Cult.news
Autotherapie | À Marseille, un festival dans le feu du monde | Gérard Mayen | 2026Selected excerpts
Original
« Deux pièces dont on est sûr de l'importance capitale, de la singularité saillante, justement parce qu'elles se saisissent, à même les corps, d'une puissance d'invention du monde. »
« Une tension émotionnelle, finement étourdissante, qui peuple un monde en puissance. »
« On a rarement connu des applaudissements aussi interminables (...) comme pour mieux se persuader d'avoir effectué une traversée d'absolue rareté, et immense transport émotionnel. »
English
"A work of major importance and striking singularity, distinguished by its remarkable ability to invent worlds through the body itself."
"A subtly overwhelming emotional tension that brings an entire world into being."
"Rarely has one witnessed applause so unending, as though the audience needed to convince itself it had just experienced something of absolute rarity and immense emotional transport."
Critical abstract
ReaGérard Mayen identifies Autotherapie as one of the defining works of the festival, emphasizing its singular artistic voice and its capacity to generate entire worlds from the presence of a single body. The review argues that the work exceeds autobiographical testimony, proposing instead a choreographic language where history, poetry, architecture, and movement coexist. The scenography is praised for creating a spatial framework in which memory unfolds through images rather than narrative, allowing Haiti, colonial history, and contemporary experience to resonate simultaneously.