The director Philippe Quesne has been appointed artistic director of the Glass Menagerie, an avant-garde theatrical and choreographic venue in Paris, this institution announced on Tuesday.
The Glass Menagerie had been without direction since the death in March of Marie-Thérèse Allier, aged 91.
Its founder-director had set up before her death the Marie-Thérèse Allier Endowment Fund for contemporary art, to ensure the sustainability of this atypical place.
It is this entity which has designated
“the author, director and scenographer Philippe Quesne as artistic director”
, according to the terms of a press release.
Philippe Quesne knows the place well.
He presented his first play
La Démangeaison des wings
there in 2004 and his company Vivarium Studio was in residence there for several years.
Read alsoDeath of Marie-Thérèse Allier, unearther of nuggets of contemporary dance
The director
“will pursue an artistic policy there in the spirit that Marie-Thérèse Allier had wished for when creating this space”
, can we still read.
Or
“a physical and mental place advocating creation and its essential irreverence”.
New French dance
It was in 1983, rue Léchevin (11th arrondissement), that Marie-Thérèse Allier, a former ballet dancer, spotted a printing press with a glass facade and a skylight in the center of the building (which explains the name, borrowed from the famous play by Tennessee Williams).
She decides on a transformation by installing three studios and a 150-seat performance hall.
The new French dance found a space there to express itself with Mathilde Monnier, Régine Chopinot, Philippe Decouflé, Jérôme Bel, Emmanuelle Huynh, Hela Fattoumi, Angelin Preljocaj, Boris Charmatz or Alain Buffard.
Avant-garde theater also shone with pioneering directors like Claude Régy, Pascal Rambert or Vincent Macaigne.
Marie-Thérèse Allier had launched two festivals in 1995, "Les Inhabitués", scheduled each fall, then "Étrange Cargo", every year in the spring, which have become platforms for creation.