Introduction

“Through the story of Pierre Avezard, known as Petit Pierre, a cowherd who built an enchanted world with his own two hands, Suzanne Lebeau commits herself to childhood and dreams. And we follow her. . . From this factual point of departure, Suzanne Lebeau has written a text with two voices, in which the personal story of Petit Pierre is told in parallel with the grand sweep of the century’s history. It is a magnificent text (and the director, in turn, transforms it into the carrousel by endowing it with form, movement, life), which speaks implicitly of exclusion and love, of dreams and wars, of a tiny country village and the universality of the time that passes and the time that remains.” .
Orianne Charpentier, Le Monde (France).

 
Petit Pierre was born “unfinished.” Half-blind, almost deaf and mute, he could not learn to read and write like other children. What else can he do? When he was seven years old, he was sent to a farm to ranch cows. And that, he did very well. The meadows and cowherds became his closest friends.

Petit Pierre is curious about everything he sees, especially things that move. Whether it is moving on paws, feet or wheels, Petit Pierre always stopped to look. On the farm, he saw many of moving things that he found interesting, but the most fascinating were machines that move.

One summer, Petit Pierre traveled to Paris. When he saw the Eiffel Tower sticking its head in the puffy clouds, Petit Pierre felt in awe and thought to himself, “I will build a merry-go-round as grand as the Eiffel Tower!”

Over the years, the world outside the farm has been going through most horrible times with wars, but Petit Pierre kept working on his merry merry-go-round on the farm. After 40 years of building, Petit Pierre’s masterpiece of merry-go-round was completed in spectacular grandeur. People from all over the world flocked to see this wonderful machine that awed them like the Eiffel Tower had once awed Petit Pierre. Long after Petit Pierre was no longer there to accompany the merry-go-around, it continued to spin on magnificently.

A collaboration between Canada’s Le Carrousel company and Taiwan theater professionals, Petit Pierre will be narrated in Chinese. This heartwarming story filled of imagination driven by paper puppets and live performance, Petit Pierre’s merry-go-round will share with us the power of courage and perseverance!

Creation in mandarin language in co-production with Taipei Children’s Arts Festival
Original creation in co-production with Espace Malraux/Scène nationale de Chambéry et de la Savoie, Centre culturel de Villefranche-sur-Saône, L’Yonne-en-Scène (France) and Théâtre du Vieux-Terrebonne (Quebec)
Special collaboration: Léon Avezard, Caroline Bourbonnais (La Fabuloserie), Laurent Danchin 

Writer：Suzanne Lebeau
Translator：Camille Yih-June Chia
Director：Gervais Gaudreault
Cast：Ludger Côté, Jade Pi-Yu Shih, Szu-Ni Wen
Assistant Director：Chao-chi Ma
Designers：Marie-Pierre Fleury, Dominique Gagnon, Pierre Lafontaine, Francine Martin, Nicolas Rollin
Production Manager： Dominique Gagnon
Stage Managers：Dominique Gagnon, Éric Gendron
Set and Stage Manager：Martin Jannard
Photograper：Jacques Deriol, Chen You-Wei


 The Team

More Than 30 Years of Creativity!

Through its view of childhood and art, Le Carrousel has been distinguishing itself on national and international stages for thirty years. Supported by research and creative work that pushes back the limits of the permissible and the possible, the company places at the core of its artistic approach the question : What should we say to children? and questions the place of children in the world.

This unique approach is manifested both in the wealth and rigour of Suzanne Lebeau’s writing and in the resolutely contemporary sensibility that Gervais Gaudreault brings Le Carrousel’s shows, which helps to enhance this particular point of view. Gervais Gaudreault and Suzanne Lebeau, as creative partners, have given birth to an impressive repertoire of original works that call upon the evocative power of theatre and are considered, here and abroad, to be important signposts in the history of theatre for a young audience.

Visit Le Carrousel, Compagine de théâtre at  http://www.lecarrousel.net/en/the_company.html