‘Le théâtre et son double-fond’ (Theatre and its Double Bottom) is the first book entirely devoted to the work of the Compagnie du Zerep, comprising critical, thematic and even historical texts, as well as interviews.

Le Zerep reveals a spirit and poetic force with which everyone can identify in a fleeting moment—the time of the performance. Jokingly, one could say that the Compagnie du Zerep invented theatre for those who do not like theatre. The book is accompanied by extensive iconography of the shows and performances, as well as preparatory documents (sketches, drawings, archives, etc.).

It is a virtually exhaustive documentary corpus retracing the first twenty-five years of the Compagnie du Zerep’s existence and creativity through some thirty plays produced for the stage, performance, and also exhibitions, as one of the distinctive features of Zerep’s work is its relationship with the art object.

Zerep’s stage productions and installations are versatile in nature, more or less orthodox, bordering on the ‘offside’. This book aims to introduce and provide an in-depth view of a body of work that questions the contradictions of stage art by exploring its most paradoxical aspects, in a world where performance rubs shoulders with classical theatre, carnival mystery and academic virtuosity, momentary imperfection and the energy of life, the constraints of ‘memorisation’ and direct speech, art and entertainment.