The Collective Art of Play and Juggling

International theatre festivals are always the ones that, in one way or another, raise the
question of collectivity. This time, the opening of "Le Festival l' Union des Ecoles" in
Limoges, France raised the question literally with the title of its opening performance: La
Condition Collective. The collective from the title is put together by sixteen students of the
acting academy in Limoges (L' Academie de l' Union) who are under the mentorship and
direction of Elsa Guerin.

We can see at the very beginning of the show that Ms. Guerin is also a juggler and a
coreographer and that she trains the young actors these practices. They are performing a series
of body games which occur in different forms. In the first several minutes they group all
together so they create an abstranct shape and when the lights fade off for a couple of seconds
they create another, a compleatly different shape. Later on they start juggling and playing
with the balls. For example, each one of them is holding a ball on his/her head while
distracting each other because thay are competing. The last one who is left with a ball on the
head is a winner.

The subject of collectivity is transparent during the whole show. But it's not present in a
political or social sense. It's manifested as a playful cooperative theatre practice. And, indeed,
the work resulted as being very communicative in relation with the public. The various
organized coreographies provide an also playful material for the spectators eye. From time to
time there' s some humor which comes to pass spontaneously. When an actor gets stuck in a
difficult physical possition when freezing to form a collective shape, the part of the audience
laughs. It may have to do with our a little bit sadistic nature which occurs when waching
someone in a inconvenient possition, but the actors may also stuck themselfs in an unusual
possition exactly for the laughs of the public. Also, when competing to be the last one with
the ball on the head, the actors seldom ignore the opponent with whom they should ''fight
with'', thus breaking the unspoken rules and therefore creating a comic effect.

Yet, not all was so well performed and managed. The problem begins when the repetition
starts. The actors are standing in a staight row, all of them juggling. One by one they start to
run backwards continuing to juggle and now running in circles altogether. This process is not
of course a problem by itself, but it repeats several times each in the first half of the show and
in the second. The process of forming an all together shapes is also doubled with no good
enough reason. Many of the other segments of the show are also repeated several times. This
frequently provokes monotony and the feeling that the show is perhps too long.

Now we may go back to the beginning – to the title of the performance. It seems that the word
collective is largely used as a surrogate for the ''group of students acting''. Though the topic
of collectivity is present here, it requires a more thoroughtly work on this subject. Otherwise,
the show is at risk to be considered a performance which exists only to show us what did the
actors learn at their academy.