LULU an operetta of circumstance

LULU

The principal sources for the project are Wedekind's plays and Pabst's film, whose texts and images serve as references, supports and inspirations for the songs and stage actions. We are more interested however in the mental space that Lulu and her partners represent than by the original story line. Working with the material of Lulu today requires that we reposition ourselves, less in regards to the legend of the « femme fatale », and more in terms of the question of desire.

LULU is a love duet, sung and danced by a woman and a man (the Others). In effect, Mark Tompkins sings all the other voices (Schön, Alwa, Schligoch and Jack the Ripper. By reducing the protagonists to a woman and a man, we create a symbolic space, by multiplying their images with video, we fabricate « the Lulu labyrinth ».

In the center, the constantly changing character of Lulu, heroine of her desire's passion, which she lives until the end, until her loss. Around her, « the Others » : hers, ours, the people of our pulsions, suffering for love, and who do not know how to love or be loved. We, spectators of our own intimate Lulu, inconsolable voyeurs of the other's desire, witnesses to the spectacle of a woman who goes to her destiny's end.

« We can all still become crazy », writes Wedekind. And that is exactly what it is about. Crazy from the desire that holds us and makes us live so feverishly, so tragically. Crazy from the desire to live, of course, but above all the phenomenal desire searching tirelessly for love. Wanting to be loved even at the risk of life ! This is the drama of Lulu and of those whom she attracts into her irresistable passion. Because « she cannot live from love since it is her life that is love ». So Lulu burns, and it is this fire, the flow of this tragedy-monster