Dossier - Key Performance

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.