By Gilles Pastor
They are four.
My mother and my aunts.
Since spring 2010, I take them together to La Giettaz, in Savoie, in their native village.
One of them still lives in the village, in the family house.
Video and time are at the very heart of this performance’s writing.
From spring 2010 to summer 2011, during four seasons, a story is built around shootings with these four sisters who gave me their image and their voice to write the performance “Odette”.
For the first time in my writing process, I shoot pictures and interviews to collect material that will be the skeleton of this performance for one actor and four video pictures.
Odette, bring me my dead !
My family life was regulated by four deaths, four collapses, four breakdowns in the daily life. In the self-contained world of family, death cropped up, common and rapid death, cardiac or vascular accident.
Today, four widows, four sisters, walk through the village under a snow storm.
The cliff that dominates the village traps and oppresses.
My mother and her three sisters are linked together by the same destiny. All of them are widows.
Today, in La Giettaz, time has passed.
The name (d)ziettâ is said to mean, in French-Provençal, a place for the gathering of herds, related to the French word “gîte” (shelter). The mountainous site, both opressive and tragic, never allowed a ski resort to develop.
Odette, bring me my dead !
I shoot the wives' faces.
They talk with four voices,
Their destinies merge together, the voices get muddled, the gestures are alike.
I am the son and the nephew – one of the dead is my father.
The village slowly empties and this gathering place is today overran by young forests.
Odette, bring me my dead !
There are four wives,
Speaking is painful for these women who never told.
The severity of the faces,
Compared destiny of faces and village.
november 2010
