Ce que j’appelle oubli

By

Laurent Mauvignier

Direction

Michel Raskine

Performed by

Louis Domallain et Thomas Rortais

In a single unbroken sentence, Ce que j’appelle oubli tells of the fate of a young man who died before he had a chance to live. Michel Raskine portrays the remorseless cruelty of a barbaric act which went unnoticed.

This minor news item took place in Lyon, in December 2009. A young man walked into a supermarket. He went to the beer aisle, opened a can, and drank it. “What, or who, he was thinking about while quenching his thirst, I don’t know” ponders the narrator in Ce que j’appelle oubli, a short story by Laurent Mauvignier loosely based on this incident. “However, I am sure of one thing, and that is from the moment he walked in to the moment the security guards grabbed him, nobody could have imagined that he wouldn’t come out alive.”
Interrogation, silent blows raining down in a deserted back room, a young man aged 25 dead from suffocation. Michel Raskine portrays the circumstances of this murder – both banal and savage – in a piece performed by an actor and a percussionist: a duo that brings a dozen different characters to life on stage. A set in black, white, green, and aluminium. Bleak, white, baleful lighting… With a choreographic directing style that avoids the usual platitudes of realism, Ce que j’appelle oubli makes us feel all the bitterness of an act of violence which is deaf and blind, all the brutality of a life that is taken.