Benoît Gasnier, is bringing his directive talents back to the festival with PASTA I BASTA, the one-day hands-on theatrical-culinary adventure. Local residents, shopkeepers, and second-hand goods dealers will all come together around a banquet prepared by a dozen local participants in an open-air kitchen. Don’t bother looking for silver platters at this gathering, where a simple yet fun-filled public space will be created and shared over a plate of pasta.Over the years, we’ve come to know the quirky yet delightfully-touching theatrical creations of Benoît Gasnier (À L’ENVERS), as he infuses subtlety with participatory and multi-disciplinary forms of art that poetically play on the spectator’s senses to place them at the heart of the artistic production. This time around, working with set designer Guénolé Jézéquel, he brings us a unique one-day theatrical culinary experience organised around the creation of a pop-up kitchen and a free banquet with all the flavours of Italy. PASTA I BASTA starts out with the selection of a place, date and a few workshops for a dozen local participants.
This Sunday, the temporary crew will set up the open-air kitchen at 10 a.m., in the middle of the participating neighbourhood’s shops and second-hand goods dealers at Le Mail François Mitterrand. As balls of dough are formed, the pasta machines begin churning and dozens of kilos of tagliatelle are set out to dry, the coordinated movements will make the pasta-making process a festive ritual and a performance in itself. Four hundred guests are expected to gather from 8 p.m. They are invited to bring other food to share with their neighbours-for-a-night, and who knows, maybe even take things one step further and bring their own table. Big tables, little tables, wooden tables or plastic tables in any size, shape or colour, no matter what their ordinary use, from coffee tables to ironing tables, will all be just fine!
It’s not a restaurant with patrons. It’s a banquet meant to bring people together, to get them sharing for a while so they can get to know each other over a PASTA I BASTA meal.
This reinvention of a neighbourhood get-together is a special day which offers a basic story outline, from set-up to the preparations and arrival of the guests. Local residents, visitors and performers will come and go from front-and-centre to back-stage, from the kitchen to the tables in this little theatre of flour and pasta that quietly proves that festive fun and conviviality can be found just outside our front doors and no further than the edge of our plates.
