THEATRE – INTERNATIONAL CO-PRODUCTION
4 August
PHILIPPE QUESNE
The Garden of Delights
French director and visual artist Philippe Quesne, renowned for his visually arresting and iconoclastic performances, has repeatedly fascinated Greek audiences. Following his dystopian yet also gently scathing Farm Fatale, which captivated the Peiraios 260 visitors last year and was centred around climate change, this year he takes over the Odeon of Herodes Atticus stage with an Athens Epidaurus Festival co-production inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s Renaissance painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (ca 1500). The central panel of this Biblical, quasi-psychedelic – if viewed through a modern perspective – triptych depicts a panorama of unusual figures engaged in inconceivable erotic acts against the backdrop of a fantastical natural landscape. Meanwhile, the Garden of Eden and the punishments of Hell are depicted on the left and right panel respectively. Much like Bosch, Quesne conjures an allegorical feast for the eyes, a dreamlike scenery walking a fine line between utopia and dystopia, bliss and lust, the enigmatic and the grotesque, reminiscent of an amusement park. Eternal pleasure may, after all, be the punishment.
Quesne’s phantasmagoria will be adapted by the artist for the Odeon in a performance that shall bring the Athens Festival programme to a triumphant close in the beginning of August.
Concept – Directing – Set design Philippe Quesne • Set design collaboration Elodie Dauguet • Dramaturgy collaboration Éric Vautrin • Costume design TBA • Assistant directors Marion Schwartz, François-Xavier Rouyer • Sound Janyves Coïc • Lighting design Jean-Baptiste Boutte • Props Mathieu Dorsaz • Technical collaboration Marc Chevillon • Stage managers François Boulet, Martine Staerk • Set technician Ewan Guichard • Video technician Matthias Schnyder • Lighting technician Cassandre Colliard • Set build Ateliers du Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne • Production and touring Judith Martin, Elizabeth Gay • Production for Vivarium Studio Charlotte Kaminski • Cast Jean-Charles Dumay, Laurent Gérard alias Èlg, Léo Gobin, Sébastien Jacobs, Elina Löwensohn, Nuno Lucas, Isabelle Prim, Thierry Raynaud, Gaëtan Vourc’h • Production Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, Vivarium Studio • Co-production Tangente St. Pölten, Festival für Gegenwartskultur (AT) - Théâtre du Nord, Centre Dramatique National Lille Tourcoing Hauts-de-France - Maison de la Culture d’Amiens, Pôle européen de création et de production - Centro dramatico nacional (ES) - MC93, Maison de la culture de Seine-Saint-Denis Bobigny - Le Maillon, Théâtre de Strasbourg, Scène européenne – Kampnagel (Hambourg, DE) - Festival NEXT – Les 2 Scènes, Scène nationale de Besançon - Athens Epidaurus Festival (GR)