Mohamed El Khatib / Patrick Boucheron Boule à neige

[Theatre]

Ridiculous, old-hat, ugly, superannuated? Often perceived as the epitome of bad taste, what about if these “gadgets” and their dancing confetti turned out to reveal much about people, adventures and different universes?

Shifting from documentary theatre to anatomic theatre, the historian Patrick Boucheron and the director Mohammed El Khatib take a painstaking look at the snow globe. In their hands, this modest, eminently kitsch object is made to reveal a myriad of stories raising questions of a more universal nature. After obtaining them from collectors everywhere, the two performers, using a mixture of tenderness and close attention to detail, make these little globes talk, and in doing so reveal a natural history of these worlds that we place under transparent domes. The snow globe is, after all, a theatre. A miniature theatre to be held in the palm of a hand and which is brim-full of different stories.