At the Avignon “off” Festival, the incredible “Happy Apocalypse”

In Avignon, there are days when you no longer know whether, artistically, you are in the "in" or the "off," as this line tends to blur when it comes to contemporary creations. Thus, one leaves Happy Apocalypse, presented at the Théâtre 11, stunned. The new play by Jean-Christophe Dollé and his Burgundy company, Fouic, offers a total spectacle. Whether it is the breathtakingly creative scenography with all the little worlds it reveals, the power of the original pop rock music played live, the costumes and animal masks that plunge us into an offbeat world, or the incredible, futuristic story worthy of an avant-garde fable, everything about it is insane.

This theater of anticipation is reminiscent of the shock felt when discovering Thomas Cailley's film, Animal Kingdom , in 2023. In Happy Apocalypse , Pearl, the young heroine, is the first half-human, half-animal hybrid, crossed with a Komodo dragon. But that's where the comparison ends, because it's not a mutation linked to a new disease, but genetic manipulation. Disobeying her mother, a physicist, she no longer wants to take the treatments that would stop her difference. Pearl both symbolizes the limitless "progress" that pushes the world into an impasse, and blurs the lines between science and imagination.

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