LA VOIX HUMAINE
“The things I do not imagine do not exist. Or else they exist in a kind of vague place where they hurt less.”
At the heart of Aphrodite Patoulidou’s staged concept of Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine lies a question familiar to anyone who has struggled to let go:
What do wet do when reality becomes too painful to inhabit?
Drawing on her Butoh practice and framed by an installation of 500 metres of telephone wire, Patoulidou enters a world suspended between memory and invention. The connection has already been broken, yet the voice continues to search for it. Again and again, reality is reshaped, softened, rewritten—not out of denial, but out of necessity.
In this intimate monodrama, imagination becomes a refuge, a trap, and ultimately a means of survival. Stripped of all but the essential elements of voice, body and space, the production invites audiences into the fragile territory where we negotiate loss, rewrite our memories, and cling to the stories that allow us to keep living.
Here is a glimpse into Aphrodite’s last interpretation of Poulenc’s “La Voix Humaine” in Frank Hilbrich’s direction with Errico Fresis conducting the Symphonieorchester der Universtität der Künste, Berlin.
APHRODITE PATOULIDOU 