2023-05-19 07:00:00
On the heights of Lausanne, the largest forest estate on the Swiss plateau offers the theater an ideal setting for awakening ecological awareness. With the support of the European Commission, seven international directors are invited to stage plays brought together under the title “Shared Landscapes”.
This content was published on May 19, 2023
Ghania Adamo
Land art: an already known artistic current. Born at the end of the 1960s, it uses nature (seaside, mountains, desert or oasis) and its material (sand, rock, trees or flowers) to enhance the earth through the creation, by artists, of sculptures often monumental. This art is of course practiced in the open air, its creators having wanted to leave the halls of museums to give their creations an ecological orientation.
Now here is the land art performative, applied to the theatre. This artistic expression has gained momentum with the Covid-19 pandemic, which has sharpened the ecological awareness of directors and actors. Some have also started to leave the closed rooms to create their pieces in the heart of nature, offering their audience the most beautiful of scenographies: an often breathtaking landscape.
“Shared Landscapes” is also the title of a large-scale project, set up by one of the two largest Swiss stages: the Théâtre de Vidy. On the heights of Lausanne, at a place called Chalet à Gobet, since May 14, seven pieces have been played, commissioned from seven artists or duos of artists, Swiss and international, who question our relationship to nature, reveal the beauty of it. this or on the contrary the harm that the human being might do to him. Seven plays given in a row, that is seven hours of spectacle within an immense Vaudois forest domain, lit by the vast plain of Mauvernay.
Actors and actresses at work in an unusual setting, the largest forest on the Swiss Plateau. © Sarah Imsand
The designers of this project? Stefan Kaegi, German-speaking director, founder of the Rimini Protokoll company, and Caroline Barneaud, producer at the Théâtre de Vidy. The two have been working for more than two years on the realization of their project, supported and partly financed by a flagship program of the European Commission, called “Creative Europe”. Culture is the driving force.
Prioritize peri-urban areas
“The seven pieces proposed lead the public to reflect on the environment in general, and on the place hosting the show, in particular, explains Caroline Barneaud. We have favored in our choice the peri-urban areas where agriculture is becoming more and more a place; where the cohabitation between human, animal and plant species becomes concrete. Chalet in Gobet, through which passes a main road, houses the complex of the Hotel School of Lausanne and an equestrian center, among others. That is to say the mixture of populations, which are not necessarily accustomed to going to the theater and even less to closely observe the magnificent nature that is offered to them.
Raise public awareness. Caroline Barneaud and Stefan Kaegi wanted to associate theatrical companies and institutions as well as several European countries with their project. “History of networking different partners, working at both a local and international level; to also create a cultural link between the host countries”, specifies Caroline Barneaud.
The two designers of the project, Caroline Barneaud and Stefan Kaegi. © Sarah Imsand
After Chalet à Gobet (until June 18), the artists and the public will meet once more in July at the Avignon Festival (France). “Shared Landscapes” will also be played in the countryside, a few kilometers from the City of the Popes. Then it will be Germany, in the very wooded land of Brandenburg, near Berlin, before a tour in 2024 which will pass through Slovenia, Portugal, Austria, Spain and Italy.
Nature and disability
The team of actors and actresses changes from one country to another. The plays are adapted to the local language. Stefan Kaegi explains: “We didn’t impose any framework on the directors, each of them was nourished by their own relationship to the countryside, and their personal vision of ecology. Example: the two Italians, Marco D’Agostin and Chiara Bersani who suffers from a problem of reduced mobility. Their play addresses the question of accessibility to the forest, in this case: how to approach it when you are in a wheelchair? A disability that pushes you to look at nature differently”.
The gaze, or rather its orientation: this is what interests Stefan Kaegi, who is also the author of one of the pieces. Its audience will attend the show, lying on the ground, on their backs, headphones on, listening to the pre-recorded exchanges between a forester, a meteorologist, a psychoanalyst… “Here, the spectator does not see his neighbors, as in a room , his gaze is therefore focused on the sky, the treetops… and his listening on the words broadcast by his helmet. Words and images intertwine to draw an unexpected landscape”, comments Stefan Kaegi.
Music is also part of the pieces performed in the heart of nature. © Sarah Imsand
The revolt of the planet
Another example is the piece by the Spanish-Swiss company El Conde de Torrefiel, co-directed by Tanya Beyerler from Ticino. She and her companion, Pablo Gisbert, wrote a text, which is projected on a large LED screen, installed in the middle of a plain. Nature is the main character here who, over the course of an initially calm then increasingly fiery monologue, addresses a fortunate humanity, because born on a generous planet from which it has largely benefited without ever showing gratitude.
Tanya Beyeler expects audience reactions to the global uprising the play tells of to vary from country to country. She knows Switzerland and Spain very well, where she has been established for 20 years. “The Swiss have a cordial connection with nature, the Spaniards a brutal relationship. The former hold out their arms to her, while the latter turn their backs on her, she confides. Well, we must recognize that things are changing; but all the same, in the Iberian mentality, the countryside is a place of life reserved for the poor. The rich man lives in town”.
Changing imaginaries
What impact will the “Shared Landscapes” have on the public? Can a theatrical project, however ambitious it be, change mentalities where political attempts have failed? “We don’t claim to convince all of our audiences,” replies Caroline Barneaud. On the other hand, we believe that this project can contribute to a gradual change in imagination, and subsequently to the emergence of a new awareness and new environmental behaviors”.
Text proofread and verified by Samuel Jaberg
In accordance with JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
1684480719
#performing #arts #great #ally #nature
