This is my telling of the Medieval Story that has been told to me in different variations by Aitor Baussauri and Phillipe Gaulier
(possibly can be attributed to Jaques Lecoq?)
In the medieval village, there was a high wall.
Inside the village lived the people of god, safe behind their wall.
There was a king, there were priests, there were farmers, and there were traders. Everyone had their place in the order of things. The king, who sat atop his throne, closest to god, was in charge of maintaining the order of this world, and did so with great delight, and often great cruelty. He was, as many were in this village, a bastard. He ruled from fear while hiding behind god’s endorsement.
Beyond the wall lay a swamp.
Every so often, someone would be born into the village who was frightening, who seemed not
of god.
Or perhaps a traveler would arrive from a distant place. Those who were different, who were threatening in any way to the people of the village, the people of god, would be labeled unholy before being swiftly cast away to the swamp.
And there they were forced to live, fighting for their survival, but finding strength in each other and pleasure in denouncing the “godly" people who had condemned them and sent them away.
They would stay up all night, cackling and laughing at the idiocy of the rules and customs of the village. They would chortle and howl as they mocked the idiots who believed they were touched by god.
Once a year, this ordered world was upset by the Carnival. The days were turned upside down, festivities commenced, and the stone seeming natural hierarchy of things became a little
wobbly.
The king would host a performance. The king would open the gates of the city and invite the bouffons out from their swamp to perform for the people of the village. The king was pleased with himself. He knew the bouffons would sing and dance and give him a delightful show, because if at any moment he took a disliking to the swampfolk, he could simply wave his hand and have them shot with a bow and arrow, or burned at the stake, stoned, drowned, stretched, etc..
The bouffons knew this too. They knew their lives hang in the balance. But they also knew they had been given a sacred tool- a stage. A platform from which they could denounce the very people who forced them to suffer- right to their faces. But they would have to do so carefully, to avoid an instant death. So they worked together to make the most spectacular show.
They danced, spoke, made music, played games, and aimed their most toxic insults at those in the town who had spurned them. But they were smart enough to know when their presence made the audience grow cold and angry and could nimbly distract the potentially hostile crowd with another wondrous trick.
They went on like this, inviting the audiences fury, discomfort, delight and awe.
The bouffons went on like this, until the audience was roaring with laughter.
The people of god laughed harder and harder and harder at those who were so different and ugly and far from them. The king laughed the hardest. He laughed and laughed at the strange creatures. He laughed and laughed and laughed. And at the height of his laughter, something happened. He finally heard what the bouffons had been saying and doing with their whole performance. He realized he had been made to laugh not at them, but indeed at himself. He laughed even harder at this. The king laughed so hard he died of a heart attack.
The audience had laughed at the bouffons’ show as vengefully as the bouffons once did at them.
The swampfolk in their performance had been as graceful as god.