THE WISDOM OF BEES

 It is a real, living swarm that Jean Lambert-wild, Jean-Luc Therminarias, Michel Onfray, Lorenzo Malaguerra, et François Royet intend to place on stage in La Sagesse des abeilles  (The Wisdom of bees ). They also suggest that we become conscious of the bereavement we will suffer if honeybees keep on disappearing. The amnesia that distracts bees from finding their way back to the hive, forcing them to die away from their home, echoes the amnesia that strikes men when they intend to “converse” with a world they inhabit, but do not contemplate anymore.

To initiate this conversation, the creators of the show come up with several tactics: to undertake a “poetic pollination” with the inhabitants of the cities and towns that will host the show; to collect these people’s faces in a host of moving images, supports and memories of a humanity, that will, over the course of the performances, become denser and thicker around the figure of Dionysus, himself abandoned to a contemplation of bees and devoured by it. To make magical phenomena inhabit the stage, in order to reveal the poetry that lies under the flow of the world.

Or else, to make audible, when attuned to the “voice of the bees”, the “voice of men”, in a concert version sung by a choir of its poets-interpreters. For the swarm, Jean Lambert-wild has built his hive. But a hive empty of any queen bee, and so, in the company of Jean-Luc Therminarias, Lorenzo Malaguerra and François Royet he will put on stage and direct these “actresses”. Michel Onfray was entrusted with the text, marking his second collaboration with Jean Lambert-wild following Le Recours aux forêts (The Retreat into the Forest ), the first movement of which was already filled with the rustle of insects.

But, how will men and honeybees work together in the same space? The solution they imagined brings the promise of many surprises, and will undeniably give us back to the world filled with the whirr of bees whirlwinding both inside and outside us like the atoms dreamed of by Democritus, leaving our ears humming with the murmur of conversation that man has with the world, and with himself.

NB: Every participating venue to host La Sagesse des abeilles  (La Voix des abeilles ) will be given the choice either to add to the performance beforehand via a programme of «poetic pollination» and/or afterwards with a concert by Jean-Luc Therminarias (La Voix des hommes ) featuring American performers David Moss, Sam Ashley and Jacqueline Humbert.

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