THE POSSESSED OF ILLFURTH

Some legends haunt village memories. In the autumn of 1865, in the village of Illfurth in southern Alsace, strange phenomena shook the Burner family. Joseph, aged 7, and Théobald, aged 9, were suddenly afflicted by a mysterious and spectacular illness. The religious authorities declare both children possessed by demonic spirits and proceed to exorcise them.
A native of the village, actor and director Lionel Lingelser takes this ancestral legend, told many times since he was a child, and interweaves it with his own story. Through the character of Hélios, his fictional double, and in a story that moves between adolescence and the start of his acting career, he summons his demons and sets out to encounter his "intimate wound". Alone on stage, but inhabited by a host of characters, he draws an imaginary, fantastic and poetic thread between these stories and their abysses, in a gripping voyage of initiation. A joyous journey of resilience that celebrates the power of the imagination in the face of reality, and affirms the saving power of theater.

Both trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d'Art Dramatique de Paris, Lionel Lingelser and Louis Arene create the Munstrum Théâtre in Alsace, France, in 2012. Their approach to the stage is physically committed, casual and creative, reserving an essential place for all creators. Between stagings of contemporary texts and original creations, their work expresses a singular aesthetic gesture and a poetic radicalism at the service of societal themes. Like a red thread linking each creation, the company invents "after" worlds, chaotic projections of contemporary anxieties that nonetheless always carry within them the possibility of change. The recurrent use of masks reveals strange creatures on the edge of fantasy, linking us to our deepest humanity and to our own monsters.

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