
POETIC CONSULTATIONS
A DOWN TO EARTH FESTIVAL-THÉÂTRE DE LA VILLE COLLABORATION
September 4 & 5, 2025
NYC-based immigrant artists, dancers, and musicians. Presented in English, Spanish, French, Wolof, and Chinese.
“Poetic Consultations” are individual conversations between artists and members of the public. Each consultation takes place around a table: it begins with a free conversation and ends with the artist reading or singing a poem or song specifically chosen for the participant. At the end of the consultation, the participant receives a personalized poem or song in the form of a “poetic prescription.” Consultations are free 20-minute experiences, individual meetings based on listening, on time given to the other, on a moment to share life, poetry, music and dance. Poetic Consultations is a new practice that rethinks the relationship between the public and the performer, imagined by Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, Director of the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, and playwright, poet, and novelist Fabrice Melquiot. NYC-based actors, musicians and dancers. A simple idea unfurls into a soothing ritual: listeners book appointments and actors call to talk for 20 minutes before reciting a poem inspired by the conversation and, finally, suggesting a poetic remedy prescribed specially for each participant. An unexpected meeting, face to face, in the flesh, between an actor, a musician, or a dancer and a person around poetry. Like the Telephone Consultation, the Face-to-Face Consultation begins with an exchange to get to know each other, but this time the scene is set. A table and two chairs create intimacy. Equipped with a collection of over 100 poems, invented on the model of a medical dictionary, the actor chooses a poem from what has been said, the dancer a choreography, the musician a melody.




Since the first lockdown, more than 200 French and international artists - actors, musicians, dancers - as well as several renowned scientists have united under the direction of Demarcy-Mota to offer Poetic Consultations, first by phone, but also as soon as possible, in person in public spaces, hospitals, schools, universities and social centers.