Not yet satisfied with the success of Wolf Soup (more than 500 performances since 2005!), the Poitou artists of the company L’Herbe d’or have started a new show for young audiences, Word of Thumb!, with the same three artists on stage: the musician Frdric Bougouin, the storyteller Franois Godard and the actress Hlne Richard.
we have been playing for fifteen years Wolf Soup and structures that had already programmed us asked for a second show, claire Frdric Bougouin. At the end of 2019, we therefore had the idea of working on Poucet’s story.
Comedy, storytelling and music
The creation was initially scheduled for May 2020, but confinement postponed the first performance until December, on the stage of La Blaiserie, Poitiers. Finally, the extension of the closure of the concert halls did not allow the company to show this new show to the public. But the three artists all the same benefited from a week of residence in the socio-cultural center of Poitiers-Ouest to finalize this creation.
Wolf Soup, it’s a show where we are really fond, from AZ, recalls Franois Godard. L, it’s a more posh show… Maybe because we are getting old! (to laugh) Either way, the matter around fear continues to interest us.
The three artists have therefore seized on the famous tale of Perrault to revisit it their sauce. The tale by itself is horrible, souligne Hlne Richard. It deals with abandonment and devouring… It’s a disturbing story! But L’Herbe d’or has turned it into a particularly funny musical tale. There is this child who comes to remind us that we can laugh at any moment, even the most tragic, explains Frdric Bougouin. It’s a bit the reverse of Life is Beautiful, the film by Roberto Benigni, in which the father tries to distract his son from the horrors of the concentration camp: here, it is the child who brings joy and turns every situation into a game.
As always in the company’s shows, many songs come into play, accompanied by the harp, guitar and Tibetan bowls of Frdric Bougouin. With a little luck, children aged 5 to 11 will be able to discover this spectacle at the beginning of next year but, for the moment, no date is fixed.
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