Boxing

Theme: shows & video games.

Out of the blue, my favourite sport comes to the forefront: boxing.
No, I don’t plan to schedule any boxing matches.
– yes, I hadn’t thought about it before writing this.
finally…. it’s a question to consider: in the kind of sport that makes a room scream with joy and terror, I don’t know any better.
yes, I’m totally in bad faith.

As usual, I’m sorry, I’m not class enough, but, frankly, I don’t care. Boxing, as a general programming theme, is exactly what we need to surprise the audience and to weave links between shows and video games.
One of these days I’ll tell you about an adorable and just crazy choreographer, one of the first to follow me in the idea of Altair, who will certainly be a headliner on this theme.

Are you thinking I can’t put on anything but a boxing show?

Let’s not joke, that’s exactly where we can get into literature.
American literature on the subject is a gold mine.

Remaining classical – I’m a girl of a wild classicism, that’s normal, I’m French – the day I program this theme, I demand, I order, I want to see at least two adapted stories on the stage.

The first is Jack London’s : The Game.

It’s a horrible story – it’s perfect.
Do you remember it? It’s about a very young man, Joe Fleming, who does everything he can to make a little money and who found boxing fights to increase his income.
But it’s not the pretty, classy boxing of the contemporary halls, no – it’s the betting fights, the hidden rooms, the rigged games, the drunks, the gamblers, it’s the boxing that really hurts.
Joe is in love. He agreed to quit for the love of his life. And it will all come down to his last fight before he hangs up his gloves on the eve of his wedding.

It’s Jack London writing, you can be sure we’re all going to cry from the beginning to the end. This man would make stones cry – he has a way of touching right that is absolutely unbelievable. We will leave the room completely stunned, just as if we had been in the ring ourselves.
London was a boxer – he wrote several stories on this theme – at worst the worst, or at best the best, we associate the adaptation of The Game with the adaptation of The Abyssal Brute. I haven’t seen a movie adaptation of The Game – whereas for The Abyssal Brute, there has been one. So, you might as well choose the story that stayed “fresh” first. No ?

There must also be stories by James Mac Cain on the subject. He’s an author I love.
But I have to admit that the other story I would love to see is Tennesse Williams’ The One-Arm . He tells the story of the aftermath. What do you do when you can’t do anything anymore? It’s true, it’s the story of a fall, of an abyss that keeps opening up in the footsteps of the character, it’s totally dark and cynical – and so it’s perfectly suited to a staging.

And here I have at least two very big plays on my boxing theme.

I have at least one dance show and some circus shows.
I would miss the music – but for music it’s so great to invite contemporary composers.
Can you imagine that?
We not only commission the piece to be adapted, but also the full score – and we play the full score “alone” – which will allow these totally brilliant musicians to have for once the pleasure of having their work put forward, complete and not cut for scenographic reasons.
And as a result, instead of having music coming out of the back of our cupboards, we will have on stage fresh music coming from the brains of the musicians of our time.
I vote for it.

Do I need to talk about video games now?

Everyone knows that fighting is a great part of these games.
And then, frankly, when Cyberpunk 2077 makes a reminder of boxing in its own game, I’m not going to hesitate to make the connection.

And for the younger ones – who are too young to have experienced this monumental game – we will have to think about making available, in the Altair gaming rooms – in Altair Twin – this completely hallucinating boxing fight that the old ones experienced while playing MediEvil 2.

Do you remember? You’re up against a Frankenstein-like monster, and every time he hits you, you lose a piece of you: one arm, the other arm, one leg, the other leg – and with every round, that piece is stolen by crazy little teddy bears, and you’re there running around the ring, trying to find your legs or arms.
And if you don’t succeed (yes – yes – I’m writing from experience, yes I didn’t succeed with this trick the first time, largely not) so, if you can’t get your legs or arms back, you’re there, facing the monster, at his stomach level, jumping on a bone in your spine and you give the most pathetic headbutts of your life.

This fight, on the entertainment side, is unforgettable – and it’s not a question of technology: it’s ancient, it’s true, but the idea of the game, its gameplay, can only excite the younger ones.

And there again, I reach my goal: they enter the theatre – they play – they watch artists talk about fighting… anyway. I have adventure and epic.
I have three months’ worth of digitized movements that go too well for virtual experiments and in-game adaptations.

Why on earth would I dream of a theme about yellow flowers? I have boxing, it’s better.

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