Interview: Thierry Collin, Jean-Philippe Hemery, And Sonia Kozlova Clark of LEONARDO, DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES at Artpark

On August 20, French performance art group Plasticiens Volants will unveil the North American premiere of LEONARDO, DREAMS AND NIGHTMARES, based on the life of Leonardo da Vinci and his relationship with his disciple Salaí. For the past forty years, the Plasticiens have been delighting huge outdoor crowds throughout Europe with their street theatre productions, which include enormous inflatable sculptures, puppets, and pyrotechnics.

BroadwayWorld Toronto spoke to Plasticiens' artistic director Thierry Collin, company manager Jean-Philippe Hemery, and Artpark artistic director Sonia Kozlova Clark about the upcoming show and benefit, as well as their future plans to create a new work based on a Haudenosaunee creation story.

BWW: You've had a fruitful relationship with Artpark so far in the past. You premiered BIG BANG and PEARL there in 2017 and 2019 respectively, the North American premieres. What makes Artpark such a great place for your work? Can you tell me a little bit about this relationship that you formed?

COLLIN: It's a question of trust. Because it's a relationship based on that. The very first time when Sonia [artistic director] didn't even know our company yet, she started to make some very, very cool mutual agreements, and that's why we were very happy to come here to perform in that atmosphere. The place is very multidisciplinary, so when they performed PEARL and BIG BANG, it was a very diverse experience.

HEMERY: For example, with PEARL, Sonia organized a music group that played just after their performance, and the performances overlapped for about five or six minutes. It was a Pink Floyd cover band that played right after.

COLLIN: Which was very interesting because Pink Floyd is "Flying Music;" we were performing, and the rhythm of our puppets, our inflatables, is the same, which makes a link. So that was a good choice. The atmosphere of both are on the same wavelength.

BWW: When you arrived at Artpark, you began with a workshop with their Devised Theatre Institute. Can you tell us a little bit about that and what you were doing?

COLLIN: This morning, we spoke with the people who are going to perform with us. We talked first about the history of the Plasticiens since the 70s, and our work with street theatre. In the second part, we showed them how to work some of the puppets we carry, some inflatables, the same idea as the flying ones but smaller, so we can carry them and walk through the audience.

BWW: How are they collaborating in performance with you?

HEMERY: Before our show, there is a carnival. The students, wearing wings, will have some action in the audience, and the same people with wings will participate in the Parade of Leonardo, with lights. There will be three flying horses to signify war. There will be 12 people in the crowd who will have banners to symbolize the war.

COLLIN: They're going to use a set of banners, lights, and some other elements. The banners are of special importance because in this painting of Leonardo, the central element is this fight for the banner. During the war, who gets the banner is the winner. We're also going to use fireworks and smoke effects.

HEMERY: After, at the very end, they'll come back like the first parade. It's a surprise, we don't know if Leonardo is alive or dead.

COLLIN: All the people with the barriers will have a special mission to go through the crowd, which is sitting around the space, and connect them with the banners. The audience is part of the fight.

BWW: So is the audience also constantly participating in the show?

COLLIN: We are going to perform through the audience. If they want to move with us, no problem. We try to be everywhere, because that's important for the audience: to have something close, not always high and far from them.

HEMERY: We try to have the big image with the flying puppets, but we try to have another aspect of walking around the audience, changing positions within the crowd, involving them.

BWW: There's all sorts of different levels of visuals and level of immersion around them.

CLARK: As you were saying in the workshop, one eye has to be looking up and one eye always has to look down. it's a very special skill; they have to see up and down all the same time.

COLLIN: That's also for the puppeteer. So the people who are going to light the inflatables have to see where they're walking, while at the same time looking up at them.

BWW: Is it a very difficult job to manipulate those large inflatables?

COLLIN: Mainly we depend on the on the weather. If there is no wind, we are able to do things really precisely. If it's really windy, we're fighting against the wind.

BWW: There's a metaphor in there somewhere, fighting against the wind. Before the show, there's going to be a carnival fundraiser. What attracts you to the carnival, and how it plays with the notion of social boundaries and our relationship to each other?

COLLIN: There is a sentence written in our book about that; two people talking about being in the street together with a crowd, and conversing even though they don't know each other. It's just a special moment; you can meet each other with a sense of equality. It's easy to talk with people. That's the first freedom. And then, after you start, you can do a lot of things. We did that with the first show we made in the 80s. With feathers, and with confetti, organizing "fights" with that. I remember seeing that show, which was really spreading feathers everywhere.

We performed in Milan, in Italy. In Milan, you can see many people who are so well dressed. And in the audience, there were people like that. And when we gave the feathers to the audience, and people came and took and spread them everywhere, the first reaction was [he mimes a man in a chic suit brushing himself off], "oh, oh, what-oh!" But then, after they let that happen, they were okay to participate. It was funny to see how they changed their mood to be in the in the game.

CLARK: Some of them are willing participants and some are just happen to be there. Which is very different from a theatre audience, which comes prepared to be an audience. With street theatre, people are not there for a spectacle. They're there to walk the streets and do something else. Right?

HEMERY: Right, and in street theatre it's a different context, not on a stage.

COLLIN: It's important. When you go in a theatre to see a show, well, there is a special place for that. Sometimes you find actors in the audience. But when you are in the streets? Well, the day after that, you can walk and remember that place. That was not the same place; that was a special one. Since that was really different, maybe the things around you can be different. It's like something you open, it's a door open to your imagination.

BWW: So it helps you see the world around you in a different context, once it's been changed by the performance.

HEMERY: Yes, that is a privilege of the performance.

BWW: Do you find that American and European audiences interact with you differently? Or do you find that they're very similar?

COLLIN: We don't have enough experience in the US to say. Within Europe, you can find a lot of difference in reaction. German people think they don't have to move; there is the show, they are there. So they don't need to move. It doesn't mean they don't want to move. They just don't understand why. And Spanish people are used to reacting quickly, and so on. So that's quite different. Some people will participate more, and some less. The main difference I noticed was historical.

When we went to Poland in the early 1990s, after the fall of the Communist Polish United Workers' Party, Poland had opened to different events and different shows, and so we had the opportunity to perform there. People went crazy. We touched on what that means, to get the possibility, the opportunity of being in the street, doing whatever you want. If you want to dance, you can. Well, that was really important. Thinking about that, I've got goosebumps. That was really great.

BWW: It must have been very cathartic for them to be able to experience something on that scale.

HEMERY: Yeah. Really good experience.

BWW: Can you tell us about this current show that you're bringing to Artpark, and how it interacts with the story of Leonardo da Vinci? It's presented as a sort of conversation between da Vinci and his disciple, Salaí.

COLLIN: Salaí means "Little Devil." We had to go our own way in in the story of Leonardo da Vinci, because it has so many different aspects. We had to choose, and it was very interesting to find someone close to him able to ask about details, and giving to the audience a way to understand how it actually worked between his genius and his workshop.

HEMERY: He and the puppet of Leonardo, a giant flying head, talk a little bit. We say Salaí is like a comedian on the stage, which allows him a natural proximity with the audience. He's the intermediary between the public and Leonardo. Leonardo wasn't a specialist in one thing; he knew a lot about a lot of different things. For example, he knew the anatomy of the heart, but also for drawing. So, he applied the knowledge to different jobs. With anatomy, he would dissect a cadaver and see the musculature, and from there he would be able to use that to draw the detail of someone's face. He would study the sky and then he would be able to draw the fog.

The word that comes to mind when you think of Leonardo is inspirations; he's inspired by things. So that's the connection between this story him. It's inspiration. His greatest desire, that he was never able to achieve, was to fly. So here, we fly with him. He was inspired by air and the Plasticiens Volants are flying artists, so we thought to connect the two and sculpt the air for Leonardo.

BWW: So in a way you're granting him his greatest wish. He's now flying in the sky.

HEMERY: His memory traverses different times, through air. it's fascinating because he didn't have one specialization. Today the same age, we have, we know one specialized thing, and then everything else is forgotten. That's the fascination.

CLARK: Just like your art.

BWW: I guess we all have kind of a fascination with the concept of a "Renaissance Man: who dabbles in all sorts of different things. The more things we know about and can bring together, the more we can see how different fields and ideas are interconnected.

CLARK: It's exactly what we were just experiencing in your workshop with our Artpark Devised Theatre Institute; students were looking at the background of street theatre as an art form. We looked at the history of the company, we looked at your aesthetic and practices of visual art using ink versus paints, using various materials, approaching things aesthetically. And then we talked about science, we're talking about technology of helium. You were very knowledgeable about that science and why. We looked at the machinery that's involved in mechanisms and how to activate inflation. It was a conversation on all the various areas, the mechanical, aesthetic, the historic, and how all of that intertwines all in one experience, so to me it's like the epitome of what's interdisciplinary.

BWW: And you're using his disciple as the audience's way in to some of these large creative ideas and concepts, so that we have both big ideas floating above us, but also a very human face to those ideas that we can relate to at the same time.

COLLIN: That's important. If we look only at what Leonardo da Vinci left us in writing, all you see everywhere is genius. That man was a genius from the first thing in the morning. So we only have sentences from him, which are very high, very intelligent, very clever. We need someone who talks like everybody to say things, basic things, you know? Because we don't know how Leonardo da Vinci was speaking when he was not giving ideas for the higher spirits. And so we need someone to talk to everybody and say, well, that workshop is a mess! I don't have money and how are we going to deal with that, and-now you've stopped that painting, but we need money!

Because you know Leonardo left a lot of paintings and sculptures without finishing them. Many projects he'd begin, and then-"Oh, that's boring!" Because he loved ideas and searching, and that was more interesting than the commissioned painting, but many people were waiting for that. In that era, nobody, no painter or sculptor, was able to do his job if it was not at the command of someone. "Well, I need the painting of my wife; I need the painting of me!"

HEMERY: All of the words that we use in our show from Leonardo are words of his that were in his writings, and Salaí translates a little bit and brings it down to more a level that we can understand.

BWW: You've called the show "Dreams and Nightmares." How do you juxtapose the dream versus the nightmare? Is it is it possible to have a dream without a nightmare, or are they two sides of the same coin?

COLLIN: It comes from the fact that Leonardo da Vinci was a pacifist, and the ones who came to him to commission different paintings and sculptures and so on, were also the people who made war. There is a story we don't use, but it's a story of a huge sculpture, which Leonardo was working on with bronze. He was thinking and finding a new technical way to pour bronze in huge volume, and when he was able to do it, because of the war, all the bronze went to make weapons. The period was really rich for all the artistic possibilities because Italy was also very rich. That was an artistic opportunity, but at the same time that was also always a place for war and invasion.

HEMERY: So creation could be a nightmare. There's a part of the show called The Battle of Anghiari. And one of the paintings of Leonardo was taken and disappeared during this battle. We're working with two paintings that explain something of the nightmare.

COLLIN: The project was to make a grand fresco, 20 metres by 6 metres high. When he was painting he tried two methods of painting. And by the time he could finish painting it evaporated. It would dry out. Michelangelo had the same problem, he wasn't able to finish, either.

HEMERY: There's another painting that inspired us. There was one with horses in battle, and they're all distorted and grimacing, ugly faces tortured, and it inspired us to create these three flying horses.

COLLIN: That painting was the central part of all the huge projects of Leonardo for that wall. He made a draft on wood first, and the central part of that was The Battle of Anghiari.

BWW: So you're working with that central image of those three horses.

HEMERY: Yes. During the show, at the end of the battle of our puppets, we try to recreate the picture. After the battle, there is the calm, the serenity in the arts.

BWW: How did the idea for the show come about?

HEMERY: We did a show for the commemoration of Leonardo in Florence and the founder had already created the flying machine before we knew we were going to use it; we created it for another show. And we used it here.

COLLIN: From Florence, we said we need to make this a story based on Leonardo; it's too interesting. Based on his passion with air and all the puppets, from there the idea started to turn and they created the show. Compared to PEARL and BIG BANG, which have been performed many times, this was created just before the start of COVID. So we're still at the beginning of the future for this show.

BWW: Can you tell us a little bit about how do you create these beautiful inflatable sculptures? What's the process?

COLLIN: At the beginning, we have an idea of the shape, what we'd love to do. So we have the idea, maybe we have some drawings and we make a small model. And then when we like it, we link with the computer, which can record all the points we think are useful for the plan. We have a program to make the pattern, which we then print on a scale of one. If we have something which is about 18 metres long, maybe we have some pieces which are 10 metres long. And we have in our factory, which is named the "Freedom Factory," we have tables about 16 metres long to unroll. We put the fabric down and then because we can see through the fabric we draw on it. Then we cut it and then we give it to the sewers.

After we have our volume, we then put on the ropes, and the placement of the ropes is really important to get the balance between the front or the rear, not too high not too low, we have to manage to find a good balance. Then, we install the fan which is going to inflate it, because we choose that way of adding volume which is always blowing air, which keeps it under a low pressure. Inside, we have the balloons with helium which are there to make it fly. So, when it's done, we paint it. We have a special place for that. It's a room about 16x16 metres square, 400 metres square, and eight metres high. And here our actual artistic director paints it.

BWW: That sounds very much like Leonardo; you're using a number of scientific principles and artistic principles together in one.

COLLIN: We try to finish our projects. Yes. But we are not sure to be in a museum in five centuries.

BWW: Well, you never know. Is there anything else you're currently working on?

COLLIN: We have a great project working with the people here about one of the stories of creation from in the local Native cultures.

CLARK: The Haudenosaunee. The core creative team are staying for a four week long residency after the show and they are going to conceive of, with our help, a new show based on a Haudenosaunee creation story. We have invited collaborators from the local Senecas and especially with Tuscaroras to collaborate with us on their story. Part of it is the story of Sky Woman. It's a very long story; it can be told over three days, but the essential part of it is the Sky Woman who gradually falls from the sky until what now is Earth, which we know as North America, but which is called Turtle Island because it was a turtle that picked her up and carried onto the water. So her fall from the sky eventually down to earth is an essential part of the creation myth of the Haudenosaunee, and we're going to focus on that part of it and also explore others.

This is hopefully going to be a show that is co-commissioned. It's initiated by Artpark. We are also now partnering with Rochester Fringe Festival, and will hopefully work with others. We are gearing up for a 2024 premiere. Right now, we're in the very beginning stages. So the Plasticiens Volants are just getting to know our Native American culture here and we will see what happens.

BWW: We look forward to the show to come in two days, and we look forward to the show to come in two years!

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