Flilippe Quesne is a 21st century director. The Vivarium Studio Theater Company celebrated its tenth birthday with the first night of Swamp Club in 2013. Quesne’s company first appearance at the Avignon Festival with the Serge Effect and La Mélancolie des Dragons turned into noticeable events showing new vectors in the development of European theater.
Swamp Club is a project indicating return of the Vivarium Studio to the theater arena after a three-year interval which followed the Big Bang project.
The Swamp Club is a center of arts placed in a volatile marshy landscape, an expurgatory and metaphysical place absorbing actors from all over the world and headed by a 70-year old director - possibly, a descendant of Robin Hood.
The place of action is a big house of Scandinavian type located next to a hill which one can go up, and a swimming pool where one can dip in. The visual part of Flilippe Quesne’s performance, as always, is mesmerizingly inventive in details.
The Swamp Club is blooming thanks to the work of a gigantic mole; however, at a certain point, the very existence of the center is impended by a threat.
In the case of the Swamp Club the plot of the story is clearer than in other, less verbalized Flilippe Quesne’s jobs. As the Director himself said, this time, the performance grew up in a different way. This performance is a symbol; to a big extent, its philosophy is outlined by the style of the site, stipulated by the simultaneous desires to mix languages and include a musical quartet in the performance, changing in each city where the performance will be shown and playing different pieces.
“Why did I choose this plot? This is an outcome of all our team’s travelling around the world, situations and people we have met. The look at the culture and what is happening to it is even straighter in this performance. The choice of a swampland and threats which are impending this center of arts are no fluke,” Flilippe Quesne acknowledges.
