Why Transforme?
The name of this festival, Transforme, speaks to its three complementary ambitions. It invites artists to transform their practice to bring about new ways of approaching performance and the stage through the hybridisation of forms. It aspires to transform spectators’ perspectives on the world by bringing audiences and artists into dialogue around major contemporary issues. Finally, it helps to transform our approach to the performing arts by imagining new relations between the stage and the spectator. In this way, the festival looks to shake up the contemporary performing arts and their reception through a programme which cultivates both high standards and daring experiments.
A festival driven by a collective ambition
The creation of Transforme reflects the Foundation’s desire to share an ambitious yet accessible programme with four very different partner institutions: in the centre of France, a national theatre, La Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand; in the east, a multi-disciplinary venue, Les SUBS in Lyon; in the west, a national drama centre, the Théâtre National de Bretagne in Rennes; and, finally, in the north, the Théâtre de la Cité Internationale in Paris, with which the Foundation has partnered since the inauguration of New Settings. These partnerships make it possible to envisage new artistic experiences whilst at the same time promoting the nationwide circulation of the major works of our time.
This new collective departure builds upon the legacy of New Settings, a programme inaugurated by the Fondation d’entreprise Hermès in 2011: after a decade of intense support and programming concentrated in the Île-de-France region, the Foundation is now keen to extend the vitality of theatrical creation to other territories and reach out to new audiences. The four partner institutions and the Foundation have therefore constructed Transforme together: its programming is collegial, decided through a dedicated committee that is conducive to debate and to the generative potential of diverse points of view. Some of the works chosen will also benefit from the Foundation’s financial support during their development phase.
“Going Further” actions around programmed works
Through this festival, the Foundation continues its generous action in favour of French and international artists and contemporary creation as a whole, whilst extending it to new territories and to as broad an audience as possible. To this end, in collaboration with each partner institution, the local implantation of Transforme is encouraged by “Going Further”, a format in which artists quite literally set out beyond theatres to encounter other audiences and contexts. “Going Further” projects are guided by three themes: accessibility, youth, and local contexts. In this way, Transforme features a wide variety of artistic actions to be shared at each of its partner institutions as well as outside theatre auditoriums, and offers just as many possibilities for transforming our way of seeing the world.
