Go shopping [et fais le mort]
In September 2001, the day after an attack that deeply affected America, the President of the United States addressed his shell-shocked people with a disturbing message: “Fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Get down to Disney World…”
Go shopping. He thus invited his mourning nation to pantomime the actions of everyday life in order to conceal their distress from their enemy. Isn’t this yet further evidence of Western society’s increasingly neurotic relationship with death? We hide it, we purge it from our shared narratives, we deny it in – or exclude it from – our daily lives: lives whose last remaining collective rite, unfortunately, might well be…. shopping.
In tackling the nature of mourning in our consumer society, this multidisciplinary performance (with a pinch of social criticism) recounts the journey of four shipwrecked people, cut off from our materialistic world. Watch them take inventory of all the deaths in their lives, both great and small. Does death torment you? Does grief crush you? Go shopping !
Premiered on October 13, 2006 at Théâtre La Chapelle, Montreal.
Photos : Glauco
Devised by the company
Original Concept/Director : Catherine Bourgeois
Assistant Director/Assistant Stage Manager : Amélie Dumoulin
Cast : Marc Barakat, Élisabeth Chouvalidzé, Jean-Pascal Fournier, Marina Lapina, and James the Fish
Wardrobe : Julie Charland
Lighting Designer : Jean Jauvin
Original Music : Jez
Design Associate : Félix Larivière
Video Associate : Lyne Thériault
Sound Operator : Maxime Boucher
Graphic Design: Mivil
Publicity : Valérie Grig
Produced with the collaboration of La Chapelle, through a creation residency.
