Based on the experience of Ron Jones
La troisième vague is a theatrical project conducted in a school setting. Over the course of three weeks, the company works with a group of students to create a participatory show on the mechanisms of a totalitarian regime, indoctrination, and brainwashing.
Our shared creation, La troisième vague, is based on a true story: an experiment on the mechanisms of a totalitarian system that took place in 1967 in a high school in California. Ron Jones was teaching a history class about the rise of Nazism. Quickly, he found himself confronted with his students' doubts: how was this possible? How could the Germans allow the Nazi Party to thrive and later proceed with the genocide of entire populations?
Ron Jones then organized an experiment. Without the students' knowledge, he indoctrinated them into a movement called The Third Wave, whose ideology was based on discipline, community, and action, while rejecting democracy, which was deemed too individualistic. We used this documentary material to conduct a participatory theatrical project in high school classes. The students are confronted with the mechanisms of brainwashing in a totalitarian system. The dramatic tension never lets up, and the students' awareness grows in a disturbing, moving, and contagious way.
THE CREATION PROCESS
For three weeks, the company works with a high school class to transpose this experience into a theatrical performance. Using the framework provided by the company, each new edition of the show is built with the collaboration of the students: from documentary research to writing, from rehearsals to performances. At the end of this residency, performances are organized within the school and then on the stage of the partnering theater.
Fueled by new documentary and poetic sources as well as the voices of the students, the show questions our free will within a community. It raises issues related to indoctrination and opens a dialogue with young people about current events, seeking to understand contemporary extremist movements.
THE ARTISTIC TEAM
Direction - Camille Daloz
Performance - Alexandre Cafarelli, Emmanuelle Bertrand & a group of students.
Playwright - Emmanuelle Bertrand, Alexandre Cafarelli, Camille Daloz
Lighting Design - Claire Eloy & Christophe Mazet
DURATION - 1h10
THE EDITIONS
No. 14 - May 2025, Théâtre de la Nacelle, Aubergenville
No. 13 - February 20 to March 10, 2023, La Coupole, MJC de Chamonix
No. 12 - November 2021, Le Parvis, Scène Nationale de Tarbes
No. 11 - Winter 2021 (cancelled due to COVID-19), L’astrolabe, Figeac
No. 10 - Spring 2020 (cancelled due to COVID-19), R.T.A. Festival, Laval (Québec)
No. 09 - Spring 2020, L’Agora, Le Crès
No. 08 - Fall 2019, NOVADO Festival, Théâtre des Deux points, Rodez
No. 07 - Spring 2019, Derrière le Hublot, L'Autre Festival, Capdenac
No. 06 - Spring 2019, Théâtre Sorano, Toulouse
No. 05 - Spring 2019, Printemps des Comédiens Festival, Montpellier
No. 04 - Spring 2018, Théâtre Jean Vilar, Montpellier
No. 03 - Spring 2017, Lycée Charles Gide in Uzès
No. 02 - Spring 2017, HTH CDN de Montpellier
No. 01 - Spring 2016, Le Périscope, Nîmes
