2004 · Place des Héros · Bernhard · Nauzyciel · Vigner (EN)
In December 2004, VIGNER designs the sets for PLACE DES HÉROS by THOMAS BERNHARD, directed by ARTHUR NAUZYCIEL, for the entrance of the Austrian author into the repertory of the Comédie-Française. VIGNER for the first time designs a set for another stage director. The style is unmistakeably his own: his characteristic use of space, a décor that is anything but realistic and leads us into the realm of painting.
Inspired by the Viennese avant-garde movement Wiener Werkstätte and his intimate knowledge of the city, he chooses dark colours inherent in this ‘testamentary’ work in BERNHARD’s oeuvre - death, the Book, religion. The open space blends into an eerie negative of a building by HOFFMANN, one of the members of Wiener Werkstätte, a fitting vessel for the music of THOMAS BERNHARD’s language.
"The theatre is a timeframe where phantoms come to life."
ÉRIC VIGNER
"Work on the curtain as both an object and a - surmountable or insurmountable - border constituted a quest for theatrical means of expression, as it did in the case of the bamboo curtain for LA BÊTE DANS LA JUNGLE or the one made of thousands of multicoloured glass beads for SAVANNAH BAY. The setting I designed for Bernhard’s PLACE DES HÉROS was conceived in this continuity. Actually, my work again and again explores the same questions: what means do I have to use to pass through images to the innermost heart of things? How can I turn a text into architecture? How can I make a text theatre? How does one build a living body out of the text, and how can one involve the listening spectator in the very process that goes on on stage? How can one come to grips with all the stories, all the situations, all the images that are elicited by the text ?"
ÉV
© Photography : Alain Fonteray
Texts assembled by Jutta Johanna Weiss
Translation from the French by Herbert Kaiser
© CDDB-Théâtre de Lorient
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