Guy Cassiers
After studying visual arts at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Guy Cassiers focused on creating a dramatic language with a strong visual and sensorial identity. Adapting and directing non-dramatic texts allowed him to grapple with a language that is often politically-charged within an ever-shifting world that may seem at first incomprehensible. The use of cameras, video images, and live music serves to immerse the audience in the languages and stories on which he works. He is now the director of the Toneelhuis in Antwerp, the great Flemish theatre in Belgium, which he leads with the desire to share his creative process with artists from diverse backgrounds. Guy Cassiers's theatre explores the history of Europe, and particularly the discourse about it and the sociopolitical forces that vie for dominance, always focusing first and foremost on the human dimension of those stories. Guy Cassiers has presented several of his plays at the Festival d'Avignon: Rouge décanté (Decanted Red) in 2006, his trilogy about power with Mefisto for ever in 2007, then Wolfskers and Atropa. The Revenge of Peace in 2008, not forgetting the first part of Musil's The Man Without Qualities in 2010, Blood & Roses. The Song of Joan and Gilles in the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des papes in 2011, and Virginia Woolf's Orlando in 2013. He will present two shows at the 71st edition of the Festival, Grensgeval (Borderline), based on a text by Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek which gives voice to refugees seeking shelter in Europe, and The Dry and the Wet.
