To question our society, Michel Schweizer stages in Bleib! a psychiatrist, a philosopher and a pack of Belgian sheepdogs. Haunting.

Michel Schweizer, artistic director of his small company, La Coma, is a man of images in his way: on the stage background a homemade slogan is projected: “Prosperity-Security-Partnership”. We are in the swing of things. Bleib! only deals with this, the new and disturbing alienation of the enslaved human being to the “big domination project of the free market”. The signs are undeniable on the stage of Espace Malraux in Chambéry, long term support of the company: some people wear t-shirts with prints that read “lure” or “providential tutor”, others wear jackets with their initials. JPL or DRD. They are Jean-Pierre Lebrun, psychiatrist and Dany Robert Dufour, philosopher. Schweizer took them on an adventure, a live performance that makes us think without overlooking the classical tricks of theater, from lights to entries and exits from the stage. Lebrun and Dufour are not alone, a small pack of Belgian sheepdogs led by their trainer cross the mental landscape, creating an extra tension – the person that has never looked in the eyes these watchdogs cannot understand what we are talking about! Our duo calls out to each other about the egotistical society in which we live.

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Michel Schweizer never uses the active extras against their will: he moves towards them and enriches his vocabulary. He directs the actors very carefully, as high as the ambitions of the unidentified creation in the current horizon. (…) Bleib! is not desperate, just a little uneasy. But as the last projection says: “Our dreams are a future.”

Philippe Noisette