Document type : article published in Reporterre
Author: Emilie Massemin
Preview:Theatre director Aurore Fattier is inviting agricultural high school students to reflect on their relationship with animals. Her show will create a dialogue between their words and philosophical and literary works. (...)
The show's objectiveis to document as closely as possible the relationships between young people in Normandy and the animals in their lives. The small troupe has previously held workshops with the agricultural schools of Thury-Harcourt and La Cambe. During these residencies, the artist has run a practical series of interviews and workshops of the kind already used in the first part of her show, which concerned the tracking of wild animals and was created in February and March 2024 in the Grand Est region of France. (...)
The final part will bring the students' contributions into dialogue with a group of philosophical texts, some of which are aimed at children, on the links that bind us to other species (...)
"These questions lie at the heart of our educational practices," says the teacher, " because our pupils find themselves caught up in a paradox: they are faced with the deaths of animals while having a very sensitive relationship with both the animals and nature in general." (...)
It remains difficult for students to deal with this ethical issue. "All the same, there are a lot of cows who get close to us. I remember a little calf that came to see me as soon as I entered the building and followed me everywhere," says Chloé, a second year student of general studies and technology, who comes from a farming family and would like to become a mixed arable-livestock farmer. (...)
The show, which premieres on March 28 at 8:30 p.m. in Noues de Sienne (Calvados) and will tour the Department until the end of June, may help to shed some light on this paradox.
