Samuel Achache Sans tambour

[Theatre]

In Sans tambour, Samuel Achache investigates the motifs of collapse and renaissance. Drawing upon Schumann’s Lieder, this fragmentary piece continues to explore, in an unhindered way, the links between theatre and music.

Sans tambour is the story of the quiet collapse of a house, together with its inhabitants. Using this situation as his starting point, Samuel Achache composes a piece using tableaux which recount different eras, from the present day to the Stone Age, and take us through the events in the lives of those present. The stage is turned into a building site in a continual state of deconstruction, made up of the strata of the past and the traces of the present. Song emerges from the ruins, and the musical instruments from the rubble. Each actor-musician attempts to reconstruct what remains of him or herself, to make do with the chaos that is left over, their misshapen recollections and subjective memory. In the company of Florent Hubert’s musical direction and a handful of his trusted collaborators, Samuel Achache returns to an infinitely musical form. He uses the Lied as the intimate, miniature basis for the exploration of the collective whole, relying upon a chorus of different voices to carry it along.