Threads of Dramaturgy: José Babin on Le Fil Blanc

“Listen, my love… Listen, my child… Listen to the river…”

There once was a Mountain-Woman, white as snow, who washed away the woes of the world in the waters of a wide river.

One spring day, she heard the cry of wild horses and the noise of chains forced into their noble mouths.

The next day, amidst horrible sounds of metal and fire, the War-Ogre climbed her flanks.

A tale of sound and fury, but of great love

and humanity. Seen through the unusual complicity between a mother and her daughter, this is the story of that spark of life that continues to pulsate its heart beating despite all the horrors endured by a broken land. A mythological tale that is on the side of life…


For this world is desperate for poetry.

What was the inspiration for this performance?
Inhumanity towards women in the name of wars. … every day, still today, in the papers, the web, TV, magazines. But I wanted to treat it in a poetic way, taking the side of life . 

How did you go about gathering the team for it?
José Babin: The musician and the actress playing with me are two long time artistic partners 

How did you become interested in making performance?
From teenage time. I was in a theatre group in school with a very open minded teacher. He kept us from becoming static people who think they can’t realize  their dreams.

Teachers are very important people!

Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
Yes, but I always get surprised ! I always start by a research with a theme and some matter.

For Threads, I wanted to work on a duet with Nadine (Walsh) . We worked with boxes, sand  and a violin. The musician works with us from the very first day. It is very inspiring.

This work, confronted with the news of the world, revealed the theme of the show. 

What do you hope that the audience will experience?
A moment out of time, a tale of courage and love told in a surreal way. Beauty against war.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
Using a scenic approach that proposes a fragmented dramaturgy.

Space, music, light, time and bodies are fragmented, each embodying a detail from the whole canvas.

Audience puts the pieces together and create his own drawing and feeling.

Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
I was trained as a corporeal mime and I guess I use the fundamental principles of Decroux in many was in my work.

Research is at the heart of our work.

Always putting ourselves in danger, for fear of standing still. Always pushing further to meet “the Other”. Digging out the hidden from beneath the obvious. Building a contemporary form of theatre that uses matter to express itself. We dig, we search, we do not imagine ourselves the craftsmen of a knowledge we do not possess. 

At Théâtre Incliné, we aspire to create a holistic stage where, for us, puppeteering not only animates the figures that move on the stage, but also all the links between body, sets, lighting, music — in other words, all of the materials that go into creating a theatrical image. Part of the story being written comes from within the actors, through all of the visuals and sounds that “interact with them”.

Æsthetics play a part in the story. We are never found where we are expected but rather where our research takes us. This is our brand of subversion. Steer clear of something that works if it does not serve the story. Our latest show, Threads, carries the voices of women who have been torn and broken throughout all eternity. 

A sand-coloured mythological tale gave them life, amalgamating women’s bodies with their fragmented limbs and war helmets. Our next project, La morsure de l’ange, explores the mental space of an unbalanced character. Filmed shadows appear alongside projectors, screens and scrap metal. It all comes from within us: the material arises and imposes itself on us during the research periods that precede all of our creations.


José Babin, Artistic Director

Please Add What Makes You Proud of Glasgow...

Like all good bloggers, I am getting lazy. Update the blog? No, I'd rather go onto Messenger and see if RolePlayGurl28 is hanging out. Besides, July is Vile Arts' Research and Development Month. Producer Harry and idiot Gareth are hanging out in cool bars, attending hip openings and networking. I'm the one in the beret, asking if anyone has a cigarette.

After eight months of being The Vile Arts Radio Hour, I decided that I wanted to be the Vile Arts Media Empire. As Rupert Murdoch's machine is slowly clogged up by the blood of innocent celebrity victims, my vague ideas about collectivism, collaboration and connectivity are poised to slip onto News International's Throne of Blood.

Just as soon as I can afford to get my internet put back on.

In the meantime, I am opening myself up to experience. Although I am not really keen on putting this blog into the public domain officially just yet, I am slapping down plenty of "first thought, best thought" ruminations. I am scattering the fragments of my experience across the floor like my dirty clothes, and seeing whether they can be pieced into a vision.

Subcity Radio has been a revelation. Online radio is one of those interestingly liminal media: not quite completely modern - the form preexists the shit-pump - it retains a heritage that goes back to shacks on hills, a single transmitter bleeping out the hillbilly music and anxious words of conspiracy theorists.

And blogs - well, they aren't even that contemporary. But the freedom of access attracts me, the ease of creation... no waiting, no editing. If I put the spell check on, they are reasonably readable, even after an all-night coffee binge.

Although the grammar check is very generous about my multiple clause sentences.

I know that I live in a city that is dynamic, and I love that I am going to walk out into the night in about twenty minutes to find something free and cool.

The Vile Arts has to be about documenting that.

I want to document it. I want to talk abut Noise Music with Kylie. I want to see Avenue Q through the filter of Live Art. I want to disrupt the business as usual of politics, which sees art as either a luxury or a branch of the social services.

I want to bring back the excitement I felt being in Prague. Not the excitement of cheap pints and accidentally walking in on a live sex show - I did think a cover charge was a bit steep for a local bar - but the realisation that twenty years ago, The Czech Republic had only ballet and folk dance: now it has radical dance companies and a big festival that rivals our own New Territories in scope and variety.

And I want Glasgow to remember that the "Glasgow Effect" is a buzz word for all slightly impoverished cities that want to rescue themselves through culture.

Let's hope the City Council remember that it is the artists who rescued the Merchant City, not the town planners.

So beneath this sad little entry, if you must read it, please add what makes you proud to live in Glasgow. Then I can steal your ideas and turn them into ten minutes of radio,

Stripping, Kicking, Wolves and Footballers

As morally confused as I am, two subjects are bound to get my attention in the Fringe brochure: gender politics and striptease. Fortunately, Class Stage Productions are covering both this year: Dances With Wolves, a comedy about strippers (a change from the usual tragic narrative of the innocent who finds herself slowly drawn into the underworld) and On The Bench, an everyday tale of alpha male football celebrities. Faster than that time a bouncer tried to get me to pay the bill for my female host’s champagne in that Soho club, I got in contact with writer and director Kirsty Eyre.

“On the Bench is less about gender identity and more about what Premiership Football has become in England in terms of scandal, sexism, tabloids and the world of celebrity,” Eyre corrects me. “This is football, not from a player's point of view or a fan's point of view but from Joe Public's point of view.”

My mistake was easy enough to make, I plead. Teaming up a play about football – performed by a female cast – with another about strippers – opens up various questions about the gap between expectations on young people. I’m sure I read in The Daily Mail that most preteen girls want to become lap-dancers when they grow up.

“Sure, football is pimped as a man's game and a male subject,” Eyre elaborates. “But the story has not been refigured in anyway for a female cast. It is what it is. The script would work if played by male actors but would provide a different dynamic entirely. I wrote both pieces within the last 12 months without consciously deciding to explore gender identity - it was a later decision to cast On the Bench with an all female cast.”

The connection between the thrill of illicit sexuality – despite its new found social acceptability, stripping remains very much a secret past-time for performers and audience – and premiership footballers could not, however, be more relevant. Eyre is happy to point out how circumstances have conspired to support her play. She observes that “More stories are published in the press about extra-curricular misgivings than what happens on the pitch. Take the superinjuction. Take Giggsy. I could not have wished for a more contemporary backdrop provided by today's tabloids.”

Having been disappointed in my obsession by On The Bench, if not by the ideas behind the play itself, I turned to Dancing With Wolves. Although it turns up in the Theatre Section of the Fringe, it proudly claims burlesque and cabaret credentials. “It has been workshopped and devised throughout rehearsals in order to draw upon the strengths of each actor. As we have some brilliant singers amongst our cast, tongue-in-cheek comedy cabaret was a new ingredient I added to the mixing pot,” Eyre says. “I personally find burlesque a tasteful form of entertainment which can be enjoyed by both men and women. It requires charisma, comedy and an act which enables the performer to have a connection with a male and female audience.”

Last year’s Fringe did see a backlash against burlesque: certain shows were panned for lacking that charisma and taste, and many cabaret nights marginalised burlesque, only a year after it seemed to have conquered variety. The decision of theatre companies to work with its aesthetic might be its best hope of redemption. Dances With Wolves shares burlesque’s humour, setting within a more structured context. It also uses humour to move into dangerous territory.

“Dances for Wolves is set in a sleazy strip joint rather than anything classy and burlesque. I have always found the dynamic of a stripper and her audience fascinating in terms of who is playing who and which gender is in control. I have chosen striptease as a vehicle for comedy and escapism.” Yet Eyre wants to get beneath appearances. “A woman says one thing with her body and something completely different in her mind. What would happen if you could read her mind and her thoughts as she performs a striptease? How would you feel if she was actually doing her shopping list or worrying about an E-bay bid?”

And despite the comedy, Eyre retains a clear moral perspective. “I work in a male dominated environment where city boys regularly boast about ending up in the pound in the pot place down the road. I find the concept of strip joints grotesque, uncomfortable, dated and confusing.” And while the show might end democratically, through a vote on which of the four performers does “dance for the wolves”, it is clear that the comedy does not exclude a clear expression of her original vision.