Dramaturgical clinics
Created in 2016 as part of the Festival TransAmériques (FTA) in Montreal, the Les Cliniques Dramaturgiques project is an approach that aims to develop an open platform and strengthen links with local artistic practices. The Cliniques dramaturgiques offer creators of the performing arts - choreographers, authors, directors and performers - a space for support and exchange. Alongside the Festival programme, they encourage meetings between guest playwrights and local artists. This project aims to forge innovative links and encourage reflection on dramaturgical practices that are at once reflective, avant-garde and daring.
La Bâtie is delighted to be able to bring this project to Geneva, with the support of the FTA and Julie Gilbert, who is helping to set up a group of invited Swiss and international playwrights. During their stay they will attend performances, take part in daily meetings and take part in public activities: round table discussions, discussions with young artists resident at l'Abri.
Above all, they will be offering free dramaturgical consultations to Geneva artists. These one-to-one meetings, open to all (registration required), enable participants to delve deeper into their research and overcome the challenges of their creative processes. The Cliniques Dramaturgiques de Geneviève are designed to provide practical support to the local artistic community.
The Cliniques Dramaturgiques de La Bâtie will take place from 4 to 10 September, with the support of the Swiss Arts Council - Pro Helvetia and the Fluxum Foundation.
Registration is open: https://forms.gle/xBYW1tkccy9LwMWR8
The audience and the guest playwrights will also have the opportunity to take part in a participatory dialogue orchestrated by Anne-Laure Sahy, head of the AVDC (Association Vaudoise de Danse Contemporaine) and creator of "Dramaturgie, Danse, Dialogue", entitled Faire dramaturgie.
Guest dramaturge
Maya Zbib (Liban)
Maya Zbib is a theatre director, performer, writer, co-founder and co-artistic director of the Zoukak Theatre Company (2006) and Zoukak Studio (2008) in Beirut.
Her process-based work always starts from a personal desire or obsession and ends up with a more global political concern. She is interested in intimacy and hybrid forms of performativity and spatial relations. She uses play and theatricality to expose systemic violence and various forms of segregation.
Over the past 15 years, she has created over 20 shows with Zoukak Theatre Company, co-conceiving, co-writing, directing and sometimes co-directing works with her partner Omar Abi Azar. Her shows, including The Music Box, Silk Thread and He Who Saw Everything, have been presented at international festivals and venues around the world (Williams College, MUCEM, New York Public Library, Queen Mary University, ITFOK Festival, Southbank Center, Santiago a Mil, Théâtre des 13 Vents...).
Silvia Soter (Brésil)
Silvia Soter is a professor at the Faculty of Education at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ, a researcher and dance critic.
Since 2003, she has been developing art and dance projects at the Redes da Maré Free School of Dance, becoming its pedagogical director in 2011. She is also the author of the book Cidadãos dançantes: a experiência de Ivaldo Bertazzo com o corpo de dança da Maré (2007), the director of the film Corpo Aceso: experiências em educação somática para bailarinos e não bailarinos and co-author of the collection of educational books Projeto Arte and Percursos da Arte (2016).
She has been dramaturge of the Lia Rodrigues Companhia de Danças since 2002, and has also collaborated with artists such as Dani Lima, Marcelo Evelin and Jérôme Bel.
Edoxi Lionnelle Gnoula (Burkina Faso)
Edoxi Lionnelle Gnoula is a leading figure in Burkinabe theatre, with a dazzling career spanning more than two decades. She founded her own company, Compagnie Désir Collectif, in 2009. In collaboration with the Kala-Kala Théâtre company, she created and presented three shows of monologues, cementing her place in the theatrical world.
A multi-talented artist, in 2014 she published her autobiography Legs, offering an introspective look at her career. The following year, in 2015, she embarked on an ambitious project, personally funding the construction of the Pan-Tãabo Cultural Centre in Saaba. In 2019, she was twice nominated for the Maeterlinck de la Critique awards in Belgium, in the Best Actress and Best One Person Show categories, and won the Best One Person Show award.
Sara Vanderieck (Belgique)
After a career as a mediator and then production manager, Sara Vanderieck assisted Alain Platel with his creations Out of Context - pour Pina and C(H)OEURS. In 2012, she joined the artistic management of the Centre Culturel De Grote Post (BE). Since then, she has worked as a dramaturge on various productions by Serge Aimé Coulibaly, Lisi Estaras, Bára Sigfúsdóttir, Naïf Production, Kristien De Proost and Louise Vanneste.
Since 2018, she has been sharing her dramaturgical practice. She works within the ANKATA research platform in Bobo Dioulasso (BF). She is a member of the Cliniques Dramaturgiques (CA) dramaturgical platform. She is associate dramaturge at La Bellone (BE) from 2020 to 2022. She is a coach at PXL-Music (BE) and a guest lecturer at the Toneelacademie Maastricht (NL).
Jessica Huber (Suisse)
Jessica Huber is a dancer, choreographer and performer. She is a founding member of the mercimax performance/theatre collective with Karin Arnold.
Her artistic work oscillates between different worlds of performance: while her early projects were primarily choreographic, her later productions vary in form and expression. For her, what links the choreographer's work is the search for a practice and aesthetic of sharing and exchange. In this way, Jessica Huber has made collaboration with other artists her main method of working.
In recent years Jessica has begun to provide dramaturgical advice for the work of other artists, and since March 2020 she has been a member of the "Tanzhaus Zurich" dramaturgical pool.
Lidija Burcak (Suisse)
Lidija Burčak is a filmmaker and writer with a passion for autobiographical and intuitive storytelling. Between 2012 and 2020, she worked as a scribe on various Swiss film productions. She has also created short films such as Sarma & Skype (UK, 2017) and Broken Skin (UK, 2019), and made television documentaries such as Blinde Welt (CH, 2024) and Psychedelika in der Therapie (CH, 2023).
She has also published a book, Nöd us Zucker, containing diary entries from her teenage years. The book toured German-speaking Switzerland from 2022 to 2024 and won the cantonal recognition prize in 2023.
His practice is playful and experimental, incorporating trial and error to create stories that surprise and touch audiences.
Anaïs Clerc (Suisse)
Anaïs Clerc is an artist from Fribourg, a mediator and specialist in theatrical work with and for people with disabilities. She is involved in a number of projects on the independent Bernese stage, and assists with several productions at the Maxim Gorki Theater, among others.
Two of her projects (staging and text) were created at the Junge Bühne in Berne. For the last three years, her texts have been presented in a variety of settings, including the Vagantenbühne in Berlin, the night shelter at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg and the Autor:innentheatertage at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.
Antonio Villa (Argentine)
Antonio Villa currently lives and works in Buenos Aires. He is a theatre artist, visual artist, writer and cultural manager.
He has published several books and contributed as a writer to various specialist magazines and independent publications.
In the field of visual arts, he has participated in numerous exhibitions, both as an artist and curator, in institutions such as the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano in Buenos Aires, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, the Museo Rosa Galisteo, the Universidad Torcuato Di Tella, and in collaboration with galleries in Argentina, Peru and Italy. He organised his first solo exhibition La espada y la piedra (2018) at Munar Arte; El dragón y la bestia at the Bienal de Performance (2019); and ¡Laira, laila! at Constitución Galería in 2023.
In 2022, he created Chongo Triste, a play commissioned by the Teatro Nacional Cervantes, as dramaturge and director. He is the curator of the Gallinero collection of contemporary Argentine playwriting at Rara Avis Editorial. He is also co-director and curator of Constitución Galería .
Julie Gilbert (franco-suisse)
Julie Gilbert is a Franco-Swiss writer and scriptwriter who grew up in Mexico and is mainly interested in issues of work, exile, the invisible in society and the feminist struggle. For twenty years, she lived, had children and made films and radio programmes with film-maker Frédéric Choffat. At the same time, she wrote for the theatre, notably for directors/authors Antoinette Rychner, Hakim Bah, Karelle Ménine, Candice Martel and Jérôme Richier, for opera, including for composer Fred Frith, and led performances such as Les poèmes par téléphone and La Bibliothèque sonore des femmes.
She has also taught screenwriting as a part-time lecturer at the HEAD, was a member of the QD2A reading committee at the Théâtre des Quartiers d'Ivry and has worked as a dramaturge at the Théâtre de POCHE/GVE as well as for various companies in Switzerland, including Anna Lemonaki and 3615 Dakota. She is currently co-writing Anna Lemonaki's next show BLACK, scheduled for the Comédie de Genève in autumn 25. Finally, from 1 July 25, she will be co-director of the Théâtre du Loup in Geneva.
Photo : Dorothée Thébert