Unrehearsed Beauty /
Le Génie des autres

2002

A performance in the form of a rock band. An attempt to turn the theatre into a public forum for the expression of political and personal ideas. An opportunity to find out whether it is possible for us, over the course of an hour, to form some sort of contingent, temporary community with the audience. Blurring the line between performer and spectator since everyone present is given an opportunity to speak.

This performance is difficult to describe. The cast members of Unrehearsed Beauty / Le Génie des autres are not exactly placed in the most comfortable of positions. Asked to generate a very personal sense of human contact with whoever happens to show up while at the same time manoeuvring their way through an intricate set of performative and musical stunts, they are expected to walk the fine line between having a very high degree of ethical autonomy and having to enact well over an hour of pure entertainment.

Like many of us living in the world today, a world defined by too much or not enough work and a general environment of virtually meaningless consumer overstimulation, the performance of Unrehearsed Beauty / Le Génie des autres exists on the cusp of an overtaxed personal honesty straining for something simpler: a chance to speak quietly about the things which really matter, play some songs which make us kind of happy even if we don’t play them as well as we might, and create a small fissure in the impossible through which something negative (or even something positive) might gently emerge.

Unrehearsed Beauty / Le Génie des autres is a potent mixture of intense moral ambivalence and a touching desire to live in a world in which one’s thoughts and feelings might actually have some genuine societal effect.

This creation is loosely based on Jacob Wren's book Unrehearsed Beauty (Coach House Books, 1998), which was translated into French as Le génie des autres (Quartanier, 2007).

Québec City, Carrefour international de théâtre / Les Productions Recto-Verso • Montréal, MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) • Hamburg, Kampnagel • Berlin, Prater-Volksbühne • Tokyo, Post-Mainstream Performing Arts Festival • Cardiff, Chapter Arts Centre • Glasgow, CCA • Manchester, The Green Room • Bergen, BIT Teatergarasjen • Trondheim, Teaterhuset Avant Garden • Olso, Black Box • Prague, Divadlo Archa • Halifax, Khyber Centre for the Arts • Toronto, 7A*11D International Festival of Performance Art

This show is perplexing and substantial in how it provokes reflections […] The systematic deconstruction of theatrical conventions that characterize this performance take on an extraordinary meaning; one sees oneself forced to reflect on what is called theatre; one listens to people tell their small stories and one realizes that they are fascinating in their simplicity. […] They really are beautiful, these others of which one knows nothing […] Unrehearsed Beauty / Le Génie des autres performs a serious housecleaning on the functions and the expected roles of actor and spectator and on the interaction between art and life.

– Solange Lévesque, Le Devoir, Montréal

Le Génie des autres […] is a theatre in question marks. It formulates, at the moment when our daily fatigue finally settles, a possible possession of the scenic space by the civic space.

– Jean St-Hilaire, Le Soleil, Québec

While writing on the work of Torontonian Jacob Wren and the Montreal company PME, the critic is exposed to all kinds of things, the first being made a part of the show by means of quotation. But this time, the critic is not alone, since the spectators also have a role to play in Unrehearsed Beauty / Le Génie des autres, a kind of participatory “rock ‘n’ roll cabaret” […] While trying to establish a real dialogue with the audience, PME comes ever closer to their much desired authenticity.

– Ève Dumas, La Presse, Montréal

A successful attempt to use performance to question whether we as individuals can make a difference to anything.

– The Western Mail, Cardiff

It was in December, the weather was bad and I was depressed. We were depressed, it was in Berlin, in Prater. A microphone was put in the audience, somebody proposed: you can use this microphone - o.k. here we go: my public brain starts to work, slowly, our public brain(s), start(s) to work: an opportunity. can we use it? can I use it? Economically? for my interest? for somebody else’s interest? a mission? promising areas of ‘yes and no’ were opening and closing again, pros and cons and maybes […] Something like catharsis, didn’t know that such a thing still exists.

– Email from an audience member in Berlin