Crash Park: the life of an island

Actors, artists, musicians and a dog: this was the basic make-up of the Vivarium Studio, the theatre group created by the artist and designer Philippe Quesne in 2003 with the founding objective of putting humanity on display as a species under laboratory conditions.

The wondrous and the microscopic, the everyday and the extreme, the theatrical lie and the truth of nature: this is the stable ecosystem in which Philippe Quesne stages his spectacles. Always set again the backdrop of a particular theme and set design, his performances are developed in collaboration with the performers during the rehearsal process.

The first production he directed, “La Démangeaison des ailes” (The itching of the wings, 2003), was a series of drills for take-offs and crash landings.

Following the domino principles, the last scene of any Philippe Quesne production brings into being the first scene of the production that follows. And it was in accordance with this logic that “Crash Park” came about after “Welcome To Caveland” (2016), a spectacle about the lives of seven moles in the bowels of the Earth.

In “The Melancholy of the Dragons” , the work with which the Onassis Stegi introduced Philippe Quesne to Greek audiences in 2016, the action takes place in an alpine landscape with the rusty old van of a group of middle-aged head bangers as its backdrop.