The film L'enfant sauvage (1970) by François Truffaut acts as inspiration to carry out an action as part of the Communication classes taught by Xavier Olivé, where student Cesc Serrat plays the “Wild Man”, while the other students have to interact with him to help him while experimenting with the communicative event in a performance context.
The Communication class is interrupted by shouts; the students leave the classroom and find the “Wild Man” chained to the handrail of the building’s spiral staircase.
The “Wild Man” can only communicate with a few senses, such as touch and smell, and through cries, but without being able to articulate words.
In this context, the other students come up against their first challenge: they need to find how to establish a new language to be able to communicate with him.
To calm him down, they could offer him bread and water.
A second challenge posed is how to free him?
The key to the padlock is missing.
Finally, the Wild Man is free.
The Wild Man action is a tribute to the film L'enfant sauvage (1970) by François Truffaut, which tells the story based on real events of a wild child captured in a French forest and locked away in a research institute, where he goes from living like a free animal to become a being who is rejected, maltreated and seen as an inhuman phenomenon. Only Doctor Itard will do everything possible to turn him into a civilised being, but despite this, the child is lost between the desire to recover his former life and his new life alongside his new protector.
Actions such as the one proposed by Xavier Olivé and other teachers at EINA, which promoted the learning of artistic knowledge and skills through methodological alternatives to the master class and conventional practical activities, while fostering the direct participation of the student, became pioneering ideas in the field of teaching innovation.
Technical data
- Date: 1974.
- Place: Casa Manuel Dolcet, first EINA site.
- Idea: Action by Xavier Olivé.
- Participants: Cesc Serrat plays the Wild Man, with the participation of the students in the Communication Class in the 1974-1975 academic year.
Text: Rubén Alcaraz and Xavier Olivé.