In Nanterre, where Atala is getting ready to perform its plays that twist the codes of stand-up comedy, Atala has designed a video game for artists in search of ideas. For all those exhausted artists struggling to sell their projects and searching in vain for the sesame to stardom. Salvation could come from a small arcade
installed at the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers (1) on which a video game
coaches you on how to sell your work and find inspiration.
The hero is an artist who starts the game with zero ideas and 100 dollars. It’s up to him to decide how to spend them: buying coffee for programmers, for example…” smiles the designer of this game currently under development.
Atala, who introduces us to the most ingenious algorithm
invented to find successful, 100% up-to-the-minute pitches. The algorithm randomly combines a “pop” format with a “classy” theme. This might result, for example, in ‘a soccer game about Greek philosophy’, or ‘a talk show about communication theory’.” Or, for example, a video game on the production process
production processes in 2017. Class and pop: an unstoppable recipe, a magnet for journalists… Atala is an absolute fan of the American series Seinfeld, the sitcom about “nothing” created in the late 90s. So it’s hardly surprising that he’s also an actor with the experimental tandem Grand Magasin (the French Seinfeld?), masters of the comedy of emptiness, inadequacy and inefficiency. But it was in the United States that he honed his eye for pop culture. First in Los Angeles, where he took a course in sitcom scriptwriting – “my colleague was a former ER nurse”. And in New York, playing the role of spectat X] in the bleachers of TV late shows: “The performance of the audience, who learn to sense when and at what volume to laugh, is almost a readymade of experimental theater.” This quasi-anthropological study has given rise to a number of plays in the form of instructions for use, rich in absurd data, such as Stand-up Comédie, a sometimes funny comedy, its sequel today, Stand-up Comédie 2, a comedy with even
more people, or SITuation COMédie, an experimental sitcom
also steeped in self-parody rather than sarcasm.
sarcasm. This is undoubtedly the singular charm of this artist: to know how to underline conventions without overhanging them. And, at the same time, to apply and divert “recipes”, because there are always some, whether we admit it or not.
(1) Le jeu vidéo Contemporary
Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers (92) then at Gaité lyrique (75003) in autumn.