Game Over 2

After revolutionizing the scenography of circus tents, Archaos takes its unique ability to surpass existing circus conventions a step further by creating this show for large theaters and concert halls.

As the audience enters, they are faced with an empty stage with absolutely nothing on it, not even a cable. Nothing suggests they’re about to witness a circus show. As the performance progresses, the equipment appears and disappears as the scenes unfold and the narrative evolves.

Game Over 2 explores the human fascination with images as it stages a battle between the real and the virtual using cinema, video, large-scale still and moving images, and the latest technological innovations... The evolution of television’s increasingly spectacular treatment of information and the emergence of reality shows inspired the creation of this production.

Production Information

Authors: Pierrot Bidon and Guy Carrara
Director: Guy Carrara

Artists: Linet Andrea, Benoît Belleville, Valérie Bordedebat, Creso Euclides, Gérard Fasoli, Véronique Lafaurie, Marie Josée Larin Sogny, Raquel Rache de Andrade, Pascal Sogny, Jeremy James, Bill Bloquet

Actors in the 35mm film: Alex Taylor, Mathieu Brickler-Gateau, Frantz Coqblin, Violaine Crespin, Saïd Jambay, Katia Kious, Lydia Kious, Priscilla Reami, Anne Somot, Sidy Top

Scenography, set design: Georges Ulivieri
Music: Lefdup & Lefdup
Light design: Jean Marie Prouvèze
Image design: Fabien Martineau
35mm film technical advisor: Guillaume Debroise
Sound design: Alain Français
Additional music design and composition: Linet Andrea
Choreography and movement: Creso Filho
Aerial choreography: Gérard Fasoli
Costumes: Raquel Rache de Andrade

Media Coverage

“Game Over 2... jugglers, tightrope walkers, acrobats with magical props and tricks... This reality served with a dash of sadomasochism is avant-garde, provocative, and dreamlike as it fuels contrasting pictorial art... By creating raw, poetic, and visual artistic material, the creator turns this show into an ever-changing landscape. Until now, Guy Carrara has been a fabulist, creating shows based on the most striking ‘characters’ he sees around him in contemporary society, but now he has become an activist and a manipulator. Game Over 2 is his latest challenge…and he presents a Machiavellian, realistic palette that is somewhere between art and chaos...”
– E. Dubourg, Les Saisons De La Danse, December 1997

“Game Over 2... end of the match, game over... Archaos zaps the TV... In a spectacular show, the ‘circus of character’ creates a scenographic revolution against the dictatorship of the ratings… A performance set within the image machine... A surreal parody, an act of humor and derision, a small cry of alarm, a great shout of hope...”
– Patrick Tardit, Cahier de l’Est Républicain, 16 November 1997

“With Game Over 2, you can free yourself, break the TV! Guy Carrara delivers this urgent message with the characteristic madness of Archaos. Stellar colors, bikers, jugglers, an exploded world, an imploded life, baroque sounds and techno music, reality in disarray and a cybernetic world, acrobats and drag-queens, brilliance and violence, life as an enormous video game, with dusks as pale as the small screens. Dazzled and captivated, you’ll believe it when you see it, and you’ll definitely flip!”
– Anita Castiel, Grandes Lignes TGV, September 1997

“Game Over 2... You see Archaos, you’re knocked out... Better than a rave party, this delirious show is performed at a blistering pace... It’s as beautiful as hell pretending to be heaven. Or vice versa. It’s a feast for the eyes and ears.”
– B. Lescure, La Dépêche

“The poetics of the absurd... Archaos, Game Over 2 yesterday at the Zénith: circus that feeds on current events. Channel surfing waves of mindless TV while jugglers and balancing cyclists remind us we’re at the circus, just before the Apocalypse Now implosion. The image box blows up in our faces. TV makes you crazy. What a circus!”
– Didier Hemardinquer, L’Est Républicain, 29 November 1997

“Archaos shows character… In Nancy, Game Over 2 packed the Zénith... The awe-shocked audience seems to have emerged from this experience without too much damage... The show stimulates the intellect and discombobulates the bearings, and then shocks some more: the sight of Courbet’s The Origin of the World (nude female genitalia) still makes mothers blush a century after the scandal and after twenty years of shameless television... Guy Carrara’s universe is there to infuse the audience with powerful emotions, to make them reflect on the degeneration of television...”
– Le Républicain Lorrain, 1 December 1997

“Archaos last night at the Zénith in Pau… Very emotional, almost hypnotic, a confrontation between life and death, the abundant fertility of Game Over 2 is a reminder of the overflow of images, of the spectacle of information and, ultimately, of the incomprehensibility of it all...”
– La République (Pau), 17 December 1997

“Game Over 2... a flamboyant melting pot of culture, skillfully blending cinema, theater, comics, and contemporary dance. A total spectacle, Game Over 2 is a feast for the ears and the eyes, with a special mention for the bungee-jumping basketball players and the superb erotic sequence in the incubator that hovers between the beams and floor… Using a square stage, Archaos has solved the problem of framing the circus without a big top. Check and check! Chapeau!”
– JP Ch., Sud Ouest, 18 December 1997

“Game Over uses state-of-the-art technology for the filmed images, which are processed virtually, as well as for the lighting and sound. The lighting, conceived by Jean-Marie Prouvèze, is specially designed to match the virtual images. The sound system is more complex than that of a major concert, and sound is supplied by multiple sources placed throughout the space...”
– Katérina Flora, ‘Les écrans sur la scene’, Théâtre XXe Siècle, 1998