Still Travellers (Voyageurs Immobiles)

In 1995, when I created “Still Travelers,” I focused on the voyage of a character walking through his own inner landscapes and coming face to face with himself.
And then it happened that an uncontrollable skid led me down a path where the odyssey of a single character progressively turned into the odyssey of a group, and then that of humanity passing through time, space, with its obsessions, struggles, conflicts, disgraces, icons, terrors, fascinations, dreams and denials…
Striking images as they suggest to us a wide range of paths, trips across oceans and deserts, sometimes of Biblical dimensions, with a derisory glance and a sort of humor which keeps us from sinking into despair.
From 1996 to 1997, this Voyageurs Immobiles [Still Travelers] was to travel all over the world. In hindsight, the topic seems to be even more contemporary, a topic that provokes me, calls out to me, and encourages me to explore it even more, to develop it by extending particular leads, by changing some scenes beyond oceans, beyond deserts…

My dream is much like an utopia. I am firmly convinced that we shall not attain peace between people, nations or social groups until we make peace with ourselves. This is the end I am pursuing in my stagings which is probably a bit too naïve. There is a political subtext present in Still Travellers. I am speaking about the crisis, about the triumph of avidity, about the collapse of the utopias and national identities, about wearing yashmaks… But least of all I should want to lose my poetic vigor.

One of the most beautiful creations of Philippe Gent.

Come, and may your eyes be closed and may your feelings be awakening. And don’t take your time to plunge into Philippe Genty’s sixth creation.
There are eight characters on stage, eight wayfarers having set up on an Odyssey through time and space and crossed all the physical borders. Eight motionless travelers engaged in an endless sequence of incessantly changing circumstances. They are akin to sensations, the pulsating states of the soul that continuously pass through our hearts.
Philippe Genty stays within the bounds of his world that he has traveled about many times in the course of his countless tours. But there exists another world that invariably remains in the focus of his creative quests – the world of dreams… The productions, such as Still Travelers derive their vigor and universality from the acute awareness that inherent in each of us is the talent for going into raptures, for becoming amazed, for dreaming and doing it like no one else can do.