Europe Theatre Prize - V Edition

V Edition - Reasons

ROBERT WILSON

The Jury of the fifth Europe Prize for Theatre ha unanimously awarded the Prize to Robert Wilson in recognition of his thirty years' work aimed at creating a personal reinvention of scenic art that has overturned the temporal dimension and retraced the saptial one. He refused to render a mere production of reality and offered an abstract or informal vision of the text and also redefined the roles, whenever possible, through global intervention in the creation of his performances where he played the author, director, performer, scenographer and magic light designer. Architect by profession, the artist pursed an indisciplinary language that did not ignore the visual arts in enhancing the importance of the image and, restorting the support of music, he approaches dance and simultaneously attempted to find a pure harmonious value in the spoken word, in an ideal tension towards a form of total theatre.
It has been said that his works can been considered part of a single opus in continual evolution that constitutes the synthesis. During his career Wilson has confronted himself with different genera and drawn them closer thanks to the conformity of language. He has executed classical works and specially written works and for this reasons has stimulated the interest of eminent writers, such as Heiner Müller and William Burrough, establishing a particular bond with the former.
He has dedicated himself to teaching non theatrical literary works often adapted into monologues interpreted by eminent actors, such as Madeleine Renaud and Marianne Hoppe. He has ventured into the production of opera and ballet, he has created musicals sui generis in collaboration with illustrious emerging personalities, he has promoted performances especially with Christopher Knowles, he has directed spectacular fashion parades. His prolific activity as designer and visual artist can be seen in his paintings, sculptures, installations, graphic works, exhibitions. He was awarded the major prize at the Venice Biennale.
Nothing new can be archived without changing the conceptions of organisation. He was a decisive promoter of coproduction of festivals since the ' 70s, of the creation of prototype - performances that could be translated in various nations with new casts, and also of the creation of evening works to be completed later in production studios. Thank are due to him for the embrace between different nations, languages, styles and traditions.
Even when using bigger and bigger and more and more international teams of collaborators Wilson has never renounced making his own imprint of perfectionist in a developing opera. He is to be accredited with centre, centre of experimentation and training where his work as a teacher has helped him in retain an inexhaustible flow of fresh ideas from the contact with the young.

EUROPEAN PRIZE FOR
NEW THEATRICAL REALITIES
THIRD EDITION

COMPAGNIA DELLA FORTEZZA

THÉÂTRE DE COMPLICITÉ

COMPAGNIA DELLA FORTEZZA

For the last 9 years " Compagnia della Fortezza " directed by Armando Punzo has tenaciously overcome numerous difficulties and obstacles in order to pursue the idea of a type of drama that is redemption and liberation, affirmation of dignity that each individual can, and must, claim.
The experience undertaken and tirelessly carried on inside the Volterra prison has led to the production of " Masaniello " , " Marat Sade " , " Prisons " and recently " The Blacks " , and has attracted great Italian and international interest and attention. The introduction of drama inside a prison institution created a pathway that established a new line of communication and dialogue between the actors - prisoners and the audience gathered inside and outside the prison. In The Blacks, the actors - prisoners acting themselves, admonish the society watching them and stage an ironic and ferocious performance with strong new evidence Genet s drama has been integrated freely by the actors. Punzo described the genesis of the play: We had started work on Moby Dick by Melville, but the result was not satisfactory I was rereading ' The Blacks ' by Genet at the time and was greatly struck by the intuition that lies at the core, the story of a company of blacks performing a play centred on a crime committed by blacks against a white woman, to a white audience. I said to myself: Look! The blacks are them, the ones locked up in here, while the whites are the outside audience " This project gave birth to an original sacred and desecrating ceremony where provocation is the extreme response to a condition of unease, where the audience is fully aware of its condition of being white, free and innocent. This ceremony highlights the actors' skill in reinventing language to suit and enhance their possibilities and expressiveness , and emphasises their audacity in using the ideas offered by Genet to the utmost. The only means of communication for the excluded is drama .

THÉÂTRE DE COMPLICITÉ

Théâtre de Complicité, which is one of the most original and inventive British theatre companies, was founded in 1983. It was created by four young people whose aim was to bring the physical disciplines they had learned at the Jacques Lecoq Mime School in Paris to the largely text - based British theatre. But over the last thirteen years the company has not only acquired an international reputation. It has also grown organically. It now combines a strong mimetic skill with the exploration of complex literary texts. It has forged its own uniquely brilliant style which makes it a worthy winner of the New Realities Prize. Its founder members were Simon McBurney, Marcello Magno, Fiona Gordon who had all studied together in Paris and Annabel Arden who was a contemporary of Simon' s at Cambridge University. The first production, Put It On Your Head, was a darkly hilarious examination of an English seaside resort and attracted modest attention. There followed a series of shows dealing with such subjects as our attitudes to death, food, Christmas and office - life. Gradually built up a following for its original vision , grotesque comedy and dazzling mime. But the breakthrough came in 1988 when it presented a 15 - week season of its work at London' s Almeida Theatre including its first - ever production of an existing text: a version of Durrenmatt' s The visit which contained a prize winning performance by Kathryn Hunter as the vengeful plutocrat and which used mime to recreate the atmosphere of a small, run - down European town. Peter Brook, who saw the production, rated it as superior to his own version in the late 1950s. Since then Complicite has become one of the most sought - after companies on the international touring circuit and has adapted literaly texts to the stage including Bruno Schulz' s Street of Crocodiles, John Berger' s The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol and J.M. Coetzee's Foe. But it has expanded its range and style without sacrifing its experimental instinct or physical discipline . Above all, it shows an astonishing ability to re - create whole communities such as that of a small Polish town in Street of Crocodiles and a peasant village in the Hautes - Alpes in Lucie Cabrol. Complicité are currently working on a co - production of Brecht'' s The Caucasian Chalk Circle with Britain' s National Theatre. But it remains one of the most audacious and genuinely experimental companies at work in European Theatre today.