The director becomes the only woman to direct one of the five national establishments.
by Fabienne Darge
It was one of the most anticipated appointments in the French theater: the director Caroline Guiela Nguyen, 41, was appointed Monday, December 19, at the Directorate of the National Theater of Strasbourg (TNS), the only national establishment Established in the region and flagship of capital importance for theatrical creation, due to the means of production it has. She will replace Stanislas Nordey, in office since 2014, who was not a candidate for her succession but had accepted, in October, an interim until August 31, 2023 pending her succession. Caroline Guiela Nguyen thus becomes the only woman to direct, at present, one of the five national theaters in France, which is more doubled by a prestigious school. She will take office on September 1, 2023.
“Caroline Guiela Nguyen has the ambition to address all those who feel far from the theater, so that they find their place both in the audience, on stage, or within the school of Tns “rejoices the Minister of Culture Rima Abdul Malak in a press release which specifies that the new director intends to make this theater, a place” where the practices of theater, cinema and audiovisual are built and think of each other in a same movement “. The TNS will also associate with this objective with the Franco-German chain Arte announces the ministry.
a style and new stories
This appointment crowns a superb course, which saw the young woman impose in a few years a tone, a style and new stories that lacked in the French theater. Due to her family origins, Caroline Guiela Nguyen has links with Vietnam, Algeria and India and with the colonial and postcolonial history of France. And it is weighted with this baggage that she brought something completely new and invested with forgotten or concealed territories, over her shows: remember Violetta (2011), Emma’s Ball (2012) , She burns (2013), Le Chagrin (2015) and, above all, Saigon who, since its creation at the Avignon Festival in July 2017, has had a shattering success and has continued to shoot around the world, China to Australia via the whole of Europe. Meanwhile, Caroline Guiela Nguyen signed Fraternité, Fantastic Conte (2021), the first part of a cycle which continued with the creation, on October 7, at the Schaubühne of Berlin, of Kindheitsarchive [Childhood – Archive].
break the male mold
In Strasbourg, she returns to already known land, since she studied at the TNS school (in the staging section), from which she was released in 2008. She was marked in this course by Two great artists, Krystian Lupa and Joël Pommerat. And it is with comrades of her promotion that she created her company, approximate men – a name taken from a poem by Tristan Tzara.
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