

In "Bacacay", a musical adaptation of a short story by Witold Gombrowicz, directed by Chloé Bégou, you can expect anything. There is hell in it. There is also air and a balloon. And they scare us too. When the protagonist talks about his second imprisonment in a steel cone at the very bottom of the ocean, you want to plug your ears and sing "lalala I can't hear you". Let those who suffer from claustrophobia give up. The fantastic story continues. The heroine in velor trousers with braces takes us with her. Her companions do not make the cello vibrate, electroacoustic instruments to buzz, violin to creak, and they even touch the keyboard. What? Sex in this art? And the innocence of children? But are they really children? Do only their pants seem too short for too long legs. The director and actress from Lyon worked on the adaptation of Gombrowicz's short story, transforming the protagonist into the heroine she plays herself. With great finesse in every way. Her body of a praying mantis, in the lights of Romain Delagarde, hypnotizes. Its long arms organize a route of dangerous adventures. Sometimes he even takes on the expression on his face and the voice of his worst enemy (the famous white Negro). When we ask Chloé to summarize the play, she replies with a gleam in her eyes, "It's Jules Verne high." So, are you ready to "go"?

Listening to the philosophical tale "Adventures" from Witold Gombrowicz's collection "Bakakaj" (1933), we have the impression that we are traversing the comics of the apocalyptic Philippe Druillet. We find here areas as annihilated and at the same time perfectly controlled as those created by the creator of the comic. The protagonist swims in a glass ball on the froth of the oceans, then becomes trapped in a steel cone under the water before landing in Poland, where she meets love and rises with her man in a balloon. This is not the end, because she runs away from boredom, choosing a course for China, where she is chased by millions of lustful lepers! Impossible to issue? Not for Chloé Bégou. The young actress of Gazoline takes the stage with four musicians in an old-style classroom littered with old (and wonderful) geographic maps. At wooden desks, in small benches, two classical instrumentalists (violin and cello) and two more modern ones (electroacoustic devices and keyboards) take the actress into "crazy" worlds. Chloé Bégou was able to make a chaotic spectacle out of a text that takes every imaginable and imaginable twist, while, without flattening the author's idea, she has created a work of great quality. Nadja Pobel, "Le Petit Bulletin", April 16-22, 2014

"Bakakaï" is Chloé Bégou's directorial debut. And it is not by accident that this young artist chooses Gombrowicz - an author whose absurd and funny world gave the name of her company. Colonie Bakakaï places an actress and four musicians in a classroom to relate these extraordinary journeys, these incredible encounters that await a young woman, thrown in a glass ball across the oceans, shot in a balloon, chased by terrible lepers. The classroom becomes an area for games, plays and music. The performers seem to be kids in a class photo, kids who dream and play with serious things.
"TOPO", January - February 2014