Direction artistique : Marina Montefusco et Magali Esteban

Since 1990, Marina Montefusco and her company Le Clan des Songes have been developing a theatre of strong, dreamlike images, using puppets and animated forms as their main tools.
His shows have been performed hundreds of times in France and at festivals around the world. They have contributed to the recognition of a theatrical form that is now open to all fields of contemporary creation.
The Clan's expressive universe is aimed primarily at young children, but they are appreciated by audiences of all ages.

Supported by the Ministry of Culture DRAC Occitanie, the City of Toulouse, the City of Sérignan and the City of Venerque, and by the City of Toulouse and the Haute Garonne Departmental Council, Clan des Songes is a company for young audiences that is recognised nationally and internationally for the quality of its work. The company is in residence at La Cigalière in Sérignan and the town of Venerque (workshop and storage).

Since January 2024, Clan des Songes has been run under the shared artistic direction of Marina Montefusco and Magali Esteban. They each direct a creation based on a personal idea, while working together on research, language and aesthetics. They have been surrounded by a loyal team for many years: -Erwan Costadau: puppeteer / stage manager and lighting designer Isabelle Ployet (scriptwriter and puppeteer), Fanny Journaut (visual artist and puppeteer) and Hervé Billerit (production and distribution manager).

18 shows created, hundreds of performances in France at major festivals: Avignon, Charleville Mézières, Momix, Marionnettissimo, etc. National Scenes and major Theatres: Théâtre National de Toulouse, Scènes Nationales d'Albi, Tarbes, Bayonne, Odyssud in Blagnac, Théâtre 71 in Malakoff, Moulin du Roc in Niort, Gallia Théâtre in Saintes, etc.

And abroad...touring in Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taipei), Quebec, Brazil, Israel, Singapore, the Assitej World Festival in Montreal, the Bravo Helsinki Festival, Figurteater in Oslo, the Vermont Festival (USA), Théatralia in Madrid, Tam Tam in Réunion, the Petits Bonheurs Festival in Quebec, the Neuchâtel International Festival, the New Victory in New York...

The company is also involved in training amateur and professional audiences: symposia, courses, meetings and presentations on young audience and puppetry.

Interventions in schools, raising awareness of the art of puppetry among young audiences.

marina

Marina Montefusco

After studying theatre at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Marina moved to France, where she founded her company Le Clan Des Songes in 1990. While creating her own shows, she continued her training, notably with Philippe Genty at the Institut Supérieur des Arts de la Marionnette in Charleville Mézières.

In 1990, together with Jean Kaplan, she founded MARIONNETTISSIMO, the first International Festival of Animated Forms in the Midi-Pyrénées region, and was artistic director for its first edition.

Surrounded by a loyal team, she writes, directs and constructs shows in a sensitive language that reaches the spectator beyond words. Her aesthetic choices are essentially directed towards a theatre of metaphor as part of the revival of puppetry in France. His creations have travelled the world, invited by theatres and international festivals.

magalie

Magali Esteban

After studying at the Conservatoire National de Toulouse, Magali trained mainly at the "Le Passage à Niveau" school and took part in various courses: singing, masked acting, clowning and puppet design and manipulation with Footsbarn Travelling Théâtre. A puppeteer and actress for several companies, she has been a loyal collaborator with Le Clan des Songes since 2014, performing in shows such as "Bella", "Bout à Bout", "Arrivederci" and "Conte Chiffonné". She is also responsible for cultural activities. Globule" in 2022 was her first creation for young audiences with the company.

19 spectacles créés

Marcello doesn't grow up like other children. In his wacky, incomprehensible world, he spends his time marvelling at the flight of bird feathers and collecting piles of stones that he stacks in defiance of the laws of balance.

Behind a pair of thick, round glasses hides Globule, a discreet little boy who is often "in the moon" and lives alone with his father.
When Globule takes them off, the world becomes a blur. He can then have fun transforming it by inventing absurd, funny, touching and sometimes frightening stories, and he loves it!
But his father doesn't give him the time. Waking up, going to school, going home, running, galloping, hurrying... that's how it is with Dad, you don't dawdle.
So to stay in the blurred world in which he feels comfortable, Globule has fun taking off his glasses in his daily timetable, at the risk of disconnecting himself from reality.
Magali Esteban's first production is a sensitive, offbeat show of shadows and projected images for children and adults aged 3 and over.

Conte Chiffonné is a show made entirely of fabrics, rags and lace, inspired by the fairy tale of Cinderella.
Guided by a puppeteer, the audience walks with her through a dreamlike world of castles, fairies and princes in fragile, unreal lace.
Then, like the heroine, he is surprised by an enormous pile of rags that has fallen from the sky, covering her completely and plunging her into a dark present, a time of heartbreak and conflict. From this heap, characters from the fairytale appear and disappear as if by magic: the horrible stepmother, the ugly sisters, the mistreated young girl... And finally, in an interplay of transparencies, the rags become airy and colourful, bringing the fairy to life and transforming our damsel into a princess...
The timeless music of Laurent Rochelle is the backdrop for a game of transforming and animating matter.

Arrivederci is a visual and poetic show for all ages from 5 upwards.
Throughout her childhood in Italy, Marina watched washing being dried in the sun, and has always remembered her fascination with clothes playing and shifting in the wind, their shadows projected onto facades, fantastical and fantastic images.
They seemed alive when, puffed up by the breeze, they tried at all costs to detach themselves from the thread that held them in place.

Proteus is a giant puppet made of a single string!
It is manipulated using halyards and pulleys by ten stage actors who, like Lilliputians, breathe life into it and transform it constantly. It can be sometimes inanimate, sometimes an octopus or a dancer, or it can rise twelve metres into the air and disappear into the hangers... It gives the impression of being heavy, hard and strong. Yet it is ethereal, celestial and marine, sinuous and slippery....

A small piece emerges from a pile of ropes, leaves the tangled heap, begins to come to life and sets off to meet other pieces.

Their games and arguments conjure up images of everyday life, holidays and dreams, and together they conjure up characters who take on a fleeting life before morphing again in the blink of an eye.

With tenderness and humour, family life and human relationships are explored in simple tableaux of lines drawn by the ropes. A story full of light and poetry, for young and old alike.

BELLA grows up carefree and lonely, her head in the clouds and intrigued by her body, which transforms into a wiry, unfamiliar shape.
With delicacy and humour, this show evokes the transition from childhood to adolescence and tells us about the troubling desire for lightness that can cause us to lose our footing...

CITYis a fantasy on the theme of the city, evoking the wanderings of a character in the urban world. The city is suggested here by a non-realistic setting, inspired by the world of painting by Evsa Model, a contemporary New York painter whose works are large flat tints of bright colours and geometric shapes.

Étrange voyage que celui de ce petit homme fragile et solitaire avec,

comme unique compagnon de route un sac enfermant tout un monde magique.

Son chemin ? Juste une ligne capricieuse tantôt droite parfois interrompue

se dressant telle une montagne infranchissable ou plongeant dans l’abîme,

toujours changeante.

Et, qui sont-ils ces types cartoonnesques aux allures pressées, assurés ou égarés, qui croisent sa route ?

« Fragile » est un spectacle poétique entre déséquilibre et instabilité.

Un univers sans dessus dessous qui parle du bonheur gagné à franchir ses propres limites.

This show takes place inside a Jules Verne-style dome that the audience enters. It tackles the theme of fear of the dark, the anxiety that begins in childhood and haunts human nights from time immemorial...

A Franco-Quebec creation, the show is composed like a fragmented poem, a poetic collage of childhood memories of Italy and Quebec ....

Le Clan des Songes is exploring a new form of performance: a journey through the world of music.
A captivating whodunit set against the natural backdrop of a city.

Two neighbours with completely different temperaments and physics, one day realise that a gap is opening up between their two domains, a mysterious hole that they will have to explain and then explore ...

Theatrical adaptation of Claude Ponti's wonderful album. Here again, the visual theatre is the medium for a powerful theme: death, the disappearance of a loved one.

In this free and very personal interpretation of Corlo Collodi's "Le Awenture di Pinocchio", Marina Montefusco touches on the delicate issue of adolescence with poetry and humour.

Jealousy in siblings through the adventures of a young cub, in a visual and poetic way.

A tender story built around an old lady completely overwhelmed by events. A dream in pictures, a love story perhaps...

A young penguin leaves the family group after a big tantrum I A blow to the head, the feeling of omnipotence and here is our hero lost on the immense ice floe ...

A young penguin leaves the family group after a big tantrum I A blow to the head, the feeling of omnipotence and here is our hero lost on the immense ice floe ...