Magali TOSATO
Stage director

Magali received a production grant for her play Amour/Luxe.

What is your artistic background ?
After several assistant roles with companies in French-speaking Switzerland, I interrupted my study of literature at the University of Lausanne to train as a director at the Ernst Busch theatre school in Berlin (2010-2014). Then, back in Lausanne, I founded the Compagnie mikro-kit with Lydia Dimitrow and Franziska Keune, through which I started a piece mixing fiction, documentary elements and biographical fragments. I am currently continuing this, thanks to a theatre fellowship from the City of Lausanne and the Canton of Vaud (2015-2017).

How do you see your profession today ?
My experience in Germany, French-speaking Switzerland and France, all of which have different systems of production, financing and training, has shown me that these systems are threatened everywhere: they struggle to guarantee artists financial support and a decent income and flexible production conditions adapted to the specific nature of different artistic approaches. This tension, however, creates a very stimulating dynamic. It leads many artists to move to other venues, to invent other theatrical forms, to develop new structures and new ways of working: the challenge is to redefine what theatre is today without diminishing it, and to reaffirm its place in society while defending the independence of the artist.

How do you see yourself in 5 years ? In 10 years ?
I see myself continuing my work with the Compagnie mikro-kit, perhaps beyond the French-speaking part of Switzerland and with a larger team, but still inhabited by the same desire to tell the intimate, the everyday, the unspectacular, in order to reveal their political dimensions. To create shows which try to understand the world in its complexity, to try to open a space where the public feels intimately and collectively involved by what is at stake. I hope to keep my idealistic impetus of wanting to contribute to inventing our future, as well as my revolt and my desire to fight against a world that leaves so little space for it.

This interview was conducted in 2015
Photo credit: Rémi Chapeaublanc