Sturbzep - Odéon

SturbzepGenre: Contemporary Theatre / PerformanceAges 14+

Show duration: 1h20 without intermission

In 1934, a Scottish gynaecologist named Robert Wilson signed the famous photograph of the Loch Ness Monster. A hoax. [...] “In this world of boring adults that culture generally is, Zerep has remained that orchestra of sick children, singing for the moon, wolves and the dead.” (Pacôme Thiellement)

At what age do we stop believing in monsters? Did we ever believe in them? Do we still believe in them? On 21 April 1934, the London Daily Mail presented its readers with a black and white photograph: a long-necked creature emerging from the waters of a lake lost in the north of Scotland. The image travelled the world, fuelled fantasies and outlandish theories, and established the Loch Ness Monster as a legend. Behind the lens – and at the origin of the hoax – was a certain Robert Wilson: not the illustrious stage director, but another image-maker, a gynaecologist by profession, a photomontage artist in his spare time. Drawing on this improbable homonymy – which suddenly brings Nessie to the theatre's doorstep – and driven by the same taste for deception, Sophie Perez in turn embarks for the swamps of Loch Ness, bringing the entire Zerep company in her wake. For nearly thirty years, the stage director and visual artist has been creating a proliferating theatrical bestiary, shattering all seriousness in favour of unbridled inventiveness, stitching together heterogeneous forms and the most dissimilar creatures. Beyond the legend of Loch Ness, she undertakes to reawaken an entire gothic imagination. In the wake of the Highland fabulists, Sturbzep is a cross between a farce and a cabinet of curiosities: archaic beasts and contemporary chimeras, hideous creatures capable of igniting the imagination of the wisest, and beings capable of shaking the most rational minds, all collide pell-mell. Bogged down up to their necks in the misty peat, the audience is invited to