Mathilde Monnier & La Ribot
Gustavia
Gustavia talks a lot about things she doesn’t quite understand: eternal subjects like death, femininity, theatre and artists.
She is reminiscent of Jacques Tati, the Marx brothers and Charlie Chaplin. She draws unexpected conclusions from meandering arguments, tangles her thoughts in absurdum, and somehow manages to turn her incompetence into expertise. She uses the classic tools of burlesque, drastic crying, babbling and the two-by-four plank – which she carries on her shoulder and uses to accidentally knock people down. She is irreverent, silly and disrespectful. That’s Gustavia for you.
But actually, she’s just an excuse for the artistic collaboration of two quite different performance artists and choreographers. Spanish La Ribot and French Mathilde Monnier have been active in dance and performance for over thirty years. Both have their artistic origins in dance but work in a variety of media, and simply use whatever is needed to achieve the artistic goal at hand. In Gustavia they’ve combined their thoughts about the future of art, not leastwise performance art.
Written, directed and performed by: Mathilde Monnier and La Ribot
Lighting design: Éric Wurtz
Sound design: Olivier Renouf
Stage design: Annie Tolleter
Costume: Dominique Fabrègue assisted by Laurence Acquire
Stage manager: Rémi Jabveneau
Sound manager: Antonin Clair
Production manager: Vincent Cavaroc and Fanny Herserant