La Mélancolie des Dragons
Phillipe Quesne
Dates
Tickets
Venue
Time & Date
Information
Tickets
EARLY BIRD from 1 JAN until 28 JAN: 13 - 20 €
Full price: 15 – 18 – 28 €
Reduced & Small groups (5-9 people): 11 - 14 – 22 €
Large groups (10+ people): 9 - 12 - 20 €
People with disabilities: 5 €
Companions: 10 €
Unemployed: 5 €
Duration
1 hour and 20 minutes
Age guidance
14+
Introduction
Hard-rock Disneyland. What are a heavy metal band, a car and a granny doing on the top of a snow-topped mountain? The miracle-worker extraordinaire of the French avant-garde makes his Greek debut with an iconoclastic production in praise of friendship.
Photo © Martin Argyroglo
A visual anarchist and an alchemist of the gaze, the ground-breaking French director and visual artist Philippe Quesne comes to Greece for the first time on the invitation of the Onassis Stegi. The tragi-comic spectacle he brings with him is extraordinarily beautiful,
unexpectedly humorous, and gives the word ‘melancholy’ a more positive make-over.
How much poetry can there be in an unexpected meeting in the middle of nowhere between a down-at-heel band and an old lady? ‘An infinitude’, would seem to be the reply from Quesne, who has enjoyed triumphs at the Avignon and Vienna festivals since 2003 and who continues to shake the theatre to its foundations with the extravagantly iconoclastic power of his productions.
In “The Melancholy of Dragons”, a battered old Citroën breaks down in a glade in the middle of an otherworldly, snow-covered landscape. There are six middle-aged headbangers in the car. An old lady who knows her way round an engine offers to repair their car for them. To thank her, they create a ‘recreational park’ with everything in their hard rock repertoire.
Together, the alpine landscape, the hard rockers with the Metallica T-shirts and the rock ballad “Still Loving You” by the Scorpions mixed with mediaeval cantatas, form a surrealistic hymn in praise of the human race’s most bizarre achievement: friendship.
Pop culture meets the metaphysical, cheap stage effects combine with highbrow Beckettian abstraction, melancholy with optimism and the theatrical lie with the truth of Nature: This is the ecosystem to which Quesne returns again and again to create his bizarre, oneiric and paradoxically funny spectacles.
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Photo © Martin Argyroglo
Premiered in 2008 at Festwochen, Vienna, “La Mélancolie des dragons” received raving reviews in international press:
“An absolute masterpiece!”
– “De Morgen” newspaper (Belgium)
“What mostly pervades the production is an unprecedented rendering of the absurd, ingenious and funny at the same time.”
– “De Standaard” newspaper (Belgium)
“A moment full of joy and pleasure, so rich and pointless as the life that inspired it.”
– “Le Soir” newspaper (Belgium).
“The incredible naturalness of actors, the poetic innovation and the humor which never turns into cynicism make ‘La Mélancolie’ a disarming and powerful spectacle”
– deredactie.be
Actors, visual artists, musicians and a dog: this is the main composition of Vivarium Studio, the theater company created in 2003 by the visual artist and set designer Philippe Quesne.
Born in 1970, Philippe Quesne used to collect and observe insects as a child. However, he never became an entomologist. Instead, he made good use of his studies in visual arts initially as a set designer for the theater and the opera as well as art exhibitions, and later as a director and set designer for Vivarium Studio: a company for which set design functions as an ecosystem into which the actors immerse themselves. Principle aim of Vivarium Studio (which means “aquarium” and/or “glass menagerie”) is to expose humans to the conditions of a microbiological laboratory.
In creating each new production, Quesne follows the principles of domino: the last scene of each work becomes the first of the next one. In this logic, “La Mélancolie des dragons” is born out of “L’Effet de Serge” (“Serge’s Effect”), a production whose main character constantly devises microscopic effects with whatever he finds in his apartment.
For “L’Effet de Serge” (2007), Quesne received the Obie Award at Under the Radar Festival (New York).
Since 2014 Quesne has been artistic co-director of Nanterre-Amandiers, Centre dramatique national.
Apart from theatre productions, Quesne also creates site-specific performances and artistic interventions in public spaces or natural landscapes. For instance, “Des Expériences” was performed in forests and lakes as well as landfills and galleries!
In “Enchantillions” (2008), the stage is a storefront window. Passersby-turned-spectators click the mouse of an iMac giving instructions to the actors who are on display.
Philip Quesne has toured internationally from Avignon, Vienna, Berlin and Brussels to New York, Seattle, Brazil, Mexico and Hong Kong with the following productions of Vivarium Studio: “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), and “Next Day” (2014).French Institute (31 Sina st.)
Thursday 25 February | 19:00
A conversation with Philippe Quesne
Onassis Stegi
Saturday 27 February
- Theater workshop by Philippe Quesne
- After performance talk with Philippe Quesne
Credits
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