Dossier - Key Performance

Gisèle Vienne _ DACM
Production and distribution :
Key Performance, Sankt Eriksgatan 84, 11362 Stockholm (SE)
Koen Vanhove T +46 760 494 293
koen@keyperformance.se / www.keyperformance.se
General management & management of the productions :
Bureau Cassiopée
211 rue Saint Maur 75010 Paris
Tel + 33 (0)1 46 33 37 68 – Email bureau.cassiopee@free.fr

Photo Alain Monot

JERK
Solo performance for a puppeteer
From a novel of Dennis Cooper
Directed by Gisèle Vienne
Dramaturgy : Dennis Cooper
Music : Peter Rehberg (original music) and El Mundo Frio of Corrupted
Lights : Patrick Riou
Performed by and created in collaboration with : Jonathan Capdevielle
Recorded voices : Dennis Cooper and Paul P
Stylisme : Stephen O’Malley and Jean-Luc Verna
Puppets : Gisèle Vienne and Dorothéa Vienne Pollak
Make-up : Jean-Luc Verna and Rebecca Flores
Costumes : Dorothéa Vienne Polak, Marino Marchand and Babeth Martin
Ventriloquism teaching : Michel Dejeneffe
With the technical team of the Quartz – Scène nationale de Brest :
Technical direction : Nicolas Minssen
Text translation from American to French : Emmelene Landon
Drawings : Jean-Luc Verna, Courtesy Air de Paris
Thanks to l'Atelier de création radiophonique of France Culture, Philippe Langlois and Franck
Smith. To Sophie Bissantz for sound effects. Voices and sound effects have been recorded
for the Atelier de creation radiophonique.
Thanks to Justin Bartlett, Nayland Blake, Alcinda Carreira-Marin, Florimon, Ludovic Poulet,
Anne S - villa Arson, Thomas Scimeca, Yury Smirnov, Scott Treleaven , la galerie Air de
Paris, Tim/IRIS et Jean-Paul Vienne.
Production and distribution :
Key Performance / Koen Vanhove
General management & management of the productions :
Bureau Cassiopée / Anne-Cécile Sibué / Léonor Baudouin / Alix Sarrade / Pascale Reneau
Associate producer: DACM
With the collaboration of the Quartz - Scène nationale de Brest (Gisèle Vienne associate
artist from 2007 to 2011)
Coproduction : Le Quartz - Scène nationale de Brest, Centre Chorégraphique National de
Franche-Comté à Belfort dans le cadre de l’accueil-studio and Centro Parraga-Murcia.
With the support of Conseil Général de l’Isère, Ville de Grenoble andthe Ménagerie de Verre
in the framework of studiolab
The company DACM is supported by the Drac Rhône-Alpes / Ministère de la culture et de la
communication, Région Rhône-Alpes and Institut français for international tour.
First production : March 5, 6, 7, 8, 11 and 12 2008, Centre d'Art Passerelle - Brest, Festival
Antipodes’08 / Le Quartz – Scène nationale de Brest
www.g-v.fr

JERK
Solo performance for puppeteer
“Jerk” is an imaginary reconstruction – strange, poetic, funny and somber – of the
crimes perpetrated by American serial killer Dean Corll who, with the help of teenagers David
Brooks and Wayne Henley, killed more than twenty boys in the state of Texas during the
mid-70s.
This show sees David Brooks serving his life sentence. In prison, he learns the art of
puppets, which somehow enables him to face up to his responsibility as partner in the
crimes. He has written a show that reconstructs the murders committed by Dean Corll, using
puppets for all the roles. He performs his show in prison for a class of psychology students
from a local university.
Due to the violence and humor of the text, there is an underlying fierceness to the
performance. The glove puppet theater is in fact the traditional form used to enact violent
illicit subjects. And “Jerk” unabashedly mingles sexuality and violence in the vein of gore
aesthetics, thus harking back to the glove puppet repertory.
The text has been staged as a solo for puppeteer, who uses glove puppets and also
acts the role of con artist.
The story, however realist it may be, seems to border on unrealism. The play’s
apparent realism stems from its linear narration, as well as from its basic true story and from
the trickster-puppeteer’s total identification with the fictive character of David Brooks.
“Jerk” is the fourth play that were produced in collaboration with the American writer
Dennis Cooper: “I Apologize” (2004), “Une belle enfant blonde” (2005) and
“Kindertotenlieder” (2007). In these three plays, the links between fantasy and reality are
being constantly probed, thereby altering our perception of reality. The more realist “Jerk”
puts forth a consistent linear narrative, generating the credibility that undeniably stems from
this form. And it is this undeniability that is reexamined by way of our different formal
experiences.

Also from this text
Jerk – radio play
in the framework of the Atelier de Création radiophonique
FRANCE CULTURE (17 June 2007)
The radio play “Jerk” was commissioned by Frank Smith for France Culture and the Atelier
de Création Radiophonique. It focuses on the deeply schizophrenic nature of the puppeteer’s
art by conveying the puppeteer’s mindset and viewpoint. The radio form enables this
experience to be intimately shared.
EROTICISM, DEATH AND MECHANICS
About a working experience on the connections of the human
body with the artificial body
From the body to its forms of representation
It was my passion for dolls, masks and other anthropomorphic objects that first lead me from
philosophy and visual arts to puppeteering. I was keen to examine the various meanings that
artificial bodies can assume on the stage.
Dolls represent the dramatic antagonism that happens in bodies, which represent the link
between eroticism and death. In spite of their physical presence, they can also represent the
absence, the void and disincarnate spirits. They represent the intermediate state between a
real body and a body that, although merely imagined, is an extraordinary object of desire.
The work I would like to present first derives from a confluence between two art forms, dance
and puppeteering, which both deal with the body through two different media, the body and
the object respectively. The relationship between these two media, the mutual impact
between natural and artificial bodies lead me from the dolls to the body, and from
puppeteering to choreography. The questions raised by the confrontation of these two media
seems fundamental to me regarding the way we see, perceive or judge the body, the way we
have of transforming it to idealise, dehumanise or lower it to the status of an object. The
relationship between the body and objects is mainly modified through an urban perception of
the body. Inanimate objects and machines come to life, whereas the body itself tends to
become dehumanised.
The questions raised by the study of the relationship between natural and artificial bodies
lead me in turn to issues at the core of my work, raised by the relationship between reality
and imagination, and their conjunctions.
The links between images and movements, representations and reality are also present.
I work both as a puppeteer and a visual artist, while incorporating my work in the fields of
choreography and theatre. I have been developing this work since 1999, incorporating
various art forms in it. At the core of my thinking, the flesh-and-blood body is linked to
anthropomorphic objects, but the main focus is indeed artificial bodies. They lay at the centre
of my work, in which literary, philosophical, visual, and musical works, and others, leave their
mark.
Splendid’s, Showroomdummies, Stereotypie and Tranen Veinzen.
So far, in our shows with Etienne Bideau-Rey the thematic approached have been eroticism,
death and stereotypes.
Death, under several aspects, is there in all the shows, and seems not to be dissociated of
the questions raised by the representations of the body.

Splendid’s, Stereotypie and Tranen Veinzen meet more specifically in the issue of
stereotypes. In Splendid’s, the interpreters plastically incarnate stereotypes of gangsters,
their completely modified bodies and their masks make artificial characters out of them, their
images are shown as photographs. Yet, their lack of gesture emphasizes the contradiction
between their reality and the image we have of them.
In Stereotypie, the stereotype remains a fantasy, almost inaccessible; it stays present like an
erotic stimulus and like the ending of a body and character considered like a draft. Tranen
Veinzen is like a metaphor of comedy, like a mask: under the appearance of a totally
stereotyped and happy universe, represented through a scenic space and characters, a dark
reality is being unveiled through different behaviours.
Showroomdummies and Stereotypie are concerned by the question of the influence body
representations have on our erotic imagery. In Showroomdummies, we approach a possible
realization of a fantasy, where the image of a body is viewed as an icon, even if, sometimes,
they can no longer be considered sacred, whereas in Stéréotypie, this image seems
impossible to realize and leaves a gap between reality and desire.
I Apologize (created in 2004) and Une belle enfant blonde/ A young, beautiful blonde
girl (2005)
In the continuity of these works, the diptych created in 2004 and 2005 with I Apologize and
Une belle enfant blonde/ A young, beautiful blonde girl deepens this subject, while working
on the notion of disturbing strangeness, approaching it this time by the theme of the
reconstruction of an accident, on the one hand, and the formulated fantasy of a crime, on the
other hand.
I Apologize is both the construction of a fantasy and the attempt to formulate it. Une belle
enfant blonde/ A young, beautiful blonde girl deals with the experience of a formulated
fantasy, one of a murder.
In this way, these plays permit to question ourselves on the space of freedom created by the
world of fantasies, in particular erotic fantasies, on artistic expression and their connection to
reality.
Kindertotenlieder
From intimate fantasy to collective fantasy.
My work usually centres on the relationship between natural and artificial bodies. On this
project, it will be more precisely focused on how the body is represented in traditional
Austrian iconography. This will allow me to tackle the issue of the representation of death
and the horrifying.
More particularly, I am aiming to work on the custom related to the “Perchten”, creatures who
appear mid-winter to offer protection against demons and to punish cursed souls. This
custom is still alive today and stirs in us fantasies of cruelty, innocence and expiation.
Through this work, I am keen to examine the meaning of the fantasies expressed through
this custom.
I would also like to explore the confusion that may occur between the official events where
this fantasy is expressed - such as ceremonies - and reality.
Finally, I will try to call to mind the usual locations of collective fantasies, and to examine the
importance of, and the need for, rituals and art in society, which can be defined as
“unproductive expenditure”*.
Dennis Cooper will write a text exploring these issues. If my work so far was dealing with the
relationship between truth and fiction in a personal and intimate setting, this new work
examines the confusion between fantasy and reality in a collective context.
* « La Part Maudite », George Bataille. (Editions de Minuit).

Jerk
The comfort of fake realism
The play “Jerk” divulges an intimate experience of murder, based on true story. The
play’s linear narration bolsters this sense of reassuring realism. “Jerk” incites us to question
our perception of reality. This work can be regarded in continuum with my three previous
collaborations with Dennis Cooper; it questions the linear narrative form as a sort of
comforting decoy.
Our previous plays dealt with the issue of fantasy-fulfillment, which can take place in the
realm of poetical experience, and its fundamental difference from real experience. “Jerk” is
about what happens when the fantasy actually gets lived out. In this play, a real experience
ends up shattering the characters, who ultimately embody their confusion.
The narrative’s linear form emphasizes how closely “Jerk” borders on reality. This
form lets us openly tackle the subject of acting out a criminal fantasy in the real world. The
play widens the spectrum of reality-experiences proposed in our previous projects, allowing
us to bridge the gap between fictional forms and real forms; linear structures and non-linear
structures. It thus enables us to undergo the potential realism of the poetic form and the
potential artificiality of the apparently realist form. This question lies at the narrative core of
“Jerk”, in how we experience the relationship with fantasy and reality.

BACKGROUNDS
CONCEPTION
Gisèle Vienne was born in 1976, she is a franco-austrian artist, choreographer and director.
After graduating in Philosophy, she studied at the puppeteering school Ecole Supérieure
Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette. There she met Etienne Bideau-Rey with whom she
created her first shows.
She works regularly with, amongs other, the writers Dennis Cooper and Catherine Robbe-
Grillet, the musicians Peter Rehberg and Stephen O'Malley, the light designer Patrick Riou
and the actor Jonathan Capdevielle. Since 2004, she has choreographed and directed, in
collaboration with the writer Dennis Cooper, I Apologize (2004) and Une belle enfant blonde /
A young, beautiful blond girl (2005), Kindertotenlieder (2007) and Jerk, a radioplay in the
framework of the “atelier de création radiophonique” of France Culture (June 2007), the play
Jerk (2008), This is how you will disappear (2010) and LAST SPRING: A Prequel (2011). In
2009, she created Eternelle Idole with an ice skater and an actor and the rewriting of
Showroomdummies with Etienne Bideau-Rey. Since 2005, she has been frequently
exhibiting her photographs and installations.
Gisèle Vienne, Dennis Cooper, Peter Rehberg and Jonathan Capdevielle published an audio
book in 2 versions French and English: JERK / Through Their Tears, editions DIS VOIR. She
will published a book 40 PORTRAITS 2003-2008, in collaboration with Dennis Cooper and
Pierre Dourthe (Publisher : P.O.L / release: February 16, 2012)
The current works in progress are: a solo performance with the dancer Anja Röttgerkamp, an
installation-staging LAST SPRING: (subheading in progress) and an interpretation of Le
Sacre du Printemps. For further information please visit: http:// www.g-v.fr.
TEXTS
Dennis Cooper is a novelist, poet and critic. He lives in Paris and Los Angeles. He has
published eight novels, most recently The Sluts and God Jr., both 2005. In France this books
are published by POL.
He is a contributing Editor of Art Forum Magazine and the editor of the American publishing
imprint Little House on the Bowery. His most recent book is a short fiction collection Ugly
Man, published in France by POL this past spring under the title Un type immonde.
He has written all the texts in I Apologize (2004), Kindertotenlieder (2007), Jerk (2008), This
is how you will disappear (2010), LAST SPRING : A Prequel (2011) and Une enfant blonde.
A Young Beautiful blonde girl (2006), in collaboration with Catherine Robbe-Grillet.
Gisèle Vienne, Dennis Cooper, Peter Rehberg and Jonathan Capdevielle just published, in
March 2011 an audio book in 2 versions French and English: “JERK / Through Their Tears”,
editions DIS VOIR. Furthermore in collaboration with Gisèle Vienne, he’s directing the
fanzine LAST SPRING : The Maps, in the frame of la Cooperative Fanzine created by
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Philippe Parreno and Jean-Max Colard (publication : spring
2011). For further information on his work, please visit: http://www.denniscooper.net/
MUSIC
Peter Rehberg (born in 1968) is an author and performer of electronic audio works based in
Vienna, Austria. Rehberg has given live performances both solo and collaborative throughout
Europe, North & South America, Japan and Australia. One of the first batch of artists that
turned to mobile computing devices for presentation of live audio performances in mid-
1990’s. He has collaborated live and in the studio with, amongst others, Jim O'Rourke and
Christian Fennesz (as Fenn O’Berg), Stephen O’Malley (as KTL), Gisele Vienne/DACM
(www.g-v.fr), Peterlicker, Z’EV Russell Haswell, Florian Hecker, Meg Stuart, Chris Haring,
Marcus Schmickler, Jade, SUNNO))), as well as being a member of MIMEO. He also
operates the Editions Mego (www.editionsmego.com) label since 2006, and was co-leader of

the original Mego label since 1995. His collaboration with Gisèle Vienne involved creating
the music for I Apologize (2004) and Une belle enfant blonde / A Young Beautiful Blond Girl
(2006), Kindertotenlieder (2007), This is how you will disappear (2010) and LAST SPRING :
A Prequel (2011) in collaboration with Stephen O’Malley with whom he formed the band KTL,
Jerk a radio-play, Jerk solo for a puppeteer as well as for two other shows by Etienne
Bideau- Rey & Gisèle Vienne: Showroomdummies (2001 & rewriting in 2009) and
Stereotypie (2003). He also collaborated on the music for Highway 101, a show
choreographed by Meg Stuart, and for Fremdkörper by Chris Haring, as well as taking part in
the 2nd Göteborg Art Biennale (Against All Evens) curated by CM von Hausswolff in 2003.
Gisèle Vienne, Dennis Cooper, Peter Rehberg and Jonathan Capdevielle just published, in
March 2011 an audio book in 2 versions French and English: “JERK / Through Their Tears”,
editions DIS VOIR. More informations on www.editionsmego.com
LIGHTS
Patrick Riou After several years spent studying at the Conservatoire de Musique of Toulon
and training as a string-instrument maker, he first started working in theatre with
choreographer François Verret. He discovered his passion for dance performances with
great lighting engineers such as Rémy Nicolas, Jacques Chatelet, Pierre Colomère…Those
experiences allowed him to work in various fields of choreography, and has been in charge
of lighting for Joseph Nadj, François Raffinot, Karine Saporta, Kubilaï Khan Investigation,
Catherine Berbessous and Angelin Preljocaj.
He created the light design for the performances Showroomdummies (2001 & rewriting 2009)
by Gisèle Vienne and Etienne Bideau-Rey and for Gisèle Vienne I Apologize (2004), Une
belle enfant blonde / A Young Beautiful Blond Girl (2005), Kindertotenlieder (2007), Jerk
(2008), Eternelle Idole (2009), This is how you will disappear (2010) and LAST SPRING : A
Prequel (2011).
PERFORMANCE
Jonathan Capdevielle was born in 1976 in Tarbes, France. He lives in Paris.
He studied drama in Tarbes from 1993 to 1996, Then he entered the Ecole Supérieure
Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette.
He has been involved in several performances such as: Personnage à réactiver, Pierre
Joseph (1994), Performance with Claude Wampler (1999), Mickey la Torche by Natacha de
Pontcharra, translation Taoufik Jebali, directed by Lotfi Achour, Tunis (2000), Les Parieurs
and Blonde Unfuckingbelievable Blond, directed by Marielle Pinsard (2002), Le Golem
directed by David Girondin Moab (2004), Le Dispariteur, Le groupe St Augustin, Monsieur
Villovitch, Hamlet and Marseille Massacre (atelier de création radiophonique - France
Culture), mise en scène d’Yves-Noël Genod (2004-2010).
Gisèle Vienne’s collaborator since the beginning, he has been performing in all her plays:
Jean Genet’s Splendid’s (2000), Showroomdummies (2001 and rewriting 2009) and
Stéréotypie (2003), directed by Etienne Bideau – Rey and Gisèle Vienne. And I Apologize
(2004), Une belle enfant blonde / A Young, Beautiful Blond Girl (2005), Kindertotenlieder
(2007), Jerk, a radioplay (2007,) Jerk (2008), Eternelle Idole (2009), This is how you will
disappear (2010) and LAST SPRING : A Prequel (2011), directed by Gisèle Vienne. Gisèle
Vienne, Dennis Cooper, Peter Rehberg and Jonathan Capdevielle just published, in March
2011 an audio book in 2 versions French and English: “JERK / Through Their Tears”,
editions DIS VOIR.
In September 2006, he created with Guillaume Marie We are accidents waiting to happen in
the Palais de Tokyo. In August 2007, he presented for the first time the performance-show
Jonathan Covering during the Festival Tanz im August in Berlin, starting point of his first solo
creation Adishatz / adieu, created in November 2009 at Centre Chorégraphique National de
Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon in the framework of ]Domaines[ & in January 2010 in CDC
Toulouse for the festival C'est de la Danse Contemporaine 2010. In April 2010, he is

performer for the radiophonic play of Yves-Noë Genod and Nathalie Quintane, Marseille
massacre in the framework of “ateliers de creation radiophonique de France Culture”.
Gisèle Vienne, Dennis Cooper, Peter Rehberg and Jonathan Capdevielle just published, in
March 2011 an audio book in 2 versions French and English: “JERK / Through Their Tears”,
editions DIS VOIR.
STYLISME
Jean-Luc Verna was born in Nice in 1966. Artist and performer, he develops a work based
on the body, movement, reversal of signs, and gender transgression. His drawings and
performances in the videos of Brice Dellsperger as well as his choregraphies unearth a
tangible rebellious style identified to rock and is also defined by a slightly affected precision.
His work is regularly exhibited in France and abroad (Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de
Paris ; Centre National d’Art Contemporain, Sète ; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen ; Mamco,
Genève). He is represented by the gallery Air de Paris (www.airdeparis.com)
He is teaching the anatomy’s drawing at the Villa Arson in Nice. He has performed feminine
role in several Brice Dellsperger’s videos. In 2004, he published a record with his band
“Jean-Luc Verna and his dum dum boys”. With Gisèle Vienne, he’s involved as a performer
in I Apologize (2004), Une belle enfant blonde / A young, beautiful blond girl (2005) and he
created make-up for the performance Jerk (2008).
More information available at : www.jlverna.online.fr
Stephen O’Malley (b. 1974) was born in New Hampshire, USA and raised in Seattle. He
eventually spent a decade in New York and presently is based in Paris.
As a composer and musician he has been involved in hundreds of concerts
and performances around the world over since 1993.
Stephen O'Malley was a founding member of several groups including Sunn O))) (1998),
Khanate (2000), Aethenor (2003), KTL (2005) and others. He is a frequent collaborator of
many outsider musicians in various formation, and in studio settings.
With in Gisèle Vienne plays, he has created the music for Kindertotenlieder (2007), This is
How You Will Disappear (2010) and LAST SPRING: A Prequel (2011) in collaboration with
Peter Rehberg (with whom he founded the band KTL) and also for Eternelle Idole (2009).
O’Malley has also worked together with film makers and visual artists in gallery installation
work, most notably with the American sculptor, Banks Violette on several pieces between
2005-2008.
More information about his work is available at: http://www.ideologic.org/
MAKE-UP
Rebecca Flores was born in 1976 in Grenoble. After graduating from the Ecole D’Art of
Grenoble, and a stay in London where she had training in severals fields such as : make up,
three-dimensional costumes, plaster cast, jewellery... she settled down in Bruxelles in 2004.
She has been working for several creation such as Tannhäuser de Jan Fabre, Peter Grimes
de Willy Decker, Le rois Arthus de Mattew Jocelyn, La Flûte enchantée de William Kentridge,
Pikovaya Dama de Richard Jones and Midsummer Night’s Dream de David Mcvicar. In 2007
she started a collaboration with Guillaume Marie for the movie Spinnen and then the
performances Trigger, Nancy and Asfixia (création 2011). She has been working with Claude
Schmitz in Amerika and Inner worlds. She started to work with Gisèle Vienne for the
performance Treinen Veizen (Gisele Vienne et Etienne Bideau-Rey, 2004), then for I
Apologize (2004), Une belle enfant blonde (2005), Kindertotenlieder (2007), Jerk (2008),
Eternelle idole (2009), Showroomdummies (Gisèle Vienne et Etienne Bideau-Rey (rewriting
of a piece 2009) and This is how you will disappear (2010)

PRESS
SEATTLE TIMES
Novembre 7, 2008

LES INROCKUPTIBLES
March 18-24, 2008
In this jointly-crafted fiery exploit, Gisèle Vienne and American writer Dennis Cooper have
gone off the beaten track in their stage version of Jerk. Cooper’s grisly text is based on the
true story of serial killer Dean Corll and puppeteer David Brooks, one of the teenagers who
took part in Corll’s killing spree. In prison, Brooks writes and performs a glove-puppet act.
How is one to go about enacting the bloodthirstiness of these blond and sexy teens? How to
set up a distance from the crime and its orgasmic effect in a nearly debauched America?
Vienne, who has a strong theatrical background, finds the answer in a story-within-a-story
told with remarkable restraint. No superfluous effects, just an electric bass and fanzines
handed out to the audience. And most of all, an outstanding actor, Jonathan Capdevielle,
who is one of Gisèle Vienne’s regulars. He maneuvers the puppets – superb pieces with mini
football gear and wigs – and whenever he breaks off, a sense of anguish hovers in the
audience. He also displays ventriloquist skills: Capdevielle grabs our attention for the entire
fifty minutes, and has us squirming in fear whenever he laughs. In this kingdom of
abstraction and sham, neither Vienne nor Cooper are ever being indulgent. It is purely an
autopsy of adolescent distress, dreams of fame and fear of others. In the finale, a psychology
professor’s short letter to the serial killer brings in a different angle.
Jerk might be unbearable for some. But in our eyes, theater so wisely woven with reality,
however violent, is wholesome.
LIBERATION
March 29, 2008
The Etrange Cargo festival, which offers an interdisciplinary approach to theater, had a
powerful kick-off this year with Gisèle Vienne’s Jerk. The young and talented choreographer
– she was born in 1976 and has been creating shows for over 8 years (Kindertotenlieder is
on at the Théâtre de la Bastille April 24-29) – has joined forces again with American novelist
Dennis Cooper, but this time for a solo puppeteer show. With the impressive Jonathan
Capdevielle as the serial killer who learned the art of puppets while in jail as a way to
exorcise his past, fiction and reality are constantly interlacing. Jerk shrewdly explores this
relationship between fantasy and reality. The violent text verges on gore, setting a mood of
anxiety that is only heightened by the first-person narration, delivered like matter-of-fact
testimony. Up until the amazing ventriloquist act, which in just a few minutes of unsettling
magnetism, lets us glimpse the workings of madness.

LE MONDE
March 22, 2008
The gruesome tales of “Jerk”
Jonathan Capdevielle’s performance in the show Jerk, directed by choreographer Gisèle
Vienne, is literally mind-blowing. This solo for puppeteer is an amazing feat of acting,
ventriloquism and sound effects, based on a true story’s fictionalized account by American
writer Dennis Cooper: in the mid seventies in Texas, a serial killer by the name of Dean Corll
murdered over twenty boys with the help of two teenagers.
Jerk opened the Etrange Cargo festival at the Ménagerie de Verre in Paris. Created in the
framework of France Culture’s radio-performance workshop, Jerk fuses three previous
shows about sex and death that Gisèle Vienne put on in collaboration with Dennis Cooper.
One of these shows, Kindertotenlieder, is running at the Théâtre de la Bastille April 24-29.
This fusion is an exercise in starkness, due to the remarkable selection and economy of
theatrical means. A man, a chair, and five puppets are all it takes to reenact the murders.
The scantiness of tools offsets the heaviness of the gory tales told by Jonathan Capdevielle
in a nearly realistic fashion.
While his main role is David (one of the teenagers who wound up in jail), he dons all the
other characters for a split-second, especially the young victims. His voice-alterations and
dexterous handling of the puppets, between distance and cruelty, compiles a highly
disturbing millefeuille of sounds and emotions. An astonishing multi-instrumentalist, Jonathan
Capdevielle embodies a schizo phenomenon as disproportionate as its subject.
TELERAMA
March 19 – 25, 2008
A good slap in the face. That’s what happens when Gisèle Vienne, puppet-making artist and
top-literary-trained director, gets hold of a text by her favorite author Dennis Cooper and puts
it in the hands of her wonderful pet performer Jonathan Capdevielle. Displaying his
trademark talents in acting and ventriloquism, Jonathan Capdevielle is now in the skin of
David Brooks, using puppets to reenact his crimes for a class of psychology students. The
reason he ended up in prison: he and another teenager took part in the murder of twenty
boys, masterminded by serial killer Dean Corll. Yet another master-stroke for Gisèle Vienne,
who keeps on probing society through her creepy fantasies. Jerk is a flawless kick-off for the
Etrange Cargo festival (“an interdisciplinary approach to theater”).

Photo Alain Monot

Gisèle Vienne / D.A.C.M.
Fiscal address: 11, rue Lakanal F-38 000 Grenoble
Production and distribution :
Key Performance, Sankt Eriksgatan 84, 11362 Stockholm (SE)
Koen Vanhove T +46 760 494 293
koen@keyperformance.se / www.keyperformance.se
General management & management of the productions :
Bureau Cassiopée
211 rue Saint Maur 75010 Paris
Tel + 33 (0)1 46 33 37 68 – Email bureau.cassiopee@free.fr