Apéro cirque at l'Académie Fratellini

One of the reasons I appreciate French contemporary circus so deeply is that they are able to tell an incredibly evocative story through simple means. The Académie Fratellini's Apéro Cirque series is a reoccurring event to present work from the school's apprentice program. Held in the school's smaller chapieteau with a three-quarter round stage and no set, the third year apprentices shared the story of a young boy named Mehdi. Mehdi likes to wear lipstick, and throughout the show he battles with his own confusion of identity as well as ostracism by his peers. Solo acts evoked various childhood emotions, while ensemble pieces showed the challenge of interacting with one's peers when not conforming to the normal social expectations.  The poetic nature of the text was reflected in the apprentices' movements, from the opening scene of Mehdi's birth to the final scene in which each apprentice carried a piece of a Mehdi puppet-- holding an item of clothing that when put together showed the fragments that compose a young child, but not the child who occupied them.  The audience is left with a final image of the tactile objects we use to represent identity, but they are hollow constructions, Mehdi's true image is left to our imagination.

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