THE SCRIPTOGRAPH. Théâtre de la Massue (France)

Automatic writing workshop-show for audiences 16+

For wine-influenced authors and spectators, in all languages
Creation, scenography and puppets: Ézéquiel Garcia-Romeu
Acting and puppeteering: Ézéquiel Garcia-Romeu, Javier Swedzky (for South America)
Photos by: Lin Delpierre and Vanessa Popova

Premiere: 2006 m.

Imagine a ‘large writing table’ around which six dramatist authors sit at their writing desks. They are waiting for the puppeteer to start his puppet show at the center of the table, in order to inspire their improvised writing. Imagine the audience, circling this first gathering, attending all this creative improvisation.

‘The Scriptograph’ (fr.: ‘Le Scriptographe’) is an interactive automatic writing workshop. It is a table of an irrational approach for dramatist authors and puppets, which summons the collective imagination in the unity of a space-time both real and oneiric – on one side the set, the stage, the room and the audience, and on the other the writing, the narration, the picture and the puppets. Hidden under the table, a puppeteer improvises small shows with some characters and objects. The authors, inspired by these scenes, write during the limited time of the show. At the end of the scene, each author renders his text to the audience by reading it out loud. Without being descriptive, their imagination combined with the scenes produces a kind of exquisite cadaver of the most surprising sort. Around the authors, the audience will then have attended the narration of three shows almost at the same time. Firstly, the puppet show. Secondly, the authors focused on writing. Finally, the reading aloud of each of the authors’ texts, which will unveil the surprise of their invention. A glass of wine is offered to the authors during the reading. Depending on the organizers the spectators can be invited to share a glass of wine in a friendly atmosphere.

Ézéquiel Garcia-Romeu, artistic director of Théâtre de la Massue, is an inventor of worlds; director and set designer, based at 109, the Contemporary Culture Center in Nice (France). He explores contemporary forms of puppetry and new stage writing. His works are conceived as a paradigm within a creative theatrical laboratory. 

His shows have been programmed at the Théâtre National de Chaillot, the Odéon, the Théâtre de la Commune, the Auditorium du Musée d’Orsay, the Festival in d’Avignon, the Berliner Festspiele, and numerous festivals and stages around the world, which he continues to visit, such as FIBA (Buenos-Aires,) or Santiago a Mil (Chile) and at the FMTM in Charleville.