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This project is the fruit of an encounter between a photographer and a playwright in a magical place in the south of France, the Bergerie de Berdine.

The Bergerie de Berdine is a humanitarian, collective and associative village that celebrated its fortieth birthday in 2013. Since its creation, the association has continually hosted people in great difficulty, especially drug addicts and alcoholics.
In 1977, the association bought a ruined hamlet consisting of around 15 houses, on the Courennes Plateau at Saint Martin de Castillon in the Vaucluse county.

Life has come back to the village over the years…. In rebuilding the village, the residents rebuild themselves and get back a taste for life thanks to the strict abstinence rule that is applied here.

Everyone contributes what he can to the rebuilding of the village, resulting in 65 dwellings, a refectory, kitchen, sanitary facilities; workshops for baking, honey production, cheesemaking, carpentry, pottery; a forge, sheep pens, cutting and delivery of firewood, growing fruit and vegetables…as well as offices, agricultural hangars and garages. Since it started, the Bergerie de Berdine has received on average 100-150 people per year.

This form of community life answers a real demand, giving those concerned a new start and a real reintegration into society. Berdine has a chapel where daily meetings are held, morning and evening, to monitor on-going activities and to give the opportunity to those need or want to speak. It is open to all and one can leave at any time. The only condition is to participate in the work of the community.

Luc Choquer, touched by the pure humanity and by the heart of this community, made several visits to Berdine during 2013 to photograph the residents.
These photos were the subject of an exhibition during the Rencontres Photographiques in Arles, 2013.

In parallel with this photographic work, acting on a suggestion by Jean-Louis Trintignant, a friend and neighbour of the Berdine community, some of the residents started acting under the direction of a Parisian playwright, Philippe Combenègre. He came to run a workshop several days per month which was attended by around twenty residents. Fifteen of them rehearsed Clérambard, a play by Marcel Aymé.

This play was presented as a one-off at Arles, in the same place and at the same time as the exhibition by Luc Choquer.

This encounter between photography and theatre helped to publicise the actions of the association, to present the residents of Berdine and to see them on stage, giving birth to a new artwork born of the arts of photography and theatre.