24 NOVEMBER - 12 DECEMBER 2009

Marie-José Mondzain
& Pascal Rambert

Qu’est-ce-que tu vois?

thEATRE

For all ages: 9 years and up

Written by Marie-José Mondzain / Production director Pascal Rambert / With Grégory Guilbert and Antonin Ménard

School performances on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.
Family performances on Wednesdays and Saturdays. 

A philosophical dialogue for young audiences. After turning classrooms (literally) upside-down in the French department of Hauts-de-Seine, and a spell at the Grand Palais in Paris (for the exhibition La Force de l'Art 02, in 2009) Qu’est-ce que tu vois? ("What do you see?") returns to the Théâtre de Gennevilliers this season with a series of shows for families and schools.

Marie-José Mondzain, philosopher and research director at France's national centre for scientific research (the CNRS), has spent two years visiting classrooms throughout France, exploring philosophy and the visual world: the things we see around us in everyday life, and in pictures. Her classrooms visits inspired Qu’est-ce que tu vois?, an imaginative dialogue encouraging children to understand the joy, sorrow and fear inspired in us by the images that surround us in our everyday lives. A dialogue aimed at grown-ups, too – anyone with an interest in looking at the world, together.

Reflecting Marie-José Mondzain's dissection of the processes of thought, Pascal Rambert's staging deconstructs the traditional classroom space. In real time, in constantly-changing ways, the play's two actors slowly, gradually turn the stage classroom's tables and chairs "on their heads". Deprived of its usual function, the familiar furniture ushers in a new reality, challenging accepted norms in the classroom, and in thought.

The show is divided into two parts: Qu’est-ce que tu vois? (the live stage performance), followed by Qu’est-ce que tu as vu? ("What have you seen?) a workshop in which actors and children discuss what they have seen, and exchange ideas: what did you just see? What is there to see? Do you see the same thing as me? What do you see on TV? How do you see reality? What do you like or dislike about what you see in the world around you? What do you want to see of the world?…

Marie-José Mondzain explores images of all kinds in a variety of different historical contexts. Her work has examined violent imagery in contemporary society, and she is currently looking at the globalisation of violent images, and the economic and social conditions that foster their wider visibility. Since 2007, Marie-José Mondzain has participated in the Rencontres philosophiques series at the Théâtre de Gennevilliers: a venue dedicated to exploring the full significance of the act of looking.

Qu’est-ce que tu vois ? is published by Gallimard jeunesse (2008) with illustrations by Sandrine Martin
Production Théâtre de Gennevilliers – in association with La Force de l’Art 02