The company les choses ont leurs secrets
is supported by Scène Nationale Évreux-Louviers, Conseil Départemental de l’Eure, Région Normandie, DRAC Normandie, La Criée in Marseille and Compagnie Jérôme Deschamps.
Les Choses Ont Leurs Secrets was created in Normandy in 2013 by Sylvain Levitte, keen to work on Shakespeare and how his plays relate to contemporary society. The team is made up of actors trained at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSAD), and the first production was an adaptation of King Lear, with two young actors, the second Twelfth Night, with nine women (eight actresses and a pianist) and the third The Winter’s Tale, with six actors.
This work on Shakespeare is combined with work on Michael Chekhov (Anton’s nephew), for whom acting is a method that must be practiced regularly to achieve ease and grace. Acting is central to our artistic approach. It is about embodying somebody else in confidence, a question of empathy and receptiveness to the world around us.
Our artistic approach is focused on meaning and the movement of thought and the body, and music and dance revolve constantly around us.
We take delicate care to promote artistic expression accessible to all, where human beings are the centre of work, with their contradictions and buried desires. We aim to make beauty the focus of a sensitive process, doing theatre with the people we love and who inspire us, with a respect conducive to the blooming of sensitive, powerful productions.
Since 2013, we have sought to forge strong ties with our home region, and we have developed partnerships with Compagnie des Petits Champs in Beaumontel and Domaine d’Harcourt. These ties are both personal and professional, and we will continue working together on new productions. Since 2018 and Twelfth Night, new ties have been formed with the Normandie-Rouen Centre National Dramatique (CDN), Le Préau theatre in Vire, and also beyond the region, with Compagnie Jérôme Deschamps and La Criée in Marseille.
To cite but a few, our major inspirations include Declan Donnellan, Peter Brook, Pina Bausch, Christoph Marthaler, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Pedro Almodóvar.