The penultimate outgoing flock of the Teintureries school performs in the show “Anthropologie 13” on Friday at the Crochetan theater in Monthey (VS). A performance that treats with freshness and delicacy the family heritage of each of these thirteen apprentice-performers.
Les Teintureries is a Lausanne theater school opened some thirty years ago by François Landolt and which will close its doors in September 2023. Pedagogically and artistically directed for ten years by actress and director Nathalie Lannuzel, the establishment has its own “color” (no pun intended) in the landscape of the French-speaking scene.
According to the pedagogue interviewed by RTS, this passes through a certain taste for otherness: “Otherness is not only the other or tomorrow is also yesterday. If a young student rediscovers a text who has gone through millennia, he is entitled to ask himself: is it me there? They are talking about me there? And in fact yes, the classic texts speak of the human being with old words. This discrepancy, this strangeness allow us to better understand the present. The hallmark of his school is therefore words, words, words. And this love of the verb, she transmitted it to several generations of actors.
“Anthropologie 13”
On stage, the thirteen actors take their hair off. It sings, it dances and it plays. By way of scenography, costumes, microphones and musical instruments. Verbal matter? Their own words, their own stories. This show retraces a cartography of their childhood.
Each one is both author and interpreter of their own story. Passing through the Jura, Dakar and Morocco, the life stories of Philippe Annoni, Julien Blasutto, Aline Bonvin, Pierre Boulben, Hugo Braillard, Paola Dam, Léa Gigon, Eve Mittemperher, Jérémie Nicolet, Djémi Pittet, César Cingy, Joséphine Thurre and Léonard Vautrin dynamite the eyes and ears of the public. This show is the result of a meeting, a three-week laboratory in January 2021 between the GdRa (artistic research group) and the class of 2022.
A school of theater which closes, a “type” of play which is lost?
In French-speaking Switzerland, there are three professional theatrical training schools: the Manufacture, a high school which delivers a recognized Bachelor’s degree, Serge Martin, a private school in Geneva, and the Teintureries. Since it is not expected that this establishment will be taken over, its closure means the end of a teaching and therefore the loss of a type of game.
The directors have confirmed a certain skill in Nathalie Lannuzel’s students: “The directors who come to see us tell me that it is obvious: the students master the texts, they are not afraid to tell stories, nor to take the scenes and play them in the first degree without necessarily breaking the story with another story, which is very fashionable at the moment…”
The concern of the profession
This quality comes from the very teaching of the school’s pedagogy and the loss of this quality, within a year, worries the middle of the French-speaking Swiss scene. This concern, Nathalie Lannuzel does not share it. She trusts her former students to perpetuate the soul of the school: “I have confidence in the overall picture, there are quite a few young actors who can open schools, create shows, keep this Teintureries game. Lack also creates need. As long as the school is there, there is comfort. Lack can create a dynamic, a desire”.
Layla Shlonsky/ld
“Anthropologie 13”, staged by the GdRA collective (Christophe Rulhes and Julien Cassier), on June 10 at the Théâtre du Crochetan, Monthey.