In this physical and concrete theatre of joy, the actors immerse themselves in friendship and discover vulnerability. They confront their irrepressible need to share in the face of distress.

Lust for Life is the story of a group of friends who fancy themselves a rock band. But one of them has lost his sense of purpose; the joy of being alive is no longer obvious to him. How can the others help? What clumsy attempts, what power grabs or expectations accompany their commendable intention to come to the rescue?

This is a story of friendship, of arms that open, of shoulders to lean on, of finding your tribe, of trying to add up our respective joys together, of café buddies, of the working group, of high school friends, of the utopia training club, of fellow fighters, of the football team and of the "Division de la joie" troupe.

In Lust for Life, we want to say that human beings are not only what capitalism says we are: narcissistic people who take and post selfies all the time, lazy people who order their meals on UberEats or scared people always on the lookout for more security. We’d like to talk about other things that also define us: our solidarity, our empathy and our care for what surrounds us. Once we’ve said that, we might look a bit silly, and then we realise that other issues arise. What does it mean to help? Wanting to help is very noble, but what does it imply within a relationship when it puts us in a position of domination, submission, accountability and sometimes condescension? I would like the actors to explore this both as clowns (caught between high ambitions and low means) and as tragedians (with the vertigo of the person who realises that they cannot be helped, and the tyranny of the helping person refusing to accept that their gesture improves nothing).

We don’t want to let Facebook appropriate the words “friends” or “social network” either, because, for us, a “social network” is not virtual. No, it’s very physical, it’s very concrete, it’s open arms, shoulders to lean on and sometimes cry on, it’s a support committee coming to the rescue glass in hand on the evening of a break-up, it’s the construction of our thoughts by successive ricochets and frictions, it’s being the privileged spectators of fortuitous trajectories, it is the constant growth of our capacity for empathy, it is the wild celebration of victories that are victories only for us, it is the kind and merciless laying bare of our contradictions, it is feeling capable of true admiration, it is adding up our respective joys together.

Note of intent by Lola Giouse, 2022