Martin Zimmermann [Postponed]

For this piece, I work with three characters, clown archetypes, to illustrate powerful issues such as authority, submission and freedom. I take the conceited, know it all Whiteface, the warm hearted naive Auguste and the zany Maladroit who invariably confounds situations, and place them in the sanitized world of a museum. A place that a society creates for itself, teeming with rules and restrictions, systems and values that determines what is accepted and what is not. Here things are ordered precisely often beyond the will of the artists themselves. For me the visitors to a museum can be just as much works of art as the art itself. In my work bodies have a material quality and objects a human dimension. This contradiction presents many comic and dramatic possibilities. I have always been interested in understanding where the figure of the clown belongs in contemporary theatre. A clown is not an actor. He is completely present both inwardly and outwardly and serves as a mirror to ourselves and our existence. You can go through life by saying yes or no or you probe by asking questions. Clowns do both and doing both means power! How will these three figures plucked from the anarchic world of circus survive in this strictly ordered environment of a museum? What evolves is highly comic, absurd and tragic. The more controlled the environment, the more comic and monstrous everything becomes. — Martin Zimmermann 


The choreographer, director, set designer and physical actor Martin Zimmermann (1970) grew up in Widberg, a small village in Switzerland. After studying set design in Zurich, he graduated from the Centre National des Arts du Cirque (C.N.A.C.) in France, with distinction. For well over 20 years he has choreographed and produced visual and physical theatre without words, productions in which the body and objects collide amidst mobile set designs while magically blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction. His work has been performed on prestigious stages around the world, such as BAM New York, Théâtre de la Ville Paris and Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre, among others.Parallel to that he began working on his most recent creation Eins Zwei Drei, a piece for three high-ranking dancers and physical actors as well as the talented composer and pianist Colin Vallon. All of his pieces are currently on international tour. Martin Zimmermann lives in Zurich.