Performance - Les Blouses Bleues Theater Company

This play weaves together several narrative styles to tell the story of Pierre Rivière, of “that wretched and insignificant life,” that speck of humanity.

The play is inspired by one of Michel Foucault’s strangest works, in which he brings together medical and judicial records, as well as testimonies from villagers, surrounding a 19th-century crime committed by Pierre Rivière against his mother, sister, and brother— all of whom were of modest means, in a particularly violent manner—with a billhook. Foucault and a dozen scholars examine the complex relationships between power and knowledge during a specific era, within an “ordinary” social milieu. Pierre Rivière also emerges as a fascinating figure endowed with extraordinary intelligence and writing skills, which likely contributed to Foucault’s interest in this case—one that was at once trivial and extraordinary.
In what language can the intolerable be expressed?

↘︎ According to  I, Pierre Rivière, having slit the throats of my mother, my sister, and my brother…  Michel Foucault and his seminar at the Collège de France

↘︎ Narrator: Pierre Cartonnet

↘︎ In collaboration with photographer Philippe Bazin, who retraced Pierre Rivière’s route during his wanderings through Normandy