Frédéric Fisbach
After training as an actor at the Conservatoire national supérieur d'Art dramatique in Paris, Frédéric Fisbach joined Stanislas Nordey's company in the first years of its adventure until Nordey was appointed to the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers. In 1994, his L'Annonce faite à Marie by Claudel was a tremendous success. Then he became interested in Mayakovsky, Kafka, Racine, Corneille, and a first time in Strindberg with The Ghost Sonata. The prize-winner of the Villa Médicis hors les murs in Japan, he established an artistic link with this country, which permitted him to introduce the two countries with new texts (he was notably the first to stage Oriza Hirata in France) but also to compare his Western practices to those of an Orient rich in various forms, like the traditional puppets of the Youkisa company with which he worked to stage Genet's The Screens. Appointed director of the Studio-Théâtre of Vitry in 2002, he developed a theatre laboratory activity there, clearly asserting his desire to bring the public together around his works, offering for example amateur actors to join him when he staged Les Feuillets d'Hypnos in the Cour d'honneur du Palais des papes in 2007, the year when he was associate artist at the Festival d'Avignon. Practicing an openness to other artistic fields, he worked with dancers, singers and musicians to present Bérénice with the choreographer Bernardo Montet, staged contemporary and classic operas and produced a feature-length film in 2007, La Pluie des prunes. Co-director of the Centquatre from 2006 to 2009, he turned this new Parisian institution into an experimentation centre for contemporary artistic practices. At Avignon, he presented Bérénice in 2001, L'Illusion comique in 2004, Gens de Séoul in 2006 and, as the associate artist of the 2007 edition, Les Paravents and Les Feuillets d'Hypnos.
JFP, May, 2011