© David Wong
Le magasin
Le Magasin_ is an unusual window display frozen in time, bearing witness to a commercial system undergoing profound metamorphosis. The public/customer is invited to admire the elements that make it up: rotating displays, a mysterious flashing marquee, antique-looking pedestals and baroque curtains. Suddenly, a choreography of textures, fabrics and lighting moods unfolds before him. A hypnotic ballet of banal objects. This small commercial theater is transformed into a grandiose spectacle. In front of its last customers, Le Magasin performs its most beautiful dance, its swan song.
Faced with the explosion of online sales, often deserted shops are struggling to survive, affecting the whole life of a neighborhood in the process. The show was born of a fascination for these desolate places, with their extraordinary poetic and scenographic potential. Here, Le Magasin becomes a character. This performance, with no text or actors apart from a discreet manipulator, evokes finitude, but also resilience and rebirth.
For her first work as a creator, set designer Odile Gamache brings evocative objects to life before our very eyes. Interested by the vacant or abandoned premises of the mythical Plaza Saint-Hubert, the artist asks herself: what do the façades conceal? What does the emptiness or overflow that characterizes them reveal? After a pandemic existence in the form of short performative films presented at the Festival International du Film sur l'Art, Le Magasin was first performed on stage at OFFTA 2022. The scenographer continues her work on stage dramaturgy and offers us a remodeled version of this daring show.
Credits
Created by Odile Gamache
In coproduction with l'Homme allumette, l'Usine C, La Balsamine - Brussels, Théâtre l'Aire Libre - St-Jacques de la Lande / le joli collectif
Ideation Philippe Cyr, Odile Gamache
Direction, set design and performance Odile Gamache
Lighting Julie Basse
Music Christophe Lamarche-Ledoux
Assistant Set Designer and Stagehand Charlie Loup S. Turcot
Programming consultant Roby Provost Blanchard
Motorization design and prototyping Marco Ouellet, Éric Villeneuve
Technical Direction Guillaume Lafontaine-Moisan, Charlie Loup S. Turcot
Production and Stage Management Delphine Rochefort-Boulanger
With the support of Canada Council for the Arts, Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, Conseil des arts de Montréal, LA SERRE - arts vivants, Théâtre Prospero
Creation residencies Théâtre de la Ville de Longueuil, Théâtre Aux Écuries, Symposium artistique à LA SERRE - arts vivants in collaboration with L'Amicale, Théâtre l'Aire Libre - St-Jacques de la Lande / le joli collectif, la Balsamine - Brussels, Théâtre Prospero
Le Magasin is supported as part of the R.O.M (Residencies On the Move) network at La Balsamine - Brussels, in partnership with le joli collectif (France), Santarcangelo Festival (Italy), Le Grütli (Switzerland), Théâtre Prospero and Théâtre Periscope (Quebec). The R.O.M network is funded by the European Union as part of the Creative Europe program.
Odile Gamache
Odile Gamache works on Montreal stages as a set designer. Upon graduating from the National Theatre School of Canada in 2013, she joined forces with director Félix-Antoine Boutin and lighting designer Julie Basse to found their performing arts company Création dans la Chambre, which celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. In parallel with her company's activities, she has designed the sets for some sixty shows, including eight under the direction of Philippe Cyr, with whom she has worked closely since 2016, notably on Christine Beaulieu's documentary play J'aime Hydro and on Bluff theater's recent creation Le poids des fourmis, for which she won the Prix Françoise-Graton in 2020, and which is currently touring Europe. The scenographic play Le Magasin, which she and he have been developing since 2021, is her first work as an author.