Cabaret at Omnius – Sexual Nocturne

The Sexual Nocturne is a Czech surrealist poem by Vítězslav Nezval, written in the 1930s.
The poet recounts the nocturnal wanderings of a young high-school student who, in the course of the night and the places he passes through, has his first erotic experience. The discovery of desire mingles with confusion, curiosity and the poetry of the nocturnal city.
The two actors, Aimée Sara Bernard and Olivier Pauls, and musician-composer Bruno Grégoire, create a poetic show, constructed like a surrealist cabaret: a sequence of tableaux, with music, songs, spoken voice and a 1930s atmosphere filtered through a dream. The Surrealists loved detour, metamorphoses and shifts from one universe to another. They played with texts as if they were living matter. Altering a surrealist poem to turn it into a cabaret number is not to disrespect it, but rather to extend its freedom, to give it a new stage, while retaining its irrational spirit, humor and surprise.