Aurélia LÜSCHER
Stage Director

Aurélia received a creation grant to help her with her play Les Corps Incorruptibles.

What is your artistic background?
I began my theatrical training at the Geneva Conservatory and continued it at the École de la Comédie de Saint-Étienne between 2012 and 2015. During my training there, I met́ my colleagues. With writer and director Guillaume Cayet, I swiftly founded the company Le Désordre Des Choses, feeling the necessity to take on subjects anchored in the current reality. We worked together on several projects before taking on separate aesthetics, but our shows still have in common that they blend documentary and fiction, fable and reality, constantly drawing on investigation and analysis. To do this, we surround ourselves with thinkers and researchers so that we can really get to the heart of our subjects. The company defends decentralised, public theatre, bringing bodies, voices and ideas that are often absent from the theatrical stage. With this same logic in mind, we set up the company on an organic farm in the Puy-de-Dôme region of Auvergne. We work on several scales, creating shows for dedicated venues and others to be performed on the road, in order to reach out to diverse audiences. Alongside its productions, the company tends to run cultural education projects (connected with the subjects addressed in its shows) in prisons, theatre conservatories, amateur workshops and various associations. 

Les Corps Incorruptibles, which premiered in March 2024 at the Studio Théâtre de Vitry, is my latest creation. It is the 2022 winner of the Le Réel Enjeu production and dissemination scheme and is supported by the Porosus endowment fund and the Fondation d'Entreprise Hermès (within Hermès’ Transforme festival). The project examines the management of mortal remains in the West, mixing artistic practices in a constant back-and-forth between the visual arts and theatre, performance and fiction. 

This exercise between the visual arts and theatre, between matter and words, stems from practices that I am developing in parallel, such as photography, ceramics, moulding, etc. My aim is to offer audiences a world that is part theatre, part performance and part installation. Within this hybrid production framework, I can take on the role of investigator, author, scenographer, builder and actor – all at the same time.

In 2018, with Marie-Ange Gagnaux, Clara Bonnet, Itto Mehdaoui and Florence Verney, I founded the Collectif Marthe, based in Saint-Étienne. As part of the collective, we write, act, direct and build from a feminist perspective, taking theoretical and non-theatrical works as our starting point. The Collectif Marthe is a place where we learn from each other, where we always experiment, without any hierarchy, and sharpen our view.

How do you view your profession today?
Like most workers in the performing arts, I'm extremely worried about the direction the cultural economy is taking in France. I think we will find real solutions through the concept of collectivity.

How do you see yourself in five years? In 10 years?
I see myself managing a funeral cooperative, living between Switzerland (where I grew up) and France, the country I love. I will continue enjoying theatre and visual arts, creating hybrid and, I hope, unclassifiable forms, with friends whom I love and who give me confidence.

This interview was conducted in 2025
Photography credit: Isabelle Chapuis