THE COMPANY I.D.A. – INTERNATIONAL DREEMS ASSOCIATED

I.D.A. Mark Tompkins is an independant company which has willfully chosen artisanal production means and nomadism as a way of living and working. Even though the company is sometimes associated with a theatre and loyal to many institutions, it prefers to remain without binds. And by affirming this « marginality », it can better ask the questions that preoccupy and trouble it and its place in society. Since 2002, the company’s main working space is in Arbecey, a small village in the east of France.

Since it’s creation in 1983, the company has produced more than thirty stage productions and almost the same number of films. Over the years, It is posssible to observe a certain number of constants :

¤ Many projects are conceived and realised over long periods of time - two or three years. More than simple performance projects, they are artistic and human adventures in which the process is as important as the finished product.

¤ Improvisation and real time composition impregnate the creative processes and serve as the fondation and score for some performances.

¤ Site specific projects form an important axis of research and creation. Making work in nontheatricalspaces is a challenge and a pleasure which then nourishes the work in the black box of the theatre, and vice versa.

¤ A fascination for video images in relationship to the stage gives an important role to video in some performances.

Over the years, a « dichotomy of extremes » has become apparent in the company’s work. Certain themes and obsessions repeat and intertwine : both in the more « abstract » pieces, with carefully designed spatiotemporal constructions, and in the more « figurative » pieces, with theatrical situations and a pronounced taste for camp, cabaret and « bad taste »

Unclassifiable, the performances are often considered as UFOs that play with and navigate between the borders of dance, theatre and other forms of performing arts. They are composed according to a process of stratification that Tompkins calls a « dramaturgy of complex images », in which several often contradictory threads are given simultaneously to the audience. Each spectator witnesses, feels and creates his own associations with the proposed images.

Quite regularly, group pieces are followed by solos, created and performed by Tompkins himself. If this « stage beast » has always felt the need to confront the public, alone, and face to face, it’s because it nourishes his reflection about performance presence and allows him to avoid finding refuge in his directorial vision. All the better to understand and transmit « the life of the stage » to his performers.

In addition to its performance activities, the company organizes international events : festivals, research laboratories and conferences around subjects like « real time composition », « gender questions » or « the birth and development of complex images ». Mark Tompkins directs workshops in Arbecey, in France and around the world.