Gisèle Vienne and Puppetry Arts

Gisèle Vienne joined the École nationale supérieure des arts de la Marionnette in 1996, then founded her own company, pursuing all aspects of the puppeteering art in Showroomdummies (2001-2020), a collaboration with Étienne Bideau-Rey, and The Ventriloquists Convention (2015), presented at FTA in 2016. A visual artist, photographer, and director, she has also continued her explorations beyond the stage, including the publication of the book/CD set Jerk // Through Their Tears (2011)—a companion piece to Jerk (2008), a show performed at La Chapelle in 2010. Along with her trusted collaborator, author Dennis Cooper, she served as joint commissioner of the exhibition Read into My Black Holes at the Centre Pompidou in 2012, and in 2021, she launched a seminar, “Travailler la violence,” with Elsa Dorlin at the Centre national de la danse in Pantin.

Altering and distorting space and time, the basic elements making up our experience of the world, Vienne unearths taboos, inhibitions, and archetypes in works such as Kindertotenlieder (2007), presented at Usine C in 2014. Using rave culture as a framework, Crowd (2017) challenges our definitions of the archaic and the contemporary by re-establishing ritual and trance as meaningful experiences that are essential to our social interactions. For the performances of L’étang at FTA, Vienne is supported by feminist actress Adèle Haenel and dancer Henrietta Wallberg, with whom the director previously worked on Crowd. L’étang also pays tribute to the late Kerstin Daley-Baradel, a member of the original cast who was a long-time collaborator and inspiration for Vienne.

In 1995, along with Lorraine Côté, he founded Le Sous-marin jaune, a puppet theatre company for adults led by the now-legendary Loup bleu. Laprise focuses mainly on theatre directing and music. His first one-man show, Otomonogatari / L’Éveil d’une oreille (2015), explored the world of Japanese experimental music. He is a professor at UQAM’s École supérieure de théâtre.