Éric Vigner
Éric Vigner (born October 27, 1960 in Rennes, France) is a French stage director, actor and scenic designer. He is directing the CDDB-Théâtre de Lorient, Centre Dramatique National from 1996 to 2015. Biography. Éric Vigner graduated from the University of Brittany, France, in the visual arts. He then studied in Paris, at the National School of theatre art and techniques (ENSATT) and at the National Drama Academy CNSAD. His consecutive qualifications naturally led towards directorship. In 1990 he founded his own theater company SUZANNE M. Éric Vigner. In 1996 he was appointed by the Minister of Culture  (France) to direct Brittany's Drama Centre, henceforth called the CDDB-Théâtre de Lorient. Since 1996 the graphic artists M/M Paris are in charge of the CDDB's visual communication. Besides Vigner's commitment to contemporary playwrights such as Marguerite Duras and Roland Dubillard, for which he was awarded the honour of Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1998, Vigner developed a new approach to the French classics - Racine's "Bajazet" (Comédie-Française 1995), Corneille's "L’Illusion Comique" (Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers 1996), Victor Hugo's "Marion De Lorme" (Théâtre de la Ville 1999), Molière's "L’École  des femmes" (Comédie-Française 1999) and "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme" (French-Korea cultural prize 2004) and Shakeapeare's "Othello" (Odéon – Théâtre de l’Europe 2008). In October 2010, Vigner founded his international theater Academy. "The Academy" follows the principles of a little democracy and assembles seven young trilingual actors from seven cultural backgrounds - Morocco, Romania, Mali, Belgium, South Korea, Germany, Israel. They work on classical as well as contemporary forms of writing and present "La Place Royale" by Corneille, "Guantanamo" by Frank Smith and "La Faculté" by Christophe Honoré. He has chosen a course as a pioneer, an "’inter-lingual" navigator, building  on dramatic art as common ground. He developed international collaborations to last over the years, searching for a genuine mutual cultural transmission. He directed in different languages and cultural backgrounds: at the National Theater of Korea in Seoul, "The Bourgeois Gentleman" by Molière and Jean-Baptiste Lully (French-Korean Cultural Prize 2004); twice at the National Theater of Albania, Tirana, 2007,"The Barber of Seville" by Beaumarchais (Price Festival Bharat Rang Mahotsav, Inde 2011), and 2016, "Lucrezia Borgia" by Victor Hugo (Festival Theatre National de Bretagne, France 2017); at 7 Stages Theater, Atlanta, 2008, "In the Solitude of Cotton Fields" by  Bernard-Marie Koltès (U.S. Koltès Project); in India, "Gates to India Song" based on "The Vice Consul" and "India Song" by Marguerite Duras (Festival Bonjour India, Bombay, Calcutta, New-Delhi, 2013); at the Odeon Theatre in Bucharest, 2016, during Romania's campaign for Unesco's approval of The Wisdom of the Earth sculpture by Constantin Brâncuși, he staged the famous trial from 1928 - "Brancusi versus the United States". Theatre productions. "The theater which I am interested in develops a form for the spectator to project himself into, to reinvent himself. For me, theater is not a place to come to  in order to get answers, but a place where it is possible to revisit stories, our ones, the intimate, forgotten ones - in fact an unfamiliar place into which the spectator can enter. Theater needs to carry in itself its counterpart, its paradox : "to be or not to be", to be one thing and at the same time something else. For example, when Cézanne paints apples and says "It is with an apple that I want to amaze Paris", his subject is not the apple. His subject is painting. The same goes for theater. It is not the story we are  actually attached to, but the theater itself."