Bruno of the Room

Bruno of the Room is a storyteller and the director of CLIO, the center of oral literature.

Biography

Bruno of the Room was born in Toulon in 1943, of a Lyons family. He passed most of his childhood to Givors, at the edge of the Rhone, “in the streets, the demolitions of the war, with bands… ”. It is in this city that it starts to write poems, theater, for which it is encouraged by Luc Estang, Jean Cayrol, Jean Dasté. It is there too that it composes a series of spoken dreams which it interprets in front of small groups of friends. At twenty years, he undertakes his round the world tour as others undertake their turn of France: the Middle East, Africa, Australia, the Indies…

Of return to Paris, it occurs with its dreams in the cabarets of Left bank. He attends the musicians working around the brothers Baschet, the Group of Lettristes. He meets André Voisin and Marie-Louise Tenèze of the museum to Arts and Traditions Popular which initiates it with their respective work on the tale. He follows courses of sociology to the faculty of Censier.

Participation in the renewal of art to tell

May 1968 and its upheavals lead it to reconsider its poetic action through a contemporary form which would be connected with the traditional oral literature. It remains to him to define it, to implement it, to try out it with other artists.

It starts in 1969, with the musicalized narration of two versions transposed of the Red Hood and the Bush peach, while being accompanied by an organ of Baschet glass, with the Theater of the Wood Sword, then with the Festival of Avignon where it returns, since then, almost each year.

This first public recitation causes immediately among cultural persons in charge, a movement of interest for this form of expression that each one thought disappeared. It is very quickly requested to tell in all France and abroad. During four years, it will make a first training while occurring in schools, libraries, MJC and festivals.

He notices quickly, however, that this idea of a disappeared art classifies it with the row of “antiquities”, whereas he conceives on the contrary the tale like an art of tomorrow. While continuing to tell, it sticks, consequently, to sensitize all people whom it meets with the modernity of this expression, and incites them to take part in its development. It is in this intention that it goes, until the middle of the Eighties, to cause meetings, training courses and workshops, and to produce many radio broadcasts in France and in the French-speaking countries. In 1972, for the ERA of Geneva, with the invitation of Rene Zosso, it organizes a first workshop of tales which will be followed of good of others, in particular to the experimental library for the youth of the Joy by the Books, in Small Clamart, the abbey of Royaumont with the assistance of Nacer Khémir, within association the Old one of Gold of France with Evelyne Cevin, in Grenoble in the libraries of district then in full rise. In 1977, it causes the first meeting of new storytellers with Vannes with ten artists, writers, singers, researchers, librarians; then in 1979, one second meeting in the Center Georges Pompidou which is relayed by France Culture then directed by Yves Jaigu. (JPG)

These meetings and workshops give the opportunity to him to accompany the beginnings by the principal storytellers by today who, as it did before them, start, in this end of the year seventy, to exert this new trade in forms and under extremely varied conditions.

Creation of CLIO

Ten years after its beginnings, which one henceforth calls “the Renouveau of the tale” became a reality which appears in its eyes, dubious and sometimes debatable. It fears to see this artistic providence which represents the oral literature, reduced with the row of a minor art. At this point in time it decides, in 1981, to create a Center of Oral Literature, in Chartres, there to gather the means of research and training of the art of the Account and Epopee which remains for him the model of excellence of any literature.

It is there that it carries out its first great collective and musical recitations with the type-setter Jean-Paul Auboux and the support of France-Culture and the Festival of Avignon. In 1981, the Odyssey of Homère, which it will take again as a recluse in 1991; in 1982 and 1983, the Account of Shéhérazade; in 1984 and 1985, the Cycle of King Arthur.

During these creations, it makes known one second generation of storytellers such as Abbi Patrix, Yannick Jaulin, Michel Hindenoch, Pascal Fauliot, Jean-Lou Bally…

It realizes at the same time, on the chains of France-Culture, of many radio programs, either of creation, or of information on the universal oral literature or the contemporary Conte.

It organizes or takes part in the installation of festivals of storyteller, like those of Chevilly-Larue, of Oralies of Provence, Arts of the Account in Montpellier and Radio-France. The frequentation of the large texts which it presents almost each year shows him the need for developing an oral style specific to the narration, within which the metric one, the rate/rhythm and the song are dominating. The study, the adaptation, the rewriting or the translation of these texts Greek, means-Eastern, Celtic, medieval and more recently that of the old Account of the Flood, genesis mésopotamienne, are for him unceasingly renewed occasions of training.

It publishes, of 1985 to 1990, a series of albums, “the Tales of always”, for which it rewrites starting from collected oral versions, the French traditional tales most famous. Then, in 1996, a told autobiography: The Storyteller in love who gathers part of these tales, accompanied by reflections and apologues on his trade. (JPG) During the Eighties, the Center of Oral Literature remains mainly a place of preparation and production of great collective narrations that Bruno of the Room conceives so that they remain perennial. However the number of candidate-storytellers increases regularly and with him, the need for accommodating them and for helping them. It becomes necessary to set up a regular program of formations and demonstrations, to create an information center.

These achievements are made possible thanks to the recognition of Clio like structure of national interest, granted in 1987 per Robert Abirached, then with the head of the Management of the Theater and the Spectacles to the Ministry for the Culture, like by the assistance of the local government agencies of the Area Centers, then in 1995, by the establishment of Clio in Dormouse and Expensive, in Vendôme.

Thus Bruno of the Room can create, in 1991, the Workshop Fahrenheit 451, with an aim of making it possible to the new storytellers to acquire capacities comparable with those their ancestors storytellers had, griots, aèdes, troubadours or poets.

It received there, inter alia, Jean-Claude Bray, Jeanne Ferron, Fiona Mac Léod, Philippe Campiche, Isabelle Jacquemain, Olivier Noack, Bruno Walerski, Vincent Pensuet, Guylaine Kasza, Marie-Claire Sauvée… and there currently accommodates young storytellers, surrounded by old, more senior.

In 1996, it creates an Internet site through which it hopes to still promote more largely the practice of contemporary orality, by the diffusion and the information exchange, the access to a bibliographical and documentation base, like by the production of oral works. In 1997, it organizes in Vendôme the Trace of the Words, first Living room of the Book of Tale and the Storytellers become the awaited appointment of the various actors of the medium of the tale. It is also one of the founding members of the project MONDORAL, which, since 2000, works with the development of arts of the word, with the support of the Ministry for the Culture. In 2004, it creates the Song of the stones, which are connected with a contemporary epopee.

Produced spectacles & theatrical Creations

(Spectacles of most recent with oldest)

the 2004 - 2006 SONG OF the STONES (currently in round)
2002 the KNOWN AS one OF the SOOTHSAYER (currently in round)
2000 PROHIBITED LOVE (currently in round)
1999 - 2000 account of LARGE Shéhérazade
1998 MOTHER LIE (currently in round)
1996 - 1997 the old account of the flood (currently in round)
1995 Small, small
1994 That large you have
1994 the fountain of the fables: the lion: and the ox
1993 the song of Roland
1991 SONG OF the ODYSSEY (currently in round)
1990 the pond with the devil
1989 genealogy of the murmurs
1988 epic of the fairies
1987 Gargantua or the good country
1986 history of the soldier
1985 Perceval
1984 the cycle of the king Arthur
1982 - 1983 the account of Shéhérazade
1981 the odyssey of Homère

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