The Company “Dans La Cour Des Grands” resumes its season with the creation of SCHPOUNTZ

A unique artistic concept in France: the art of the hills. Since 2008, the “Dans la cour des Grands” Company has been carrying the “Randonnées Théâtrales” project, created in 1998 by the “Scène d’esprit” Company. It has developed and evolved to its current artistic form. In this, we follow in the footsteps of Marcel Pagnol who was among the first directors to leave the movie studios to shoot his films, as early as the 1930s… Going back to the source, to the humanity and universality of the work, taking Pagnol’s characters out of theaters and books to give them back to the real life they belong to: This is the artistic approach of ultra realism that drives us.
A unique experience: living a work from the inside.

This is the concept of the “Theatre Walks”. A whole day to live the events and to feel them, not as spectators but as witnesses living the moments of joy and the moments of drama which take place throughout a day entirely scripted. It is this immersion in time and space that creates the strength of our show. Playing in the places and landscapes that inspired Marcel Pagnol’s work is the particularity of our creations. For “Le Schpountz” our choice was once again the commune of Allauch and the departmental domain of Pichauris, because it is an exceptional site in the northeast slope of Garlaban, which allows to discover a completely preserved Provence.

Le Schpountz – Creation 2014

After MARCEL PAGNOL of the French Academy

Adapted by NICOLAS DROMARD and GÉRALDINE BASCOU

Directed by NICOLAS DROMARD

The story

A young grocery clerk who is a bit of a mythomaniac, Irénée, whose head is turned by the cinema, is convinced that he will become a famous actor. He meets a film crew that tells him a cruel joke… He arrives at the studios full of hope…

Note of intent

“It is always delicate to know if the Arrow, when it leaves, will reach the center of the target or if it will strike on the 9 or the 8, what is sure it is that, when one gets ready to shoot, one puts there all its force, all its concentration, all its desire.”

Adapting Le Schpountz from the cinema to the theater is a work that I started fifteen years ago and finished five years ago. This work has already been successful in the theater, performed by several professional companies for over three years.

Today, I’m looking again at this work whose universality seems obvious to me in order to adapt it to the particular framework of the Randonnées Théâtrales that we’ve been doing for 15 years.

We have all dreamed of a greater, more beautiful, more impressive, more alive destiny. Some dreamers never take the plunge, others attempt the adventure, sometimes with success. Is it better to have regrets than remorse? The question is posed by this work by Le Schpountz. In the staging work that I am going to carry out in Randonnée Théâtrale on the Schpountz, I want to bring the spectator to ask himself this question and to feel it deep inside himself. For that I will make the spectator, first of all, an actor of this story. From the beginning of the show, he will be considered as a patron or a potential investor of the cinema. He will then become an accomplice of the joke, made by the film crew to the young Irénée who will think that his chance has finally arrived. Throughout the day, the “spectator” becomes a “spect-actor” of the story because, as a financier of the project, he will be asked to interact with the story. The world of cinema must be shown in all its human colors, beautiful or ugly, and the sympathy that emerges at first sight from the film crew, leads the spectator to a reflection on appearances and the reality of everyone.

If I, if we, succeed in this bet, viewers will have forgotten about the film “Le Schpountz” and will be perfectly aware of the whole point of Marcel Pagnol’s speech on cinema; that of money and business, that of intrigues and false pretenses, but also on its magic, suddenly possible.

By NICOLAS DROMARD – Director