Manuel is based on Alvaro García de Zúñiga's radio trilogy Manuel. This programme is made of many extracts of different handbooks mixed with Manuel's own manual, other texts from Alvaro García de Zúñiga and other ones chosen by him. The base material is wide and flexible allowing us to adapt each Manuel on Stage to the concrete circumstances.

The result of these performances can therefore vary a lot and take advantage of the participants and their number – up to now Manuel on Stage has been played from 2 till 23 interpreters – of the disciplines they master : acting, music, visual arts, video, the different spoken languages, (the local one always the main, though) and the special guest(s) that may join Manuel.

Since 2008, blablaLab has developped a very fructuous relationship with the French association La Sirène Tubiste : Arnaud Churin - co-director and Emanuela Pace. Together Manuel has evolved to the manual of Manuel : the Manuel on Stage performative format.

The "M" Team

Already manualized

Manuel Lasuite...

Manuel on Stage is variable in number and shape, but 12 could be an ideal number for the diversity of languages and personalities on stage.

The following performers are part of our "central core": Alínea B. Issilva, Wénic Dominique Pierre Béaruné, Arnaud Churin, Rocco Giordano, Daniel Kientzy, Millaray Lobos, Emanuela Pace, Dominique Parent, Myrto Procopiou, Guillaume Rannou, Yves Rousguisto, Leopold von Verschuer

Directors : Arnaud Churin and Alvaro García de Zúñiga

Manuel Lasuite # Time >< Space

Manuel on Stage is a "light" theater play. Performances are prepared up to some extent locally in about 8 days work.

There is no scenario, only the same number of music stands and interpreters.

Manuel will take advantage of whatever he will find. Each performance is unique.

Manuel's manual # description

We are all dressed up, as musicians in a classical orchestra. In front of each one of us is a music stand. Each one of us reads his part…

This "chorus", will try to "understand reality through books and vice versa, books through reality and vice vice through reality, reality and versa versa through books, books" (extract).

By means of a dynamic writing and often musical one the text is heard by contrast. From the handbook's gruel that sounds like a commercial advertisement emerge some shreds of meaning that begin to make themselves heard. Spectators who have seen our experiences tell us that they have entered in a sort of folly that they recognise. There is in each one of us this will to understand that is thrown against the opacity of the world. Furthermore the disposition that we use, between concert and theater play creates an open moment, without a definite formal definition.

On the course of each performance, according to the different programmes, Manuel embodies himself more and more, one of the interpreters plays him more specifically, he tries constantly to achieve the comprehension of everything, languages, objects, instructions that he should follow. He dissolves himself in this labyrinth of signs where his own biography becomes polyphonic, he dries up and ends up talking in hieroglyphs….

Alvaro García de Zúñiga with his writing, so particular, forces interpreters, spectators to invent.

We are all much more cosmopolitan then we think, we recognise languages and we walk in the forest of every sound, of every language... and sense emerges as the entanglement of sensual and sensible.

and :

Other pages in this site about Manuel :

Manuel on Stage

Already manualized

About Manuel on Stage by AGZ

Manuel is a building site. a work in progress, a jumble. by Manuel-Arnaud Churin

Manuel à la Maison de la Poésie, or Manuel of home-made poetry &

MMIX