The Scorpion-Fish

What if we extended the enchantment of The Way of the World, performed to packed houses more than 70 times in our small hall? Nicolas Bouvier wrote thousands of pages on his relationship with the world – but he lived it, too, down to the bone. In 1953, he set off from Geneva with his friend Thierry Vernet, traversed the Balkans, ventured solo to Afghanistan and India, and finally reached Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1955.
But the « Island of a Thousand Smiles » didn’t smile back. Bouvier the wanderer falls ill, sinking into the feverish haze of this tropical purgatory, where solitude weighs just as heavily as the sweltering heat. Trapped in the sticky confines of his room, he swaps human company for exotic insects and hypnotic hallucinations. Bouvier would wait nearly 25 years before publishing The Scorpion-Fish, a form of exorcism and a mesmerising tale where humour weaves through the strange and the sublime.
It takes a born performer to capture both the excess and the beauty of these aimless travels. Under the direction of Catherine Schaub, actor Samuel Labarthe enhances the musical cadence of this motionless voyage with the precision of a miniaturist. In this performance, Labarthe becomes one with the language, turning Bouvier’s lyrical flow into a rejuvenating, vivid elixir you can almost touch.