This summer the TOPIC has closed its creation residencies with the help of the Don Davel company, a company that was born from the passion for theater of Davel Puente Hoces, a traveling juggler, passionate about the circus, magic, object theater and scene in general.

Between 2014 and 2016 he was part of the historic French company Cirque Bidon, which still travels in horse-drawn carriages since 1974.

He currently participates in collective creations as a juggler and magician in France, Spain and Italy, which he combines with his creations, as is the case of the work he has been preparing at the TOPIC creation residency, an experience that, without a doubt, , I would repeat. “I think TOPIC is a perfect place to create and all members of the team are very grateful for the welcome and the provision of the facilities for our project. It is very important for artists to feel supported by institutions of this type.”

The show that the company has been creating in Tolosa is titled LIHED, which is the acronym for The Incredible Story of Elzear Duquette, a very eccentric character who in the 1970s went around the world carrying his own coffin on wheels, in which he slept, cooked and showered. “What attracted me to his story is that he did this with enormous optimism and at the age of 60. In his biography he tells how he never got discouraged, since the day he became aware that time is not infinite. That’s why the puppets we use are hourglasses,” says Davel.

The object and puppet theater are experiencing an explosion of creativity similar to that experienced by the new circus movement in the 80s and 90s and Don Davel is a clear exponent of this. “Many artists from other disciplines are becoming interested in the expressive potential of puppets and the animation of objects, learning from the great masters, and providing specific visions of our disciplines of origin. In my case, I come from the circus, and the fusion of the two disciplines allows me to give more emotional charge to the objects that I use to make circus acts and, at the same time, the puppets have a very wide range of action since they can “juggling and acrobatics knowing that I will catch them no matter how high I throw them”.