La révolte des mannequins

For almost thirty years the French company Royal de Luxe have been synonymous with spectacular theatrical events in public spaces. Under the artistic direction of their founder Jean-Luc Courcoult the group from Nantes have created a whole series of projects which have delighted and excited audiences the world over. Their latest coup, La révolte des mannequins, is a type of cartoon strip acted out in the shop windows of Berlin’s KaDeWe department store. The production »runs« around the clock and lasts a week in total. Each of the ten windows tells its own simple story, whose subject could be taken from real life, which develops from day to day. The protagonists of this poetic obstacle course are shop window dummies which undergo strange changes in the course of the week. Even if they remain motionless, they still express the movements and emotions of their own »personal« stories: joy, fear, love, jealousy, revenge, tenderness and cruelty. Even the price tags on the clothes tell part of these humorous, moving and witty stories. Driven by their human emotions the dummies ultimately break out of their glass prisons: with their bodies inside but limbs out, they break through the windows like invisible walls. They are last seen climbing the walls of the building as they make their escape. After that, they’re gone.