IBSEN THE FINAL BID

Run time 70’
Language French
Director Eleni Apostolopoulou
Artistic collaborator Αlexandros Giannou
Video Daphné Hérétakis
Set design Jules Mercier
Lighting Luigi d’Aria
Music Οrestis Kalampalikis
Costume Ioannis Michos
Production coordinator Αntonis Lagarias
Cast Hélène Chalastanis, Ilios Chailly, Justine Chambon, Françoise Huget Simon Masnay,  Stavros Moiras 

  Produced by IBSEN SCOPE.                                                                                                              Supported by CENTQUATRE-PARIS                                                                                                      Mains d’Oeuvres and FSDIE Paris VIII University

In 2022, five actors are recruited to shoot a film about an imaginary takeover which took place the night before the municipal elections of 1930 in Paris. The film captures the bloody events of that day. Conceived as a pseudo documentary, the play extends those techniques, imagining a 1930 Paris equipped with television, mobile phones, and social media. In this setting, the performers step out of character and comment on how they see the issues of racism and of neo fascism ideology reflected in contemporary French politics. Ibsen the Final Bid treats events of the 20th century, but it actually works as a way of commenting on both history and the present, social memory and the media.

Inspired by Henrik Ibsen’s fundamental idea about the illusion of power in When We Dead Awaken, the Collective Strates seek to make sense of the extreme right logic and the role played by the mainstream media in constructing social consciousness. How the notion of democracy reflects today in Europe? Where do the successive social crises and states of emergency, whether political or health-related, lead us to? How does this crisis affect life in the public space, but also in the private sphere?