OWNwell… Nicolas Fraiseau’s performances reflect his personality. In fact, the artist seems to be inhabited by an unquenchable inner fire. Spectators who discovered him during “La Nuit du cirque” between November 14 and 16 in Saint-André-de-Cubzac (Gironde) will not soon forget him.
His new “one man show,” titled light upin fact, it features a pyromaniac clown. Named Kroupi (“because he looks like he came straight out of a swamp,” his creator laughs), the character is fascinated by fire and is so attracted to any flame that he ends up dancing amidst the flames. For an hour, the public watched in amazement the solo ballet of the man who learned to tame fire.
It all started out a little scary. A silhouette circled the small tent where we were sitting. This villain drags behind him a heavy load that emits a scary metallic sound. He immediately fell into the middle of the audience. He was a small man with a face smeared with dried mud, whose reddened nose could easily be smeared with clotted blood.
The man seemed to be in a bad mood. Burdened with jerry cans and gas canisters which he began storing under the track, he began playing with matches, then candles, before slowly setting everything around him on fire. The lantern floating in the air, the pile of iron filings, the metal tree planted at the foot of the stand, everything that passed through his hands would burn.
First amazed by the beauty of the spectacle, then amused by the protagonist’s grin, the audience quickly becomes nervous when they remember that the clown Kroupi has piled a large amount of flammable material under his feet. Then begins the most spectacular part of the show: a form of ballet in which our man will try to extinguish the flames that appear here and there on the stage, like wisps.
A (circus) star is born!
Deeply inspired, this monologue-less work, in which the actor-acrobat is content to address the audience with short, catchy interjections, is not only funny. Deeply poetic, this performance moves people beyond what can be written. You literally feel like you’re melting!
Some will see it as an allusion to the myth of Prometheus, others as a metaphor for “the planet (which) burns (when) we look elsewhere”, Nicolas Fraiseau’s artistic proposal nevertheless evokes a feeling neglected in live performance: the public’s sense of smell. The burning smell tickled the nose. The warm feeling evoked by the burning fireplace creates a sense of closeness to this gambler with his burning gaze.
But who was the prodigy who radically reformed the world of the circus? Nicolas Fraiseau is 29 years old. The French-Italian born in Rennes spent his childhood in the Ariège in a family he describes as “hippies”. His maternal uncle taught him juggling when he was 3 years old. “He made me dream by telling me that he went on a trip at the age of 18 with a circus troupe,” recalls the boy who first dreamed of becoming a footballer.
Nicolas Fraiseau enrolled in sports studies. But his father’s death, when he was 12, turned everything upside down. This disappearance made him very angry. “I was a difficult teenager, always in conflict,” he admits humbly. Nicolas Fraiseau will find his calling during the circus course organized by Alex Naugier. “My path was visible at that moment. I was going to follow in the footsteps of my mother Michele’s brother,” he slipped.
The teenager bought a unicycle and trained for six years in all circus practices: first at the National Circus School of Châtellerault, then at the National School of Circus Arts in Rosny-sous-Bois (Enacr), finally at the National Center for Circus Arts (Cnac) in Châlons-en-Champagne (28e promotion) from which he graduated in 2016.
As a time-traveling friend of the group “Men Penchés”, he created his first solo in 2018. The show is entitled Unstable. Designed in collaboration with director Christophe Huysman, it consists of “singles-on-stage” full of elegance. We find Nicolas Fraiseau without make-up, this time, attempting to climb to the top of a Chinese pole, which is placed on a platform made of planks mounted on tires.
Just as quietlight upthis first performance (already) radiated extraordinary power and also kept the audience in suspense. Imagine! For an hour, circus performers attempted to climb poles mounted (and not mounted) on moving ground. He would fall, sometimes even hard, but still continue his ascent with a mixture of passion tinged with anger.
Metaphorical performance
The show ends when he achieves his goal: reaching the peak he has set for himself. Not without difficulty. The audience can then take a breath and leave with light hearts, relieved that the young man’s persistence has paid off, but also with a thought… What if the silent encouragement of the audience, the invisible energy poured out by everyone to support young Nicolas, in one way or another, contributed to this small miracle?
“Performing a circus means seeking total communion with the public: trying to amaze the audience and allowing yourself, during the performance, another way of dialogue with them, by evoking raw emotions born of more or less provoked incidents,” the artist philosophized when we met him at the end of one of his performances, held in autumn in Châlons-en-Champagne.
“My wish, with light upis to treat fire as a subject of spectacle and develop a new fire aesthetic. This subject has been working on me for a long time since my first attempt at the subject in 2015,” he continues while sipping a beer, wearing a fireman’s sweater. An accident (he suffered third-degree burns during school) has forced him to forget about this project.
The show light up is the result of a long maturation process (“eight years,” he estimates) that saw Nicolas Fraiseau first form his own group – the collective Sismique – and then purchase a 190-seat tent to be able to present this work. “No theater is ready to welcome creations that require fuel handling,” he explained.
Created with Léa de Truchis (dramaturgy) and with the artistic collaboration of Delphine Cottu (yesterday at the Théâtre du Soleil and now at the Munstrum Théâtre), but also Servane Guittier, Léo Lerus and Constance Bugnon for setting burlesque moments and choreography, this new show comes at the right time.
To find
Kangaroo today
Answer
“Fire is one of the elements that is at the heart of our news. We are facing it more and more frequently, whether it is fires related to global warming or protest movements taking place here and there in France and around the world,” he concluded. After a period of hibernation, the show light up will be back on tour in early January.
*For more information, see the performance calendar: here.
