Jean-Christophe Meurisse

Thomas is thirty-five years old and has decided that he will never go outside again. He lives in a caravan in a shed in the middle of the city and invites his family and his friends and neighbours round. He organises parties – Dionysian feasts. Every day Thomas celebrates his rejection of society. Merrily and furiously. Jean-Christophe Meurisse wanted to try out the use of improvisation, which is entirely how this was shot, in film. Accordingly, the film starts with an idea and has no real script. Meurisse uses this medium-length film as a means of interrogating our ability to live outside civilisation – in order to get closer to the world.

Founder and artistic director of the theatre company Les Chiens de Navarre, Jean-Christophe Meurisse has directed their collective performances since 2005. He is also a film maker interested in the possibility of accidents and awkward moments, which – as happens during rehearsals for his dramatic productions – throw the actor into a real-life situation, unprepared, with no predetermined role and without preconceived ideas.

production Ecce Films (Emmanuel Chaumet)
coproduction Le grand gardon blanc (Antoine Blesson – Claire Nollez)

Performance Day is coproduced with the Playground festival, (STUK Kunstencentrum & M-Museum Leuven), with support from the Agency for Arts and Heritage of Flanders, as part of the project "Alfred Jarry Archipelago" initiated by La Ferme du Buisson Centre for Contemporary Art in Noisiel (France), Le Quartier Centre for Contemporary Art in Quimper (France) and Museo Marino Marini in Florence (Italy). The venture is part of Piano, the Franco-Italian art exchange platform, in collaboration with M-Museum and the STUK Kunstencentrum in the framework of Playground in Leuven (Belgium).