Returns Department

Young audience: theater, circus, robotics and puppets

The show is recommended for children aged 4 to 10 and their adults.

A Les Soeurs kif-kif production

Twin sisters welcome you to the Returns Department, where merchandise returned by disgruntled consumers is inspected. With a love of their work, they handle complaints like opening boxes of candy. On their conveyor belt, they discover all sorts of dysfunctional items and manufacturing errors. Little by little, the temptation to play with the merchandise takes hold of them, but the objects haven't said their last word!

Combining physical theater, circus, robotics and puppetry, Département des retour is a playful look behind the scenes of object production. Through non-conforming products, the characters find the freedom to create and evolve.

A word from the artists about this show: Children's creative space is reduced when their toys have only one function.

Likewise for adults, our objects generally have a single function. In a way, we're creators that the industry turns into consumers. In the ideal factory of the kif-kif sisters, the opposite happens. We play music with toys, fight with a limp badminton racket and train little mechanical dogs. The show proposes another way of approaching life, through play and laughter. Département des retours is a cabinet of ordinary curiosities, a playful look at the absurdity of modern life. Hopefully, it will encourage spectators of all ages to remember that the human being precedes the object, and can do with it as he or she pleases.

We're identical twin sisters, still closely linked by the umbilical cord. Since 2007, we've been imagining and directing shows for public spaces and the stage. Our creations are playful, offering humor that is both tender and intelligent, accessible to children and adults alike. Multidisciplinary, our work interweaves theater, music, circus, robotics, puppetry and performance. Our creations have been presented over 1000 times in 20 countries. Our career has led us to create for organizations such as the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec and Cirque du Soleil, and to perform at numerous international festivals in Europe, Asia, North America and Latin America.