Sophie Moreau has transformed traditional writing workshops using fifteen or so customised typewriters, including a memory-sewing machine, fakir machine, retro machine, lottery machine, joke machine, rose-tinted spectacle machine and more. Her work concentrates on these “typewriter” objects whose appearance, keyboard or user instructions have been modified, which makes for some absurd surprises for participants. In this unique typewriting adventure, our typewriting clowns Madame Sophie and Madame Solange welcome visitors and show them the ropes in this unusual writing workshop where anyone can type a letter, word, sentence or whole book, with games and surprises around every corner. It is an original and sensitive sideshow for the whole family.
This writing workshop has plenty of tricks up its sleeve to engage people with the act of writing. By using typewriters, now rendered obsolete in our digital age, Sophie Moreau has broken down constraints to create a world of fun and absurdity. Fifteen “typewriters” (the oldest dating back to 1930) have been customised, cobbled together, refitted and modified to create remarkable practices and one-of-a-kind games around the act of typewriting. There is a fakir machine, ultra-resistant machine, retro machine, memory-sewing machine, joke machine, rose-tinted spectacle machine and one machine missing the letter “a”, in tribute to Georges Perec’s book A Void.
These off-the-wall objects are lined up on a table and can be used intuitively. Like playing a game, spectators are free to type a letter, word, sentence or whole book, with surprises hiding around every corner. The typewriting clowns Madame Sophie (Sophie Moreau) and her assistant Madame Solange (Ameline Bernard) present the objects, perform readings and help participants to type in this unusual, new breed of workshops. You’ll need all ten fingers for this participatory typewriting adventure, offering an unhinged, literary and sensitive experience for the whole family. It will run several times a day at Les Tombées de la Nuit, to the rhythm of the typewriters.
BIOGRAPHY
At a festival in 2012, Sophie Moreau discovered the appeal of old typewriters and the possibilities they present for writing. She had the idea of presenting this concept in her writing workshops, explaining that, “when faced with a blank page, people often freeze and don’t know what to write. But the fun and quirky nature of a typewriter nowadays gives them the confidence they need to type and pour out their hearts, even if it’s just for fun.” After collecting and customising around fifteen typewriters (including one antique from 1930), she embarked on the Les Machines De Sophie adventure, adding a theatrical and staged component after meeting Ameline Bernard. Since then, Madame Sophie and her assistant Madame Solange have been travelling book festivals and libraries across the South of France with their new take on typewriters in a successful writing workshop and original typing adventure.
DISTRIBUTION
Design and performance : Sophie Moreau and Ameline Bernard.
