The next interview in our stagey chat series is with Guillaume Pigé. Guillaume is the Founder and Artistic Director of Theatre Re, and we sat down to discuss two of their current shows, Bluebelle and BIRTH. 

Hi Guillaume, how are you doing today? Thanks so much for chatting to Stage to Page! Would you mind introducing yourself to our readers and telling us how you first got into the theatre industry?

Hello everyone! Thanks so much for having me.

My name is Guillaume Pigé and I am the Founder and Artistic Director of Theatre Re - an artist-led theatre company bringing original live music with striking visual performance to create world class, deeply moving non-verbal productions about universal human challenges and the fragility of life.

I first started with magic and then I trained as an actor, and then trained as a Mime artist and at the same time as a director…. But Magic never really left me.

Theatre Re’s sell-out shows, BIRTH and Bluebelle are returning to the UK - Can you tell us about both of the productions?

BIRTH and Bluebelle, even though very different in their respective aesthetics, both deal sensitively with intimate and taboo subject matters.

BIRTH is a powerful piece of visual theatre with original live music about what it means to lose and create a new life. We follow the journey of Emily, who is six months pregnant when she first reads her grandmother's journal. As she delves into the depths of her family history, it's pages trigger a shift in her sense of reality, unveiling a legacy of unspoken tragedies, courage and unconditional love. Through her story, we portray what is being passed down from one generation to the next.

Bluebelle is a new folk-inspired tale - as much as any tale can ever be new – intertwining, transforming and re-inventing numerous motifs, objects, and characters from ancient folktales. It is about being a parent, about life and how to protect it. It is also about stories and our profound need for poetry and magic. It unravels our desires, our weaknesses, and ultimately our strength and ability to care for those born after us.

Both pieces explore the fragility of human experiences such as pregnancy loss and fertility, through the medium of physical theatre. Can you tell us more about the inspirations behind these two shows?

For BIRTH, our original leading question was: 'When does memory begin?’. We focused on secrets within families and discovered the world of psychogenealogy, which is about recognising parallels between our own lives and the lives of our ancestors, and how issues or traumas might have been subconsciously passed down. We used this to 'study' our family trees and unravel some of these secrets. Pregnancy loss was the one things that all our trees had in common and how it was never talked about. Surprisingly, ‘losing a baby’ is also something that came up in our improvisation sessions without us consciously looking for it.

For Bluebelle, our exploration started with Why live theatre? Our journey took us from corporeal mime to clown work, from imaginative transformation to visual vernacular, from rich musical textures to sound design, from philosophy to silliness, and from real life experiences - gathered through interviews with parents and carers - to ancient folktales.

Bluebelle has been created alongside Visual Vernacular and d/Deaf Artists making the show accessible to d/Deaf audiences. Can you tell us more about this inclusion to the piece?

Developing access for our work is something that started ‘by chance’ at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with BIRTH back in 2019. Many d/Deaf artists and audiences came to see the show at the festival that year, and were very appreciative and supportive of the work. The piece was so visual that it did not need BSL interpretation to be accessible. This is something we were keen to carry-on and make conscious choices about moving forward.

When it came to developing ‘Bluebelle’, we were naturally keen to collaborate with Deaf and Visual Vernacular Artists. This ensured that ‘Bluebelle’ could be accessible without the need for BSL interpretation, but it also enabled us to challenge our physical and visual style, as well as our way to communicate without words. It has also showed us that there is so much more we could do to make our work fully accessible, starting with more BSL interpreted workshops.

Developing ‘Bluebelle’ was the beginning a long term collaboration with Performance Artist and Creative Consultant Jonny Cotsen. Since then, we have made another show with Jonny called ‘Moments’ and Jonny has also joined our Advisor Group.

My blog is called Stage to Page. But if you could turn any book, from page to stage, what would it be and why?

Peter Pan is a story that I would love to explore one day. Not so much to do the play as J.M Barrie wrote it but invent a new story around the legendary character. I particularly love the take that Régis Loisel (French Comics Writer) offers in his Peter Pan.

And finally, why should people book tickets to BIRTH and Bluebelle?

People should come and see us because I truly believe that our work is unique. And to come back to the magic, even though there isn’t any magic per say in the shows, the adjective that most audience members use to describe our work after a show is that it was Magical.

You can find out more about both Bluebelle and BIRTH from Theatre Re, here.