interActing with Architecture

Abstract

The Compagnie un tour de Suisse was created in 2012 out of the meeting between the actress and director Hélène Cattin and the architecture and dance critic Anna Hohler. Their shared interest in architecture and in travelling theatre provides the framework for their joint work. The aim is to stage texts by architects in non-theatre venues, to put a given place of the city into an immediate relation with the text and theatre action. In other words: unveil the architecture, heritage and social use of a building through its transformation into a stage while expressing a given architectonic thought by fitting it into a real stage.

The first play by the company, Être un bâtiment - ein Gebäude sein, based on writings by Peter Zumthor, was performed from 2012 to 2016 in 17 different locations in Switzerland, Austria, France and Spain. The second creation by the Swiss directors, La transformation (Umbau), focuses on the Austrian architect Adolf Loos, pioneer of the Modern Movement, and was premiered in 2016 in a former chocolate factory on the outskirts of Lausanne. Today, these two plays have been performed in over 28 different architectural spaces, such as a swimming pool, a student’s residence (Le Corbusier’s in Paris), abandoned industrial warehouses, a former convent and the Mies van der Rohe Pavilion in Barcelona.