Collectif In Vitro
Julie Deliquet Catherine et Christian (fin de partie)

[Theatre]

In a provincial restaurant, the setting in which the fiction unfurls, the meal is ready to be served. A funeral day. A time for seeing off heroes. The oldest of them, Catherine and Christian, have departed and those remaining are gathered around the table. You have to carry on living, bury the dead. Little by little, the different stories emerge, and are battled out between the living: sons, daughters, legitimate or otherwise, and incomers to the family. What legacy of the past do they carry with them? Can these deaths set them free? What do the faces of this post year-2000, post baby boomer generation look like, void of the ghosts of the past and political ideals?
The piece Catherine et Christian (fin de partie) marks the end of a journey spanning different decades. It is the epilogue to the chorus-like fresco Des années 70 à nos jours - La Noce, Derniers remords avant l’oubli, Nous sommes seuls maintenant - and to a three-part family saga, brought to us by the In Vitro collective. Thirty years have gone by since the start of the adventure. The time has come for Julie Deliquet to look into the question of heritage and its transmission, and to prolong with her work as an artist in no-frills theatre. Indeed, the In Vitro collective prides itself on the use of minimal means as a way of maintaining the urgency of the present moment in their work, infused with the joy of improvisation. Like an unedited film sequence, the collective’s brand of theatre puts its faith in what is real as the thread for a story, and invites the spectator to join them around the work table.