Guillaume BEGUIN
Stage director

Guillaume received a writing grant for his show Le Théâtre Sauvage.

What is your artistic background ?
After training as an actor at the Conservatoire de Lausanne, I practised for about ten years. Then I gradually became a director and today it has become my favourite "place". It's where I feel most comfortable questioning the world and developing tools to understand how to deal with it. 

How do you see your profession today ?
In French-speaking Switzerland, over the last twenty years or so, there have been a lot of new companies and young directors who launch new projects every year. Of course, not all of them manage to work on a permanent basis. The competition is very tough and those who succeed in getting their work seen are not necessarily the most talented. In any case, it is very difficult in the current context to develop regular, long-term work. One has to do multiple projects in order to survive at all, which limits our energy to run with and develop pieces which have already been made.

When will you tell yourself that you have arrived ?
I don't like the term "arrived". We arrive... from what place? From chaos? To go where? Is one’s aim to feel that one “has arrived"? It seems to me that what characterises any artistic journey is that we don't know very well where we come from or where we're going. I look for the place where it is difficult, the place that I don't understand yet, but which I feel will perhaps evade me a little less if I explore it. I see my art as a craft, with which I patiently try to go as far as possible, whatever the project. There are of course one or two shows that have been more noticeable in my career. But I've never said to myself: "there, it seems to me that I'm arriving!” I designed each of my works as honestly as possible, with the aim of sharing the project with my collaborators and the audience in the most intense way possible. In this sense, all my shows are important to me, even those that are less recognised or less successful.

How do you see yourself in 5 years ? In 10 years ?
I never ask myself that question. Yet I am very ambitious. But my ambition relates to my work. In 5 or 10 years, I would like to have finally had a little more time to go deeper into each of the projects I will have realised by then. 

This interview was conducted in 2013
Photo credit: Anthony Anciaux