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DEVORIS CAUSA
(...) the cuisine is an exemplary metaphor of the hypocrisy of
the culture. The so called cuisine art is based on a previous
murder with all sorts of treacheries. If this bad savage, as
the civilized man is, took away an animal or plant’s life and
ate raw corpses would be pointed out as a monster able to
commit shivering bestialities. But if this bad savage cuts
into pieces the corpse, marinades it, garnishes it, cooks it
and eats it, his crime becomes culture and deserves remembrance, books, disquisitions, theory and almost a science of
the food behaviour.
There is no life without cruelty. There is no story without
pain (...)
Taken from the book ‘CONTRA LOS GOURMETS’
MANUEL VÁZQUEZ MONTALBÁN
DEVORIS CAUSA
Staff
Idea and Script: Escarlata Circus.
Direction: Jordi Aspa.
Interpreters: Jordi Aspa and Bet Miralta.
Outside glance in movement: Roberto Olivan.
Artistic accompaniment - space definition: Jani Nuutinen.
Characters Definition: Pierre Pilatte.
Illumination design: Jep Vergés.
Construction and manipulated advices: Nartxi (Txo titelles).
Scenography and equipment: Diego Polognioli.
Wardrobe: Lluc Castells.
Musical advices: Xavier Boixader.
Sound design: Audiolab.
Cuisine advice: Mariona Cuadrada.
Hangings: Esteve Ferrer.
Electric special effects: Josep Gascó.
Graphic design: Manuel Porter.
Executive production: Escarlata Circus i Marcel·lí Puig.
Design and big top construction: Claude Rigo – La Machine
Thanks to: Marduix, Pep Bou and Maria Tricas.
Space
The show is intended to be performed in front of 50 people inside our big top.
Lately we have chosen a circle shape as we believe that the shape influences the
game and the dramatic situation very much. We like confronting the public in different situations where the evidence of the space is not really clear. From the beginning, as the people get into this round big top, we play with the surprise effect until
the end, creating moments of uncertainty and confusion. The sitting down procedure won’t be the traditional one and neither the rest of the show.
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Artistic intentions
Escarlata Circus celebrates its 23st anniversary on a cake garnished with skips, feelings, balances, gravity, skills, animality, cruelty, sweetness and all the ingredients of
a beloved pantry.
We try to transform life, ours and yours, or else participate in a little phase of emotions.
Life is straight or, sometimes, tumbles. We have chosen the spiral full of strokes of
fresh air that come from afterlife, filled with balances, gravity and with all senses
skin-deep.
DEVORIS CAUSA means past, present, future and, above all, imagination that is the
most everlasting space that exists without measures and cataloguing, the freedom
space par excellence.
Show served in the privacy of a circular space where the movement’s poetry of both
characters will make us travel to a future past from the undefined past perfect of
the emotions. The manipulating of elements, in this case, vegetables, helps us to
explain a cruel and daily story with the most tasteful scents of cuisine. The experimentation in the movement and the deepening in the drama of the characters who
weep circus through the pores in the most unexpected moments, flavour the story
in a sweet-and-sour, chilly, bitter and, even, salty way. It’s neither a cookery show
nor a circus or dance or theatre performance; it is a dinner party to a daily ritual
filled in intrigue, tasting, feats, movement and drama.
The flock of birds will be hypnotized by the sharp glance of their trainer. Get in this
dump and let you go by the deep breaths of succulent odours. Taste everything
and, then, we will talk.
Nice digestion!!!
Disciplines used
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•
•
•
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Object construction and its manipulation from vegetables
Knifes and axes throwing
Theatrical game
Movement - dance
...and above all the surprise technique
Performance registered in the human-animal, circus and greengrocer-cannibal poetry of the three main characters of the story.
Nothing is easy and nothing is what it seems. Everything is pure fiction of the reality
and everything is reality in the fiction.
To provoke subtlety the collective conscious highlighting the human syndrome of
the sand castles, construct to destroy, live to die, do to undo, know to ignore. All
these concepts, we usually build them on weak and sinking bases. In the show we
play, we echo, we express them; we make existence and then disappearances, crying, laughing, playing, dancing, and challenging...a claim to freedom, to imagination...
*Show not recommended to children under 8-10 years old.
© Miquel Ruíz
© Anna Bosch
© Boris Zapata
© Anna Bosch
© Anna Bosch
© Anna Bosch
© Miquel Ruíz
Press
The great small things
AVUI, Monday, 1st December 2008
Jordi Jané
Circus review
Very often some small format performances and little pretensions can hit the spectator
sore spot rather than big productions with tens of artists and figurants…this is Escarlata
Circus case. Jordi Aspa and Bet Miralta have the peculiar ability of creating moments of
deep intimacy from initially daily situations that, sifted through the sieve of their stage
alchemy, become surprising and unknown territories. Since they became a company 20
years ago, Aspa and Miralta lead a glance ironically loving towards the circus: we just have
to remember Pell de Gallina (2000) and Llenties i Marabú (2005). Rather than closed proposals, these versatile artists open to the spectators many stimuli that spin them in a universe
located between the dream and the game. With Escarlata Circus there is no possible distance: communication is immediate because it seems that everything happens by chance
and, without realizing it, their unexpected event is also ours.
Devoris causa is Catalonian-French co production characterized by the circle: ring, stands
and scenic space, and also an argumentative circle that starts over again. When we go
out from the enclosure we will remember how we have got in because others will start
the same long voyage as we have done. Also the food circle, the cyclical relationship with
the beings (vegetables inevitably alive) that we sacrifice to survive. This is the idea, served
with resources evoke the Jean-Baptiste Thierrèe gooses and the Chaplin barber from Great
Dictator, simple evocative brushstrokes done from the personal scenic language and the
construction of characters by Jordi Aspa and Bet Miralta, characters in a great communion
with the turkey Fridu, the genuine star of the show.
DEVORIS CAUSA. Idea and Script: Escarlata Circus. Direction: Jordi Aspa. Interpretation: Jordi
Aspa, Bet Miralta and the turkey Fridu. Temporada Alta Festival, Auditori de la Mercè, 27th November.
Vegetable Cannibal ritual
EL PUNT Wednesday, 3rd Desember 2008
JOAQUIM ARMENGOL
La Mercè Auditorium. It is Sunday, five o’clock p. m. The cold freezes the spirit. We get in
with a light mood, wrapped up until the nose tip, hands in pockets. Inside, but, there is
nobody there, there is nothing. Foolishly we are looking at each others, we are unprotected. There is a whisper like a breeze. A curtain slightly opens; a woman’s head invites us
to follow her. We go in; we obey the indications and we enter in a pit dump. In front of us
a huge cook with a stonemason t-shirt, baggy trousers tied with a lace and slippers; with a
saucepan in the hand stirs a vegetable stew, the aromatic stink fills the atmosphere. A metallic arm comes out from the helmet that she wears on her head which ends up in a light
flake. The tool-lamp is a lantern in the kitchen. There is a wooden bar and a burner, lots
of cooking utensils and a light door behind; there is a little upholstery round table near, a
hanger, chairs and a radio that murmurs. We are all crowded together, stood up, the mate
and the way he looks at us fascinate us, and disgusts while he scratches the tool. We try to
imagine things. Behind us a white curtain surrounds it all. With a gesture, we are invited
to have a taste. The housekeeper shares cones full of an enigmatic pastry made of vegetables. The man fills them up, the woman delivers inquisitively. A fifty’s music peals from the
background. Suddenly the curtains raise and, behind, we see set up stands made of wood.
We go there among enigmatic smiles. When we sit down we have some teaspoons so we
can eat the hotchpotch. Could we be the show?
From the half-light, the diabolic couple starts its clumsy dance. As if they were a couple
of children reproducing circus moments in a fair, they imitate birds, they play with chairs,
throw knifes, they train and hypnotize an amazing turkey...they laugh of happiness and
enjoy themselves enormously; they show a tender and loving way of taken delight while
sadism gestures persist constantly and disturb us. In the middle of loads of vegetables,
sharps and sharpened carvings, they choose, cut, prick; mix up, do and seem a kind of...
And then wielding an enormous knife in the hand and staring at us with his eyes popping
out of his head...
Escarlata Circus has created an unprecedented show, of primary and grotesque sense of
humour, with a circus spirit and out of all classes, out of all parameters, of great originality and no absent of intentionally. Starting from object manipulation and giving them
humanity they obtain a kind of tragic illusionism where we see our unworthy condition
full of a nervous and recognized air that embarrasses the agreed limits. Both interpreters, Jordi Aspa and Bet Miralta, personify the most entertaining insanity while they instil
a disturbing worry, always between the limit that balances the joke and the alienation.
Fabulous!!
Interpreters: Escarlata Circus (Jordi Aspa and Bet Miralta).
Place and date: La Mercè Auditorium, 30th November.
Texas Killing in a Vegetarian Style
diaridegirona.cat Monday, 1st December 2008
MARTA PALLARS
Culture
It is a confirmed fact that the circus is every time less for children. The evolution to a standardized and European scene involves, every time more, the adults to go to the Circus,
considering it as another artistic discipline. In the Devoris Causa case this evolution to maturity is obvious, even necessary. From the eyes of an adult is complicated to know what a
child’s reaction would be in front of the Escarlata Circus show, winners of the last National
Circus Awards. And this thought prevails in front of the disturbing feeling that Jordi Aspa
and Bet Miralta leave when the performance is over. His character presents a kind of instability, or psychological disturbance, some psychosis flashes represented with shouts,
spasmodic movements, hilarious but quite disturbing. And she contributes with a much
sweeter contrast, until the get together in a destructive whirl that leaves a certain bad feeling. Without giving any details, we end up resembling one of the most impressive Goya
pictures where Saturn is the main character. They are like the protagonists of The Texas
Killing, but without the bloody side. There are only leaves and carrot bits. But obviously,
the boys and girls might not be so impressed by value judgments about the protagonists’
characters, or they don’t find this darkness so disturbing coming from the people that moments ago, made them laugh hilariously .Where there are no double interpretations is in
the brilliant scenography, that transformed the inside of La Mercè into an improvised big
top. The performance, when the Catalonian tour begins will be represented in ‘usual’ big
tops, has been adapted these days to create the circus magic in a closed space. Benches
disposed semi circularly and a stage as a trail approached the public to both actors. And
just in case they were not close enough, the two clowns-to designate their work in a ‘common way’-walked in many occasions around the firsts rows. We will neither reveal in this
point the reasons that could take them to visit the audience so closely. And in fact, the
five senses are very present in Devoris Causa: the smell of food just cooked, its taste, the
touch, and obviously the most habitual ones in theatre (and circus), the hearing and the
sight, they are here strongly stimulated. A proposal to enjoy intensively, but with two interpretations: the peculiar one, weird and even grotesque one, or the most innocent one,
the children’s.
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tuesday 18 august 2009
ZIRKOLIKA – REVISTA DE LAS ARTES CIRCENSESa
Special mention to the proposal that bring the catalans Escarlata Circus. With over 20 years experience in the circus, the adventure company now has a proposal that starts from
the circus, is closer to theater and visual objects. This is the starting point of Devoris Causa,
a small delicatessen in the circus that is the excuse to offer a reflection on food and human
codition, original and poetic, in which plants and knives take lives.
thursday 3 september 2009
ARTEZ
The Fira commitment also shows that offer a fresh look at the theatrical genre. That is
what makes your Devoris Causa Escarlata Circus , a small delicatessen which renews the
discourse of the circus, in a circular and intimate space built by La Machine for the occasion. In reality, the circus is just an excuse to offer a reflection on the food and the human
condition, original and poetic, full of references daring and fun, which gives life to plants
and knives through the air circulating.
tuesday 27 october 2009
La Dépêche
A show and wacky crazy.
Devoris Causa culinary madness.
... A spectacle as the circular tent that houses where things are eternally again ...
... you choking with laughter. It’s full of imagination, so very cruel and crazy.
wednesday 28 october 2009
La Dépêche du midi
“Devoris Causa” is a hilarious, crazy and a little cruel, this ritual quotdien what the kitchen.
The art of moving on the fate of an onion.
tuesday 12 january 2010
RUE DU THEATRE
...els agrada “ remoure el cor de la gent”. Ho aconsegueixen amb gairebé res. És un gènere
rar i singular, dels que en diem inclassificable..
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Devoris Causa de Escarlata Circus
Fira Lleida 2010
FERRAN BAILE
Excellent and amazing show in which through the skillful manipulation of food processing
and agricultural (vegetables and fruits), are suggested and violated concepts, behaviors
and thoughts of the human condition. The two artists-actors-manipulators-provocativecharacters invite us to a participatory contemplation can not leave us indifferent to its
many rich reading levels. A festive apparently, nothing banal called for reflection on some
of the problems that surround us (power, violence, male-female relationship, selfishness,
submission, humiliation, sadism, cruelty, self-destruction, abandonment ..). From the circus world, who have always combined with theatrical performance, Jordi Aspa (clown,
animal trainer, educator, actor) and Bet Miralta (acrobat, aerialist, actress), give a further
step in its successful creative career incorporating the puppet (his puppet master made
of vegetables) and manipulating objects within the frame-tent also surprisingly used. A
highly recommended show from 8-9 years. Do not miss it.
La Folle Histoire…
tuesday 27 april 2010
AUDE GUILLEMIN
La Marseillase
Couple picturesque and remarkable: Paulina and Frederick. Inveterate tourists with a look
of careful and realistic role playing virtually, they were able to mingle with onlookers intrigued, urging them to follow through the village.
LLENTIES I MARABÚ
A crazy story he was also allowed to live in an evening with Original tent, the soft view of
happiness of a couple of fairground totally crazy. Paulina and Frederick had given way to
Ludmilla and Alphonso who really put the spotlight on a quasi-communicative madness
sometimes taking the public to react.
DEVORIS CAUSA
Same thing for the show closing on Saturday evening when Surrealism was to go through
the Daily stuffed with intrigue boosts a couple who likes to do sing eggplants and do fly
knives. Representations with occasional winks to the circus as games of skill and acrobatics copies.
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Una experiencia íntima y con tensión
thursday 3 february 2011
PACO INESTROSA
La Opinión de Málaga
(…) Una conexión que divierte sin importunar (…)
Lo demás es pura simpatía de los intérpretes, que enseguida logran entretener con una
serie de absurdas y simpáticas demostraciones de locura. (…)
La recreación ambiental está cuidada al máximo detalle, los artilugios que intervienen en
la trama son ingeniosos y detallistas y el clima es íntimo. Y todo a pesar que, aunque el
trato es amable, no deja de resultar tenso en momentos. Siempre esa proximidad crea rigidez al espectador, que no acierta a relajarse pensando en las posibilidades que le puede
acarrear. Pero precisamente eso es lo que mantiene la atención a cada nueva sorpresa. Y
también esa misma vecindad acarrea una mayor intimidad con lo que sucede, provocando que las emociones se multipliquen. Una propuesta muy bien elaborada, y con excelente resultado.
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DEVORIS CAUSA
Co-producers
Temporada Alta Girona – from the 27th to the 30th November 2008
www.temporada-alta.net
Panorama Festival – Olot
www.pnrm.net
Excentrique Festival – Region Centre - France
www.excentrique.org
Les Tombées de la Nuit – Rennes - France
www.tdn.rennes.fr
Circa Circuits Auch - France
www.circuits-circa.com
L’Usine – Tournefeuille - France
www.lusine.net
Collaborators
Xarxa Transversal d’activitats culturals – 7 cities
www.txac.cat
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Contact:
ESCARLATA CIRCUS
MAJOR STREET, 25
08461 ST ESTEVE DE PALAUTORDERA - E
+34 93 845 19 90
[email protected]
www.escarlata.com
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