Far right parties are on the rise throughout Europe. In the countries of Northern Europe, National Awakening—an antidemocratic, populist movement led by Martha Heiger. In Martha’s birthplace, a suicide has taken place. Leader’s visit to the peninsula for her funeral is announced. Ellen, a young teenager, sets out to assassinate the woman threatening her and her country’s future. But on the day of the funeral, the situation drastically changes…
Tristesses is a theatrical performance whose main theme is the relation between power and sadness. Borrowing the conventions of detective fiction and political comedy, Anne-Cécile Vandalem explores with humor one of the most formidable political weapons of the day: making the masses sad. Through cinematographic stage design, she shines a spotlight on the power of the media and the ways censorship functions in the open or, insidiously, in the shadow.

Statement of intent
by Anne-Cécile Vandalem

Fighting against what drives us to despair daily, in this world. 

I want to talk about sadness. I want to talk about how our bodies are disempowered daily, by the influence that other bodies — persons, things, or situations — exert on ours.

I want to talk about the tyranny of positivity: today, in Western societies, we only exist in the light of what we do. Like a theater spotlight, this positivity projects a permanent, blinding, and paralyzing glow; it overexposes the spectacle of our actions. What place is there in such a landscape for shade, sparkle (the movement back and forth between shadow and light), resistance, desire?

I want to talk about the relationship between sadness and power, because it is obvious that nowadays the greatest political weapon is to make people sad, and guilt, shame, frustration, powerlessness, hatred and despair are its byproducts.

I want to talk about emotions as motions and transformative force; when they are converted into thoughts and actions, emotions can become engines and live energy, momentum that initiate speech or action. Thus, an individual complaint can announce a collective filing of grievances. Therefore, through emotions we may also be able to transform our world.

I want to show tears as the manifestation of external signs of sadness, because they have infinite aesthetic power. I want to talk about adolescence as a vital force, power for the future; about the paradoxical unfolding of teenage bodies, in which desires are born as hopes collapse.

Finally I want to talk about the “Survival of the Fireflies” (1), about what falls and declines and yet, in the process, emits a meteoritic light apt to inform those who will come afterward about their past and help guide their future. I want to talk about any image that guarantees the transmission of experience, and in doing so guarantees the survival of “peoples destined to disappear.”

(1) G. Didi-Huberman, “Survivance des lucioles”, ed Minuit, 2009.

Anne-Cécile Vandalem. Biography

www.dasfrauleinkompanie.com