The Compagnie des Quidams is a street arts company based in Bresse Vallons, France, which will present free roaming performances with FierS à Cheval, its giant illuminated horses, at Illuminate Adelaide next month. We chat to two of the three new artistic directors of the Quidams Company, France and Bastien about the company, the show and what Adelaide can expect.
So, I’ll start with the company name. Why the name Quidams?
Bastien: Quidams is an old French word that comes from Latin. It’s a Latin word that means an ordinary person. Everyone, an individual, one person among many. Everyone, in the end.
And why did the company choose this name?
Bastien: Well, because we are part of the people on the street, the masses. It’s for everyone, it’s accessible to everyone. Street theatre, unlike theatre in a theatre, is really for everyone to enjoy and there’s no question of paying money to come and see it.
Yes, of course. And the show coming to Australia, coming to Adelaide, is called FierS à cheval. And there’s a capital S at the end of FierS. Why? Tell me a little bit about that too.
France: Well, actually, FierS à cheval is already a play on words. Yes, for those of you who speak French, Fer à cheval, FierS à cheval. So, the Fer à cheval is the horseshoe that you find under horses’s feet. And in fact, it’s because visually, the capital S kind of resembles the shape of our horse. It’s a bit of a signature, like in the days of the Knights Templar. There was the T that could resemble a sword. So, there you go, it’s a little visual nuance, a little frivolity.
I see. So you’ve both been in the show since it started, and you’ll also be in Adelaide in July. France, from what I understand, you’ve had a very active career, but you have a real love for dance and now choreography, but not only that. Since you joined the Compagnie des Quidams, you’ve been a stilt walker, an actress, a dancer, a puppeteer and a director. Is the choreography we see in FierS à cheval yours?
France: Not only that. In fact, when we work on choreography, we really adapt it to the performance space we have. And then everyone contributes a little bit. What I was able to do at one point was perhaps to gather everyone’s ideas and put them into shape. And at that time, when the show was created, I wasn’t the company’s choreographer. I was a choreographer elsewhere. So, just like Bastien and the other actors, everyone contributed a little bit.
Bastien: And in fact, we took over the management of the company, the artistic direction with France and another colleague. There are three of us in management now, but before, with the former artistic director, it was teamwork, work on site, we all worked together on the choreography, we looked for ideas. And afterwards? France has always been good at organising everyone’s ideas. But it was a collective effort. That may change now because we like to be in control. But that’s how it is.
So it won’t be the same anymore.
Bastien: For the new shows. This one was created that way. But for the new shows, we’ll have a different technique, a different way of working now.
Okay. And Bastien, you’re self-taught and you do a bit of everything too: stage manager, technician, set designer and, of course, now artistic director. What role do you play in FierS à cheval?
Bastien: Well, once again, a bit of everything, except for what we call l’homme des pistes, which is a bit like the orchestra of this ballet, the orchestra of the show. That’s the only role I don’t do, but otherwise, I can be in the horse, in stage management, in technical support.
I’m a real street artist. I was welcomed into the Quidams more than 20 years ago, even though it wasn’t my profession at all, I trained myself. I’m good with my hands when it comes to creating sets, DIY and all that. And then, little by little, lots of things started to happen. So, I was trained by the street.
That’s a nice image! And the company is based in Bresse-Vallon. Is it a village or a region known for street arts?
France: No, not at all. In fact, we’re in an area that’s better known for its chickens.
Ah yes, of course. Poulet de Bresse.
France: Exactly. That’s right, we’re pretty much in that area. Since the former artistic director decided to locate in a rural area, we’re in a village of about 1,000 inhabitants so that we can offer culture, an access to culture, an access to shows to an area that doesn’t have easy access to the theatre or the cinema. So, it was about bringing culture to rural areas, which was important to him.
And we’re taking up the challenge because, now, the city comes to us from time to time. In any case, the venue is set around our location for a few residencies, a few experimental shows, and a few small events that we’re going to create.
So, you’ve really created a cultural community or a cultural venue?
France: Absolutely.
Bastien: We’re trying, in any case, once again, the idea of being in a rural area is a bit like the name of the company. It’s for the people, for everyone and for the countryside. Small villages like Bresse Vallon, where we are, don’t have very much access to shows. It’s not like in big cities where there’s always something going on, of course. So, the idea was to really perform for everyone. Once again.
But now you’re coming to Australia, which is completely different?
France: Well, we’ve already had the chance to come and perform in Australia several times.
I had wondered. Which show was it and where did it go?
France: Well, we’ve already performed FierS à cheval in Canberra. In Sydney, I think they went too. Rêve d’Herbert was performed in Perth and Melbourne. We’ve already been to Canberra, and I’ve been to Melbourne, 20 years ago.
So Adelaide will be new.
France: Yes, we can’t wait.
Me neither! How many people are coming with you?
France: There will be eight of us. So, one stage technician and seven artists: I’ll be the femme de pistes, and then six horses.
And do the people inside the horses change regularly?
France: Yes, but not when we come to Adelaide for our little tour. We’ll stay the same team. But basically, the Compagnie des Quidams has about thirty artists who gravitate around us, who work on our shows, the different shows. This allows us to be in several places at once. It allows us to offer more opportunities to perform than if there were only five of us. And then we turn down shows because we turn down opportunities. And we’re lucky to be able to do this, in any case.
According to your website, it says that in the show FierS à cheval, there are curious characters who transform into big horses and then at the end, the horses disappear and the characters come back. And they are happy to have introduced us to their mythological alter egos. How did the show come about? How did it evolve and what were the inspirations?
Bastien: It’s going to be a little more complicated to talk about exactly how it came about and what was going through the artistic director’s mind at the time. Because, once again, it all started in his head.
It was a bit of a combination of circumstances. We were in a town called Deauville, to be precise. We were performing another show and the director of Deauville told us that next year would be the year of the horse and asked “Would we have any beautiful inflatable horses in the same theme as what we usually do?” And the artistic director said, ‘next year we’ll have horses.’
So, he had the image of the horse, and he drew it with our costume designer. And once we had that image, that character, we all searched together again on set. At first, there weren’t many of us working on this show, there were five or six of us, so we tried out this costume, we brought this costume to life and little by little, the script, the story was born. We started with a bit of a dream somewhere, and it came together like that. It was a bit of an unusual journey, let’s say, for a show.
France: Sources of inspiration can be very diverse; it can be a trend. For example, right now, it’s fashionable to do a lot of shows – at least in France anyway – about spirituality, shamanism, natural methods, etc. So sometimes there are these kinds of sources of inspiration, and then there are desires. For a long time, I’ve wanted to do a show about blah blah blah.
And then you should know that the company has a signature style that is quite recognisable around the theme of metamorphosis, i.e. the change in the physical appearance of white, since we are currently working a lot with this white material, which is waterproof and therefore allows us to offer an inflatable, thanks also to the collaboration of Fred, whom we haven’t mentioned yet. He’s a bit of a handyman who finds little tricks to make things work. And thanks to this technique that was discovered, with the help of Bastien, we have this fan that allows us to inflate and then remove the battery connections, all of which is hidden and cannot be seen.
Bastien: That’s right. We’re known for this signature style, for something a bit dreamlike, with these large volumes and beautiful shapes that are pure, white and poetic. We also have imposing, large volumes, which is how we’re known. In any case, we have this signature style and reputation, if I may say so.
And so, from time to time, we are called upon and we call it commissions, because there are people who love our world and who say to us, ‘Can you do something like this for us, but in the Quidams style, with your world?’ So sometimes we are given ideas and sometimes the ideas come from us or from colleagues.
France: I have a little example to give you. Recently, we performed in France, in the castle where Leonardo da Vinci ended his life. And you should know that Leonardo da Vinci drew the anatomy of the horse in all his works. And naturally, we slightly transformed the introduction to the show. So, the l’homme de piste (man of the tracks), who is normally written as if he were writing his dream, was writing a dream where he writes a dream. And in fact, there, I drew the outlines of horses, and the horses arrived and formed themselves as if it were little Leonardo da Vinci dreaming of horses, which suddenly appeared before him. But that’s the story we write inside ourselves. What the audience sees, what they feel, what emotions it evokes in them, what story they construct for themselves, that belongs to them and we’re okay with that.
Bastien: That’s also part of our nature. We need to nurture a story because we have to embody something for the show to come to life. We can’t just wear costumes. We have our story to give soul to this show. But at les Quidams, we don’t use subtitles, we don’t use text, we don’t want to take the audience by the hand and say, ‘You have to understand this and you have to see that.’ We always leave room for the audience to create their own story, their own dream.
So sometimes we ask people, especially when it’s the beginning of our shows. Often, children come up with pretty much the same story as us. It’s quite funny. Sometimes adults say to us, ‘I didn’t understand a thing’, but that’s because they sometimes try too hard to understand something, and sometimes there are people who come up with a completely different story but come out with their eyes wide with wonder. In fact, that’s the aim of the show. It’s not necessarily to tell the story we want to tell. Everyone is free [to have their own story].
Everyone can give meaning to your show, but did you find differences in the audience reactions in different countries, different religions, things like that?
Bastien: Yes, absolutely. There are certain countries where the horse has a special place. In Arab countries, for example, the horse has an important place, which is different from other countries where, in France, it remains a majestic animal that has always been a big part of human life since the dawn of time. But it has many different meanings depending on the culture. We are not necessarily told the same thing, people do not necessarily see the same thing.
France: And when we perform, for example during the Christmas season, there is also the magical aspect of illuminated horses, which brings something wonderful. So, they are horses but some people even see unicorns, some see Santa’s reindeer.
And in fact, when we’re inside the costumes, when we’re walking around, sometimes we hear people talking, we hear these stories, and also the guides, because there’s a group of volunteers who accompany us. We give them little tasks and they give us feedback. And it’s direct feedback: ‘Oh, but I saw this’ or ‘Oh, not at all, I saw this instead’. But it’s true that in Japan, for example, there’s still a special atmosphere around the show. It’s really specific to each culture, you’re right.
And children have big imaginations, more so than adults… The horses are three and a half metres tall?
Bastien: Yes, more or less. When they’re standing upright, they reach three metres fifty. It depends on the length of the actor’s legs.
And is it something you inflate with air? It’s inflatable and self-illuminated. Are there already lights inside? How does it work?
Bastien: It’s magic. We have to keep it magical. Your job is to sell magic and dreams, not technology, welding and batteries. That’s right, that’s what breaks all the magic, at least in my opinion.
Yes, you’re right.
Bastien: That’s why I often say it’s the magic of the show.
So they’re going to come to Australia by air.
Bastien: That’s right, they’re flying. Yes, exactly.
With their own wings.
Bastien: No. We’re lucky to travel a lot because there’s also… We also have a little advantage. If we can talk about the technical side of things, it’s that we’re able to have huge volumes to play for a lot of people. That’s right, we make them three and a half metres, or even four metres high for some shows, with diameters of two and a half to three metres. So, a single figure can play for hundreds of people and they fit in a small suitcase. So, we all come with our little suitcases and that’s it, they’re easy to transport too. We don’t need trucks, full containers or anything like that. So that also allows these characters to travel a lot.
So, customs will ask you to open the bag and you all have the same things in it.
Bastien: That happens. We’re used to it. We make AtA carnets to specify what we’re taking out of the country and what we can bring back in.
For Illuminate Adelaide, FierS à Cheval is not going to be a show format, it’s going to be more like street theatre from what I understand.
France: Yes. So, the difference is that we have a walking part. Normally, we walk around the streets and then we have a fixed show that lasts about 25 minutes. In this case, the festival commissioned us to do only a walking performance. And we asked if it was possible to do a walking performance, but with mini fixed performances. This allows us to create images and not just walk around, to be an image that passes by.
It’s also so that it’s less frustrating for the audience and so that we can really develop what we’re trying to say. So, in fact, we wander around, we take the audience with us, we settle in one place, we develop a little scene that will last between 2 and 5 minutes, and then we wander off again, and so on. It will really be decided on the day, the first day, the day of the location scout. But the idea is that if we always perform in the same place, we have three routes, I think. The idea is to do the same thing each time, perhaps with slight variations, because even if we have well-written choreography, there’s still that element of the unknown with crowd movements and how the audience reacts. Some evenings, they’ll react more, and other evenings, they’ll just stand there mesmerised. So, depending on how we interact with the audience, things can change.
We like to highlight a building, a park, a remarkable place in the city: a statue, a fountain. These are all little things that excite us, making us wonder, ‘What will we find today on this stroll?’ and then thinking, ‘How can we play around with this element of the street?’
Has the significance of horses in your shows changed over the years?
Bastien: That’s a good question.
France: The horses themselves? Or has the geography of the show changed a bit, or is it the horse itself?
Do the horses themselves mean something to you? And has that changed?
Bastien: They changed a lot at the very beginning, during the creation process, because, as we explained earlier, at first there was just an image, so it didn’t make much sense to us, at least. So, we worked on finding meaning for them, a story. After that, we still see them the same way. Our relationship with these horses, in any case, is still the same.
It doesn’t tell the same story depending on where we are, because once again there are symbols depending on the country, even depending on the places where we play. Sometimes we’re in France and we go to play in a square that has a history and where historically the horse had a very important place. And we sometimes adapt things around that. But the actual relationship and how we see that horse doesn’t change. At least, I think so. Tell me if I’m wrong, France.
France: Well, I would qualify that a little bit. I completely agree with you, Bastien, but my personal experience of sometimes being a horse and sometimes a femme des pistes (woman of the tracks) has shed light on my different view of the horses. Because between inhabiting it and seeing it evolve, well, in my practice with horses, when I come back as a horse, there are things that I know that refine my practice.
But Bastien, that must also be a little bit the case for you. Because Bastien, when he’s on the technical side, in the control room, he also has that distant vision that allows us to take a step back. And maybe also depending on the state we’re in on the day of the show, if we’re in a gloomy mood, if we’re in a joking mood or whatever, maybe it plays out differently with our horses, we don’t handle them in the same way.
Bastien: Yes, and depending on the number of horses performing, the horse doesn’t have the same attitude. There are times when we’re working with a very small group of two or three horses, and then they often perform very sensitive, very, very, very gentle things. Then, when we’re in a very large group, it’s more like a big orchestra, a big ballet dance that’s gone, that’s very, very beautiful, but the horses obey our every command. And then sometimes, when we’re in groups of five or six, depending on the event, they’re a little more playful, a little more mischievous.
So, they don’t always have the same energy, but our relationship with the horse is, at least for me, always the same. It’s just that the horse’s mood can change, adapting to the event and things like that. And being on the outside doesn’t change my relationship with the horse, it gives me finesse and accuracy, I think, in handling the horse and in being able to be outside and inside, to realise what works, what is gentle and delicate, what is too rough and abrupt. So, I think it brings accuracy, it allows us to have that perspective.
I know you don’t want to tell audiences what meaning to give it. But is there anything you want the audience to take away from the FierS à Cheval show?
France: My answer is that I hope that when they see the show passing by in the streets they walk every day on their way to work, after seeing the procession of the show passing by, wandering there the next morning, they ask themselves, ‘What happened here last night? Did it really happen? Did it happen on our street?’
It’s the idea of being able to transform a place that is familiar to them for a moment. Like every day, when they take the bus, they pass by on their way to work or their activities. It’s just about offering a moment of wonder and saying, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen this building lit up like that before.’ Because, having been to Australia, you have a lot going for you. You have nature that’s not so far away, you have the ocean, you have all these magnificent things, what more could you ask for? Well, maybe this.
Bastien: I will give my answer, which France agrees with. I don’t really want them to take anything away from this. Once again, I don’t think we’re really sending a specific message. I just want adults in particular to forget themselves for a moment and let themselves be carried away by the dream, so that they experience an emotion and are just alive in that moment, and that they stop and come out of their shell.
We adults are all the same, focused on our children, our jobs, our worries, and what if, just for a little while, they could forget about all that and escape with their children? What if they take off with that? Then, we’re there, we have something. And then the children go home with stars in their eyes.
Children are going to talk about it for days, weeks! So, you are two of the company’s new artistic directors. What excites you most about the future of the Compagnie des Quidams?
Bastien: I think it’s great. The three new co-directors complement each other really well, and the three of us have a great dynamic that is becoming more and more apparent. Right now, we’re working on a new show, for example, which is very promising. So, when it comes to the future of the company, I’m quite confident about what we’ll be able to achieve and build. Because the three of us complement each other well.
France: Yes, it’s true that the political position of culture in France at the moment is not looking good, and we hope to be able to continue for a long time because Bastien, Vincent and I have been given a wonderful legacy that we want to keep going. First of all, it’s a matter of respect for the person who put us in this position, which we were happy to accept.
And then there’s also the fact that I want the company to have a future, so for that reason and also for all the artists who work for us and defend our work, I want to be able to continue to give them work. Because if there are no shows, if there are no programmers, the artists don’t work or work less. And then also for the audience, of course, because without programmers, there are no shows.
And also, today we are bringing to life shows that were also left to us by Jean-Baptiste Duperray. And as Bastien said, I also hope that we will be able to make our mark and that the next show, which is in preparation, will be the real beginning of the adventure of artistic direction, marking the start of a new era, so to speak.
How long for? Only time will tell. But in any case, we’re enjoying the present moment and, as Bastien said so well, our wonderful complementarity, our wonderful knowledge of the company… all three of us have been here for over 20 years, so we can preserve the company’s DNA, but with a touch of modernity, perhaps giving it a new meaning, a breath of fresh air.
Bastien: Our own little grain of sand. We each bring our own little grain of sand; we can’t do the same thing anymore. We have this DNA, we have this signal, we deeply love this company and the values it stands for. But now, it’s no longer Jean-Baptiste Duperré, it’s France, Bastien and Vincent. So inevitably, it will be France, Vincent and Bastien.
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We thank France and Bastien for this interview and can’t wait to see FierS à Cheval at the Illuminate Adelaide this July.
KEY INFO FOR FIERS À CHEVAL
WHAT: FierS à Cheval from Compagnie des Quidams as part of the City Lights program of Illuminate Adelaide
WHERE: Roving performances on Rundle Street and North Terrace, ADELAIDE
WHEN: Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays between 4-20 July 2025.
HOW: It’s free and open to all so there’s nothing for you to do but go! Check the roving performance times and locations at the website:
HOW MUCH: Free
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