Vanessa LARRÉ
Stage director

Vanessa received a production grant for her play La Passe.

What is your artistic background ?
I began my training at the Geneva Conservatory, in my home town. Then I joined the CNSAD in Paris (1993-1996). After a career mainly as an actress, I undertook my first project on stage: Concert à la Carte(2010/11) by Franz Xaver Kroetz. My work continued during a research residency with a second play, Perspectives Ultérieures, by the same author, leading in 2014 to the creation of a diptych, Femmes d'Intérieur, composed of the first two pieces. In 2014, I co-adapted Virginie Despentes' essay King Kong Theory, which I directed in Paris.  

How do you see your profession today ?
For me theatre is a space for reflection, of the world, of thoughts and poetry. Art makes sense in the gap it creates and with the things it seeks to express. It is necessary that it transcends reality by working on form and material to create the distance through which the spectator can perceive a meaningful representation. For me, the work of staging is part of the search for these forms, new ones if possible, echoing or bridging with other modes of artistic expression. It is a work of sensitive sculpture. The human being and society remain at the heart of this observation laboratory.

How do you see yourself in 5 years ? In 10 years ?
I hope that I will continue to invent these spaces of representation, that I will have the freedom to imagine and create, that my faith will still be alive and that my collaborators and partners will accompany me in these fragile attempts.  

This interview was conducted in 2014
Photo credit: Emilie Arfeuil