Crash Park: the life of an island

A mysterious island looms on the Onassis Stegi Main Stage from 28 to 30 December. Around us, ocean. Everything is possible here. Planes can get smashed to bits, mermaids and monsters can emerge from the waters, new states can be set up, new myths and legends can be born. Two years on from “The Melancholy of dragons”, with which he introduced himself to Greek audiences, Philippe Quesne returns to the Onassis Stegi with his latest production, "Crash Park: the life of an island" which fuses Homer's “Odyssey” with “Lost” and Jules Verne with a musical about exile and utopia.

A passionate collector of insects during his childhood and with a past in the visual arts and set design, Philippe Quesne always creates wondrous theatrical ecosystems. As he himself admits: “I often conceive a show by reflecting on landscapes or whatever micro-world I can immerse my performers in a place in which they will have to make life possible no matter what”. He has applied this logic to “Crash Park”, in which everything is performed by seven performers around the broken-off tale of a burning plane which has crash-landed on a desert island.

Credits

Concept, Direction & Set Design: Philippe Quesne
With: Isabelle Angotti, Jean-Charles Dumay, Léo Gobin, Yuika Hokama, Sébastien Jacobs, Thomas Suire, Thérèse Songue, Gaëtan Vourc'h
Assistant: François-Xavier Rouyer
Animals Costumes: Corine Petitpierre
Original Soundtrack: Pierre Desprats
Musical Excerpts: Shea & Jasha Klebe, Pan Sonic, Frank Martin, Riz Ortolani, Debussy, Daniel Johnston, Chopin, Delinquent Habit, Frank Sinatra…
Lights: Thomas Laigle, Michaël Nodin
Sound: Samuel Gutman
Stage Manager: Marc Chevillon
Stage Technician: Joachim Fosset
Dresser: Pauline Jakobiak
Dramaturgic Collaboration: Camille Louis
Film: César Vayssié
Assisting Camera: Małgorzata Rabczuk
Film Extras: Rodolphe Auté, Marc Chevillon, Yvan Clédat, Cyril Gomez-Mathieu, Erwan Ha Kyoon Larcher, Pauline Jakobiak, Thomas Laigle, Nicole Mersey, Mickaël Nodin, Sandra Orain, Perle Palombe, Martine Servain, Emilien Tessier, Carole Zacharewicz
Set and accessories construction: Ateliers Nanterre-Amandiers (Élodie Dauguet, Marie Maresca, Yvan Assael, Jérôme Chrétien)

Production: Nanterre-Amandiers

With support from the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès programme “New Settings”

Co-production: Théâtre National de Bretagne (Rennes), HAU (Berlin), Munchner Kammerspiele (Munich), Onassis Stegi (Athens)

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Actors, artists, musicians and a dog: this was the basic make-up of the Vivarium Studio, the theater group created by the artist and designer Philippe Quesne in 2003, with the founding objective of putting humanity on display as a species under laboratory conditions.

The wondrous and the microscopic, the everyday and the extreme, the theatrical lie and the truth of nature: this is the stable ecosystem in which Philippe Quesne stages his spectacles. Always set again the backdrop of a particular theme and set design, his performances are developed in collaboration with the performers during the rehearsal process.

The first production he directed, “La Démangeaison des ailes” (The itching of the wings, 2003), was a series of drills for take-offs and crash landings.

Following the domino principles, the last scene of any Philippe Quesne production brings into being the first scene of the production that follows. And it was in accordance with this logic that “Crash Park” came about after “Welcome To Caveland” (2016), a spectacle about the lives of seven moles in the bowels of the Earth.

In “The Melancholy of the Dragons”, the work with which the Onassis Stegi introduced Philippe Quesne to Greek audiences in 2016, the action takes place in an alpine landscape with the rusty old van of a group of middle-aged head bangers as its backdrop.

About Philippe Quesne

Philippe Quesne (b. 1970) used to collect and observe insects as a child. But he didn't become an entomologist. Instead, he made use of his studies in the visual arts, first as a set designer for theater and opera, but also for art exhibitions, and then as a director and set designer with the Vivarium Studio (which means "the aquarium" or "glass menagerie"), the company he founded.

Since 2014, he has been artistic co-director of the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandier, a centre dramatique national.

In addition to performances intended for the theatrical stage, Quesne also creates site-specific performances and artistic interventions in public space and natural landscapes. For example, “Des Expériences” was performed in forests and lakes, as well as rubbish dumps and art galleries!

Philippe Quesne tours internationally, performing “La Démangeaison des ailes” (2003), “Des expériences” (2004), “D'après nature” (2006), “L'Effet de Serge” (2007), “La Mélancolie des Dragons” (2008), “Big Bang” (2010), “Swamp Club” (2013), “Next Day” (2014), “Caspar Western Friedrich” (2016), and “Welcome to Caveland!” (2016) from Avignon, Vienna, Berlin and Brussels to New York, Seattle, Brazil, Mexico and Hong Kong, winning honors along the way (including an Obie Award in 2008).