“L’Étang” by Gisèle Vienne
Performance
© Estelle Hanania
“L’Étang” by Gisèle Vienne with Adèle Haenel & Julie Shanahan is a family drama adapted from a story by Swiss writer Robert Walser examining different layers of perceptions of reality and time.
An adaptation of a short play by Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956), about a child who pretends to drown in order to test his mother’s love, Gisèle Vienne’s work casts the ten roles of Walser’s original work between two virtuosic actors: Adèle Haenel and Julie Shanahan. The work utilizes contrasts of story and movement, an unsettling soundscape, and the incredible gifts of the two actors to create multiple levels of perception of reality and temporality, interiority and exteriority, and magnify the family trauma central to Walser’s original piece. Delayed by COVID, L’Étang premiered in Lausanne in May 2021, and has since played to sold-out audiences and rave reviews throughout Europe.
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