Barbara Sylvain collects ‘fathers’ like an entomologist collects butterflies, and she offers to play for us each evening with a new and different man from her collection.

For the audience, it's a performance with an actress and an amateur, a man somewhere between 65 and 75 years of age. He plays the father, she the daughter. Together they explore the father/daughter relationship, moving step by step towards the heart of her subject: the relationship between a daughter and a father who's disappeared from her life. The actress plays with her amateur partner live (and unrehearsed) on stage, composing new scenarios, putting on and shedding bizarre characters, each tormented, each in their own way striving for redemption. The actress walks this tightrope over a schizophrenic abyss, and accepts with a healthy dose of humour her own plight and part in this fantasy.

Pater lays bare the family unit, bravely exposing the imperfect bonds, the quirky and shameful secrets which can hold a family together, or tear it apart.

Conception/script/performance : Barbara Sylvain
Staging collaboration : Craig Weston
Dramaturgy : Marie Henry
Artistic cooperation : Lula Béry
Scenography : Valère Le Dourner
Images : Val Le Dourner, Gaspard Le Dourner, Barbara Sylvain
Lights & Technical direction : Jérôme Dejean
Costumes : Charlyne Misplon
Video : Val Le Dourner/ Gaspard Le Dourner/Barbara Sylvain
Sales : Oh my god asbl

Coproduction with the support of la Maison de la Culture de Tournai, JOLT International Festival, (UK), Wallonie Bruxelles Théâtre /Danse, Wallonie Bruxelles International, SACD, Centre National des Ecritures du spectacle, La Chartreuse - Villeneuve lez Avignon (FR), Tournées Art & Vie- Service de Diffusion, Centre Culturel du Brabant Wallon, BAMP, Ad Libitum, Théâtre de la Roseraie, Théâtre Les Tanneurs / Bruxelles (administrative résidence) & Cultural Ministry of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.