Aurélia LUSCHER et Guillaume CAYET
Stage directors

Aurélia and Guillaume received a production grant for their play BABAR. 

What is your artistic background ?
Aurélia : I grew up in Geneva in a family of actors and I always wanted to do theatre. I had a period of hesitation during which I decided to turn towards thanatopraxy. But just as I was about to give up theatre, I entered the Comédie de Saint Etienne, which is why, for me, the relationship with the living and the concrete is always very important in theatre. For me it's a ritual: the ritual of the living over the dead. Theatre is life at work.

Guillaume : I grew up in Les Vosges. My trajectory was fairly straightforward. I was influenced by the forest, by amateur theatre, by the feeling of always being on the periphery. And then I discovered the faculty, university theatre, and then writing, and then Ensatt, and then Gabily, and then Kroetz, authors like that, and then thinkers. I believe that my career path is above all made up of drifting movements rather than anything else.

How do you see your profession today ?
There are several currents in our profession, and today the dominant current (fashion, bourgeois ideology, entertainment) is far too dominant. Dissent is no longer the order of the day. Today, theatre is too much excluded from the political reality, it’s just centred around its own caricature. New talent, that which is emerging, must be discovered, it must be stamped with the seal of "new discovery". We reproduce the societal model we criticise. Everything happens in Paris. Everything happens with men, white men. Everything happens with directions, with broad outlines, everything happens with commodified manifestos. Too little real thought and too much empty contemplation. Everything happens with the idea of a fantasy public. The profession is dying of its own sclerosis, so we need to be concrete. That's what we want. But how can we be concrete without reference to the earth? Without relation to the other? Without relation to the world?

How do you see yourself in 5 years ? In 10 years ?
We are already trying to "see" ourselves tomorrow by understanding how we were yesterday, trying to learn from yesterday. It seems impossible for us to determine history. We can only postulate that we will be moved by it and that our place in five years, in 10 years, will be largely independent of us.

This interview was conducted in 2017
Photo credit: Antonin Amy-Menichetti