Working collectively as L\u2019eau du bain for over fifteen years, lighting designer Nancy Bussi\u00e8res, director Anne-Marie Ouellet, and sound designer Thomas Sinou have dedicated themselves to creating works on the fringes of theatricality, giving life to worlds that impose a suspension of the gaze. The trio\u2019s approach is rooted in their sensitive dramaturgy, supported by an unusual synergy of invented devices that combine sound sculpture, lighting design, and performance. The immersive nature of their creations, from installations to stage sets, is particularly evident in their use of so-called natural<\/em> and often unpredictable, changeable materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smoke, a volatile and unstable element of variable density, has become a language in and of itself in a recent cycle devoted to loss and disorientation. In the diptych White Out<\/em> and La chambre des enfants<\/em> (2022), as well as in De glace<\/em> (2024), streams of luminous mist blur perceptions of familiar spaces: a child\u2019s bedroom, a forest, a seaside scene\u2026 The processing and transmission of live sounds through headphones or speakers supports the unfolding of liminal landscapes, where interior and exterior, childhood and adulthood, the living and the dead, as well as dreams and other levels of reality coexist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In White Out<\/em>, a room in a small seaside hotel, its bed creaking to the rhythm of nightmares, becomes the epicentre of a devastating storm. A symptom of an elusive disappearance, smoke unfurls in successive waves, reducing visibility in the auditorium to almost zero during the first ten minutes of the performance. Accompanied by low-frequency sounds that make the spectators\u2019 bodies vibrate, this opening invites the audience to penetrate the fog, to project their own vertigo and insecurities into the gloom, thus completing a piece in which the artists have deliberately left room for others. In this way, L\u2019eau du bain\u2019s creations invite audiences to navigate diverse spaces and points of passage where the imagination always runs free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated by Louise Ashcroft<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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