Ep. 60 - The Fatality of Realism (Le Beau Monde)

Gabrielle Martin chats with Arthur Amard Rémi Fortin about Le Beau Monde, coming up at the 2026 PuSh Festival!

Show Notes

Gabrielle, Arthur and Rémi discuss: 

• What questions does this show bring into focus for you, and how does that relate to your other projects?
• What is the importance of memory in Le Beau Monde?
• Is the interpretation of meaning a theme in your work, or something specific to this project?
• How do we represent a thing we used to know?
• How do you approach authorship within shared creation, and what anchors your collective language?
• What is the importance of having the right people involved in the creative process, and why do you avoid stubbornness? 
• How do you handle music in the show?
• What can you say about the creative process lab you are hosting at PuSh? What inspired this project and what do you hope will emerge from it?
• The work feels like both archaeology and prophecy. What did your process reveal to you about why we make theatre?
• Is memory the only true subject of theatre?

About Le Beau Monde

In the future, theatre no longer exists. Neither do elections, football, or kissing. Or, at least not as it used to be.

Three people stand before us—awkward, uncertain, sincere. They’ve heard rumours of these ancient rituals and are doing their best to recreate them. What emerges is both ridiculous and strangely touching: a ceremony of imitation, a eulogy for everyday life.

A collective creation initiated by actor Rémi Fortin, with polyphonic songs by Arthur Amard, Le Beau Monde resurrects our present as if it were already a ghost. Between laughter and melancholy, a contemplation: what will we leave behind for those who come next? What, if anything, is precious?

A sci-fi theatre of tenderness and absurdity, built from the debris of our daily lives.

About the Guests

The École Parallèle Imaginaire (ÉPI) is a nomadic space that invents experiences in theaters, museums, public spaces, and for territories. Playing on the boundary between reality and fiction, it works to expand our imagination and create contemporary rituals. It is directed by Simon Gauchet who is an actor, director and scenographer. 

Le Beau Monde (The Beautiful World) has been initiated by Remi Fortin who has gathered Arthur Amard, Blanche Ripoche and Simon Gauchet to create this show.

Rémi Fortin trained with the 2013 promotion of the TNS (Théâtre National de Strasbourg) drama school. Since graduating in June 2016, he has performed under the direction of Mathieu Bauer, Simon Delétang, Adèle Gascuel, Thomas Jolly, Frédéric Sonntag, Christophe Laluque, Anne Théron, Cendre Chassanne, and Olivier Martin-Salvan. He also collaborates on the radio with Blandine Masson, Chris Hocké, Laure Egoroff, and Juliette Heynemann In cinema, he has worked under the direction of Loïc Barché, Clément Schneider, Anna Luif, Arnaud Khayadjanian, Clemy Clarke, and Arnaud Simon.

Alongside his acting career, he also enjoys creating his own projects in which he performs and crafts the original idea. Without being a director himself, he offers to fellow actors to embark on a theatrical experiment together, like his first solo project, Ratschweg, a walking performance inspired by Büchner’s, Lenz, rehearsed in itinerancy with director Charlie Droesch-Du Cerceau and dramaturge Pierre Chevalier during a journey on foot through the Vosges from Strasbourg to the Théâtre du Peuple in Bussang.

From 2018 to 2021, he was an associated actor at the Théâtre Public de Montreuil. He is currently working on his next creation, La Peur (The Fear), for which Adèle Gasquel will write the script. It will be premiered in the autumn of 2025.

Arthur Amard graduated from the 27th class of La Comédie de Saint-Étienne, sponsored by Pierre Maillet. He has worked with Élise Vigier and Marcial Di Fonzo Bo on the creation of M comme Méliès, and more recently with Pierre Maillet on Le Bonheur (n’est pas toujours drôle) and Théorème(s). Since 2012, he has been a member of the Compagnons Butineurs, based in Eure. During the 2018/19 season, he was in a co-residency at La Cascade, Pôle des Arts du Cirque, where he joined the itinerant workshop, a collective interdisciplinary working group. There, he continued his research on circus performance.

In 2019, he co-founded the collective La Dernière Baleine, with which he created Tant qu’il y aura des brebis - portraits de tondeurs et de tondeuses at the Comédie de Caen, along with Léa Carton de Grammont and choreographer Cécile Laloy. Since 2020, he has been dancing under the direction of Mathilde Papin in Serein. As an accordionist and pianist, he regularly incorporates music into his work.

Land Acknowledgement

This conversation was recorded on the unceded, stolen and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish Peoples: the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh), colonially known as Vancouver.

Rémi joined the conversation from Montreuil, near Paris, and Arthur joined from Strasbourg, France.

It is our duty to establish right relations with the people on whose territories we live and work, and with the land itself.

Credits

PuSh Play is produced by Ben Charland and Tricia Knowles. Original music by Joseph Hirabayashi.

Show Transcript