French composer and musician Jean-François Alcoléa created Right in the Eye way back in 2013, yet the multimedia experience that mixes live music played to the films of Georges Méliès has endured, gaining traction at festivals like the Edinburgh Fringe, and continuing to tour the world many times, resulting in hundreds of performances. Now, it’s coming to Arroyo Grande.
Around the world and back
The Clark Center hosts a performance of French composer and musician Jean-François Alcoléa’s stunning multimedia event Right in the Eye, which mixes live music and the seminal silent films of Georges Méliès, on Sunday, Feb. 22 (2 p.m.; all ages; $19 general, $7 students and children).
Though not many people other than cinephiles, film students, and people who saw Martin Scosese’s 2011 film Hugo are familiar with the work of Georges Méliès—a French filmmaker, actor, magician, and toymaker—he’s truly a worthy subject.
“This is the very, very early beginning of cinema, you know, and I wanted to bring up these very old movies because I really love the designs and everything from this period related to the film,” Alcoléa said during a recent Zoom call. “The idea was to create a whole thing with images and my music.”
Alcoléa estimates Méliès made around 550 films, but no one knows for sure “since he burned all his films,” Alcoléa noted. Thankfully, many of them were saved or copies recovered and restored.
“I went through something like 400 films, and I watched them several times without any music, just images,” Alcoléa explained. “I chose 11 of them. Watching all these films, I highlighted three different kinds of films he created.”
Alcoléa chose science fiction films like A Trip to the Moon, but he also chose from Méliès’ documentarian period and films representing Méliès’ background as a magician, with illusions—what Alcoléa called his “funny films.”
“Regarding these three categories, I wanted to highlight his whole creativity, and I choose the films, and I scaled a kind of frame, and through this frame, the audience is embarking on a unique and amazing journey.”
The show runs about 75 minutes, and its three onstage musicians—Alcoléa on keyboard and melodica; Fabrice Favriou on drum and guitar; and Thomas Desmartis on keyboard and percussion—also play a wide variety of other instruments like aquaphone, music box, saucepans, an inner tube, chimes and bells, spoons, glockenspiel, plastic plates, a set of circular saw blades, miscellaneous metal tubes, theremin, crystal glasses, and more.
“I very often get [audience] feedback, like, ‘What were these sounds? Where did they come from? I didn’t have the time to watch every time to see what happened everywhere onstage to see where all these sounds are coming from,’” Alcoléa smiled.
Like Méliès, an innovative pioneer of early cinema who invented all kinds of camera tricks to create his films, Alcoléa is a sonic magician, creating unusual sounds that leave his audience spellbound and full of wonder.
“What was very important to me was to create a whole thing, and not just the music on the film, but a whole thing,” Alcoléa reiterated. “I wanted to give a very specific identity to each film, so what I did with the compositions, with the scores I created was create this journey you’re going on. And regarding the instruments and sounds, you have something like layers, you know? Méliès created this on the screen, and you can have the same thing with music. Whether the sound is coming from the [musicians on] stage or the speakers, meaning the sound design, it gives you a different understanding of the images, exactly like what Méliès did with his characters and the journeys—which are often related to animation.”
The idea for Alcoléa is to create an audience experience, something more than watching a film or attending a concert. Something transformative.
“I play with different contrasts, and, also, since the images and the designs are very rich and flourishing, I try to go create a kind of mural. I like to say the music is as imaginative as the images are.”
He also believes that seeing Méliès’ creations accompanied by his music changes how audiences perceive the films.
“I think so in the sense that it’s not just music and film. It’s all parts together, and when I say all parts, there are interactions between the stage and screening, but also the stage and the audiences as well. What’s very important to me is not just to present the show as musicians playing their parts and the screening, what I imagine is the audience embarking on this kind of journey and the kind of connection we can make during the show. Not just to understand, but to live, to experience something really new and unique.”
The three musicians are all virtuosos, and while there are small places where improvisation might occur, because they’re accompanying films, they have to hit precise cues.
“We have a conductor, and the conductor is the images,” Alcoléa quipped. “We need to be with the characters. However, there are moments in between the films, for instance, where you have improvisations, and during the films, there is a part where you might have improv, but we need to be with the images.”
As he was developing his show, Alcoléa did a lot of research over years and even met Méliès’ living family members. He wanted “to better understand the guy and how he created, so that helped me to think about him, to be with him, build with him, to better understand his mind, his way to create.”
One family member who’s seen the show was Méliès’ great granddaughter, who in Alcoléa’s words was “rude” when they first met, telling him she only had a few minutes to talk and asking him what he planned to do with the films. The few minutes turned into hours, and then a few days later she called.
“She said, ‘I’m intrigued about the way you’re working. I’ve never heard of any people working like you. I would like to discover your show,’ so I said, ‘Look, the premiere is in a couple weeks. You will be my guest, OK?’ After the show, she came into my arms and she said, ‘He would have loved it.’
“It’s not just a show. It’s something to experience.” ∆
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Health & Wellness 2026.