Sturbzep - Odéon

Sturbzep Genre: Contemporary theatre / PerformanceFrom age 14 Running time: 1h20 without interval In 1934, a Scottish gynaecologist named Robert Wilson produced the famous snapshot of the Loch Ness monster. A hoax.

] « In this world of tedious adults that culture generally is, the Zerep has remained that orchestra of sick children, singing for the moon, the wolves and the dead.  » (Pacôme Thiellement)At what age does one stop believing in monsters? Did one ever believe in them?

Does one still believe? On 21 April 1934, the London Daily Mail gave its readers a black-and-white photograph: a long-necked creature emerging from the waters of a lake lost in the north of Scotland.

The image went around the world, feeding fantasies and far-fetched theories, and turned the Loch Ness monster into a legend.

Behind the lens – and at the origin of the hoax – was a certain Robert Wilson: not the illustrious theatre director, but another maker of images, a gynaecologist by trade and photomontage artist in his spare time.

Emboldened by this improbable namesake – which suddenly draws Nessie to the outskirts of the theatre – and driven by the same taste for trickery, Sophie Perez sets off in her turn for the marshes of Loch Ness, drawing the whole Zerep company in her wake.

For nearly thirty years, the director and visual artist has been fabricating a proliferating theatrical bestiary, which shatters any spirit of seriousness in favour of unbridled inventiveness, stitching together motley forms and the most dissimilar brood.

Beyond the legend of Loch Ness, it is an entire Gothic imaginary that she sets out to reawaken.

In the wake of the fabulists of the Highlands, Sturbzep is part farce and cabinet of curiosities: there collide helter-skelter archaic critters and contemporary chimeras, hideous creatures apt to ignite the imagination of the wisest, brood capable of shaking the most rational minds.