A Quiet Life Under The Ground | La sommation des acouphènes at LA CHAPELLE SCÈNES CONTEMPORAINES

May 5, 6 + 8, 9, 7:30 pm

By Gui B.B

BILINGUAL SHOW | THEATER- MUSIC- PERFORMANCE- INTERDISCIPLINAIRE

Vidéo-Interview with Gui B.B

La sommation des acouphènes (A Quiet Life Under The Ground) is a performative fantasy show where, along with collaborators, Gui B.B explores the potential for inverting the musical theatre genre as well as the techniques specific to investigative storytelling to create a spectral camp space. A sort of humid and erotic X-Files, populated by trans-spider telluric incantations.

It was in 2016 that the death of the female mygalomorph Number 16 was recorded, her insides devoured by the larvae of a parasitic wasp. She was 43 years old, making herself the oldest spider in the world ever observed. It was only in 2019 that the echo of this death reached Gui, its energies reverberating around the layers encircling her spinal cord.

At the same time, Gui discovered L'enquête des acouphènes ou les chanteuses silencieuses by philosopher Vinciane Despret, in which she describes arachnologists who, through experimentation on spiders, develop a strange form of tinnitus.

It is with this premise that the following story can be shared: two investigators from the paranormal brigade, lookouts for a community of mygalomorph humans go into a burrow. It is in this underground chamber that they discover the empty body shell of Number 16 composting the clay soil. Something has happened to these organs that cannot adequately be explained by science.

An abstract and poetic musical story then follows, oscillating between reconstruction, song and performance. On a colourful, solar-tinted stage set, performers negotiate a haunted science-fiction space where they (dis)order themselves around a vibratory cacophony of screams, bites, and clues that appear without rhyme or reason.

Gui B.B is an artist working in the field of experimental performance and Visual Arts. Her collaborative and solo work has been presented in different venues and festivals (L’Écart, OFFTA, la Fonderie Darling, La RIPA, le Festival d’art performatif de Trois-Rivières, Art Souterrain). She has also presented her work in various alternative spaces where she self-explores the medium of performance, its potential for imposture and healing. In a profusion of gesture-objects, she creates spaces in which the public can experience nonsense, an eruption of alternatives to normative identifications. In these baroque spaces, she imagines playful “trans-fictions”, poetic narratives through which dissident mythologies are created.

Director, Text, Set and Costume Design B.B

Performance Michael Martini, Mycelium, Frédérique Chassé, Gui B.B, Jad Mroue 

Set and Costume Designer Frédérique Chassé | Sound design Jad Mroue | Textual Inquiry Mycelium  | Lighting Design Darah Miah  | Production Assistant Arnaud Rochefort-Allie  | Coproduction La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines

With the support of the Conseil des arts de Montréal and Conseil des Arts du Canada.