Under a crackle moon, in a set made of papier-mâché, a dreamy and nostalgic garden births under the thorny bushes. Welcome in Poussière de Crotte dans le Coeur d’une Diva (Dust of Turd in the Heart of a Diva) where three souls pass each other without seeing one another.

In an absurd and meaningless quest, a drag king thirsting for power attempts to master time as one masters money. Since, time is money. A vampire, the Broken-Hearted Diva, queen of a forgotten cabaret, sings a long-lost love with a husky and mesmerizing voice. A strange gardener of time, keeper of the withered and reborn flowers, erases clocks to allow for a better flirt with the rose petals. Like in an endless dream.

In this performance blending humor, absurd and political discourse, Marlène Charpentié invites the audience to dream despite the shadow of capitalism, with this vampiric tale shaped like a fantasy cabaret.

Biography

Marlène Charpentié is a visual artist and performer, graduated from the Work-Master program at HEAD (CH) and with a Bachelor’s degree from ESADSE (FR), and is based in Geneva. They develop dreamlike and humorous worlds by blending genres and references. Their performative practice focuses on staging clownish and burlesque characters. They imagine these characters through illogical and unexpected associations, linking, for example, striptease and the grotesque. They animate and bring their sculptures to life, which eventually transform, guided by a playful irreverence. For their objects and scenographies, Marlène Charpentié works with reused materials or repurposed objects, transforming them into costumes, sets, and absurdly poetic artifacts.Their work is a cabaret of the strange, where grotesque characters make faces. Their preferred material is papier-mâché, which they handle with love.

Their work has been presented at Les Urbaines (Lausanne), Urgent Paradise (Lausanne), Zabriskie Point (Geneva), La Placette (Lausanne), Blacklash Festival (Zurich), Canale Milva (CH), Swiss Institute (Rome), Halle Nord (Geneva), Standart de Luxe (Lausanne), and the Centre d’Art Contemporain (Geneva). They premiered their first show, Un pied dans la merde, l’autre dans les étoiles, at Théâtre de l’Usine (Geneva).