L’Étang (The Pond), by Gisèle Vienne

Gisèle Vienne’s adaptation of Robert Walser’s bitter family drama, with Pina Bausch dancer Julie Shanahan and César winner Adèle Haenel, who play all ten roles, and music by doom metal band Sunn O))) frontman Stephen O’Malley. Vienne upends conventional notions of theater and the family to create an unsettling experience that wavers/oscillates between interiority and exteriority.

“a transfixing performance . . . my mind was as stimulated as it’s been in months.” Laura Cappelle, The New York Times

An adaptation of a short play by Swiss writer Robert Walser (1878-1956), about a child who pretends to drown in order to test his mother’s love, Gisèle Vienne’s work casts the ten roles of Walser’s original work between two virtuosic actors: Adele Haenel and Julie Shanahan. The work utilizes contrasts of story and movement, an unsettling soundscape, and the incredible gifts of the two actors to create multiple levels of perception of reality and temporality, interiority and exteriority, and magnify the family trauma central to Walser’s original piece. Delayed by COVID, L’Étang premiered in Lausanne in May 2021, and has since played to sold-out audiences and rave reviews throughout Europe.