It starts with fire

Magali Mougel's novel begins in November 1989. In a rural setting in the Jura mountains, the author invites us to follow a gang of young people with burning desires, who go off on a tangent against a backdrop of the smell of petrol. A spark, flames, an inferno: revolt smoulders beneath the ashes. The idea of burning the city at both ends germinates in the tagged bus shelters. It starts with fire.

November 1989. The fall of the Berlin Wall. The failures of the first climate summits. A small urban centre in the Jura mountains. In this rural setting, the author invites us to follow Jean-Loup, Marina, Monette and all the others... This band of young people with burning desires goes off on a tangent against a backdrop of the smell of petrol. A spark, flames, an inferno: revolt smoulders beneath the ashes. The feeling of being smoked out... The idea of burning the city at both ends germinates in the tagged bus shelters. ‘It starts with fire’.
At this point in history, the mythology of progress was fading, utopias were unravelling and the world was faltering. The small rural community doubts, worries, confronts its differences and seeks to exorcise its fears through rituals.
Author Magali Mougel invites us to visit this not-so-distant world, a time when everything could have been turned upside down, she tells us. She paints sharp, sensitive portraits of a youth who, while failing to change the world, did change the world.
There's no freeze-frame, no despondency, but on the contrary, plenty of humanity and vibrant, incandescent questions. Anne Bisang and Camille de Pietro come together in this polyphonic show, a cross between theatre and film, to take us on a journey. A form of collective introspection on what we have been, what we could have been and what we could become and reinvent together. Immediate excitement!