Published on March 21, 2026 at 10:55
After B. Traven, D’autres Mondes, and l’horizon des événements, the playwright and director Frédéric Sonntag is back at Le Trident in Cherbourg (Manche) from March 24 to 27, 2026, with his brand new creation, Biosphère.
Between documentary and fiction, the play is inspired by the Biophère 2 experiment conducted in the 1990s, where eight people lived in a closed ecosystem replicating Earth for two years to achieve self-sufficiency.
“During a five-week creative workshop at AtelierCité at the Théâtre de la Cité, the national scene of Toulouse, I began to imagine a very freely inspired fiction based on this event and space exploration missions on Earth.” – Frédéric Sonntag
A spacebound claustrophobic experience
The play tells the story of an adventure that begins with the encounter between a wealthy young man and a group of artists united by their common desire to create a utopian space. In 2025, in the Hautes-Pyrénées, five people prepare to lock themselves in a futuristic, closed, and self-sufficient habitat, the biosphere.
This biosphere, at the intersection of art, science, and ecology, is a place to rethink our relationship with living things. However, obstacles arise: strange phenomena manifest inside the biosphere, and as the oxygen levels drop, the ecosystem deteriorates, shattering the unity of the group.
Biosphère follows the genre of space-bound claustrophobia, questioning the codes of this genre entirely by engaging with a series of references to iconic works like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, and Solaris. But this claustrophobic simulation on Earth is a performance, a vast game, albeit a serious one.
Biosphère explores the imagination of space exploration, the fantasy and desire to inhabit space, a concept that, despite its colonizing and anthropocentric dimensions, deserves deconstruction but also unfolds a sensitive poetics, carrying a desire for adventure and exploration, and a questioning of humanity’s place in the universe.
In the midst of these ambivalences, a counter-program takes shape: “It would then be both about dismantling all the encapsulated logics and making other ways of connecting to the cosmos heard,” adds Frédéric Sonntag.
Parallel to this performance, the cinema Le Palace will screen Stéphane Lafleur’s film, On dirait la planète Mars, on March 23, 2026, at 8:30 pm, in partnership with the Agora association. This screening will be followed by a discussion with Frédéric Sonntag.
By our correspondent Karen PENVERN
March 24 and 25, 2026 at 8:30 pm, March 26 at 7:30 pm, and March 27, 2026, at 8:30 pm. Ticket prices range from 8.50 to 23 euros. Suitable for ages 13 and above (duration: 1 hour 50 minutes).
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