La Montagne cachée

“Nobody has ever escaped from a here and now” Jorge Luis Borges

The novel Le Mont Analogue was written by the French writer René Daumal. Written between 1939 and 1944, this mythical work has left its mark upon a generation of artists, scientists, philosophers and adventurers. A novel consisting of “symbolically authentic Alpine adventures”, it brings us the story of a mystification, flight, quest, expedition, and an ascension. More precisely, it is the story of an elevation.

By means of a spoof thesis, the narrator takes it upon himself to demonstrate the existence of a mountain which is higher than all the other peaks in the world, and which constitutes a passage between the land of the living and the beyond. This unknown summit, situated on an island in the middle of the South Pacific, remains hidden, supposedly, thanks to a “curved shell” which renders it invisible to our disbelieving eyes. It is home to a community of individuals who, over the course of different centuries, have fled the madness of modernism in search of a new model for society. A group of adventurers sets off in search of it and, during the ascension, disappears into the novel’s unfinished ending.

A project aimed at creating a new show is always an adventure of sorts. It is vital to be carried along by an idea that is greater than ourselves but also to have an unshakeable belief in the project’s absolute necessity, assemble the best possible team, convince the various partners and financiers, predict the unpredictable, and keep a cool head. It also brings to mind another analogy with mountaineering: the higher the subject is, the greater the perils. After our experiences of Ubu roi, Don Quichotte, Hamlet and Pinocchio (our four most recent productions), Dramaticules now feels the urge to follow a path which is more secretive, but no less adventurous.

This is the utopia that Dramaticules is going to be exploring on the stage, that of a group of ordinary individuals who, fed up up with the dead ends and stupidity of the contemporary world, decide, one day, to head off in an extraordinary quest for hope, chimera, and a miracle: in short, a new world. They will not go to look for it on Mars but rather here, on this land which is fast becoming unliveable, and whose rescue is in the hands, perhaps, of a handful of fervent pioneers.