Artist
"Ghostbusters, wild puppets, and guides to the world of curiosities."
The Canadian theatre company Les Sages Fous presents onstage paradoxical puppet theatre which mixes magic with coarse humor, and the familiar with the supernatural. They create an unruly and unbridled game in which masks and puppets combine to transport the viewer to another world, a theatre in which the power of the moment mingles with an illusion that surprises and upsets. The result is a poetic burlesque stage, in which image and gestures seize power over the word...
Since its founding in 1999, the Les Sages Fous has attended 179 international theatre festivals and has been consistently ranked among the most popular Canadian scenic projects in the world. Led by an experienced puppeteer, Jacob Brindamourem, avant-garde stage designer and artist Sylvain Longpré, and South Miller, a graduate of the prestigious Playhouse School of the Theatre in New York, they have captivated audiences in 27 countries and on four continents.
Les Sages Fous are the perfect stage metamorphosis. Puppet artists and conductors work closely together throughout the course of the work. Performances are thus living organisms in constant development. Each performance is an experiment rather than a hard-coded form. Actors always link their dialogue with the audience, which guides the transformation of each performances' key player. Due to the requirement of unfettered artistic creation the Les Sages Fous performances are easily adaptable even to public places and non-traditional areas.
Canadian actors, right in front of the viewer, erect a long-lost world in which masks, puppets, objects and people live together. The performance Le Cirque orphelin (the orphaned circus) tells the story of the fictional circus of two impoverished junk dealers in which lonely and maladjusted subjects encounter badly formed and mutilated dolls, and together they experience the most unpredictable adventures. In the performance Bizzarium aquarium, a small boat floats through the underwater city to hunt their own dreams and chimeras and two divers from the underwater abyss liberate their own wrecks. The atmosphere is carefully poised halfway between fairground fun and poetic illusions. Parade Issimo is a story about a traveling bird trainer, two lost ostriches and one scrupulously protected egg.
Les Sages Fous studio is located in the heart of the historic district of Trois-Rivières in Quebec. This is where specific pieces, with which the ensemble eventually travels around the world, are initially developed and performed, and where regular workshops are held in which the actors push the boundaries of their plays with masks and puppets in close communion with the audience. The group is also actively involved in cultural events in Quebec - once every two years they organize the experimental Minifestival of unfinished puppets (Micro-Festival de MARIONNETTES inachevées) and they are a regular performer at the street festival Saison de théâtre insolite, which takes place in the historic heart of the city.
