Dom Juan or the Feast with the statue - Interview with Martine Creissen

SCENOGRAPHY MADE OF PORCELAIN AND DIGITALLY-WOVEN AUBUSSON TAPESTRIES 

INTERVIEW WITH MARTINE CREISSEN FROM NÉOLICE COMPANY

Interview conducted by Eugénie Pastor

How did you meet Jean Lambert-wild and Stéphane Blanquet?

Our friend Christian Couty from Esprit Porcelaine offered to show us ‘La Fabrique’, the porcelain factory located in St-Brice-sur-Vienne, which was absolutely fascinating. This is how we met Daniel Betoule. At the time, he was working with Théâtre de l’Union again, and it was him who had the idea of collaborating with our workshops to create part of the set forDom Juan or the Feast with the Statue. This is how we met Jean Lambert-wild and embarked on this beautiful adventure. We then met the artist Stéphane Blanquet who showed great interest in our weaving method. 

How did the collaboration unfold?

We worked harmoniously with both the theatre and Stéphane Blanquet and managed to overcome any difficulty that arose. We work in a way that allows to constantly share ideas with the artists, even remotely. They can intervene at any time in the development of the project. This makes mutual understanding a lot easier, and it means we can weave with a very short turnaround. This ability to react quickly is the main advantage of digitally-woven tapestry.

Do you often collaborate with contemporary artists?

We are used to working with contemporary artists, we have been doing it for several years now. On our Facebook page, you will see names such as Damien Dertoubaix, Françoise Petrovitch, Christian Lacroix, Lucien Murat, Chloé Dugit Gros, Alexandre et Florentine Ovize, Sam Baron, Olga Kisselova… and many others. We also had the pleasure of working for the fashion brand Loewe on their Paris Fashion Week show in September 2017, for which designer Jonathan William Anderson asked us to create the set. Once again, as you can see on our Facebook page, we managed to deliver this in record time. 

Do you often create tapestries that are used in a piece of theatre?

This is the first time we work on a theatre set, and we really liked the experience. We hope the future brings more challenges like this one!

Are you eager to see the finished show?

Yes, especially since our workshop’s ceilings are not tall enough for us to see our tapestries in their entirety. We are thus doubly impatient to see this new creation by Théâtre de l’Union! I hope we will be able to bring our craftspeople, without whom this would have been impossible.