Corps Diplomatique
Conceived and directed by Halory Goerger
Project Arts Centre
Run concluded
Rating: ****
As a genre, sci-fi is instinctively epic, which is a perfectly good reason for anyone writing for the indoor no-frills arena of contemporary theatre to shy away from the vastness of space.
But with space enjoying a ratings bump at the moment, it’s about time a play considered how human art might look to alien visual organs. After all, TV broadcasts are already going to be the first contact any intelligent life form will have with Earthlings.
In Corps Diplomatique, a troupe of amateur actors go into the heavens as cultural emissaries to bring raw human creativity to the galaxy, unconstrained by the straitjacket of cultural nous.
At a leisurely pace, five Francophones in jumpsuits undock from the International Space Station and drift off in the ‘Jean Vilar’ module, an intergenerational spacecraft and performance art space. The astronauts were chosen for their sterility, as each following generation is to be grown in vitro. None are accomplished artists, but plan to spend a lot of time practising.
The clock spins forward nine and a half years, and when it stops they’re at each other like squabbling flatmates, barely at Mars, and no closer to putting on a show. Goerger and Boulogne huff chemicals from a dangling tube and slump against the bulkheads. They’ve barely used their theatre in years.
The crew degenerates with every new generation and attempts to wipe the slate only amplifying the cultural stains which can’t be scrubbed from the ship’s computers, leading to the tragi-comedy of the final show, a quarter of a million years later.
Halory Goerger’s script is whip-smart, even in translation. His cast (and co-creators) deliver a superbly droll and deadpan bit of theatre which, gradually, brings out the audience from polite sniggering to throaty guffaws.
With sly digs at everything from Mars One to the Catholic Church, Corps Diplomatique is a brilliant satire about life, art, and procrastinating on an infinite deadline.