- France
- Artistic director
Pierre Guillois founded the company in 1991, originally baptising it ‘Les Madeleines’ in honour of Witkiewicz’s first show La Princesse Madeleine (presented in the Jardin des Tuileries in Paris) and as an homage to the actresses who inspired the project.
After several years working as a company outside the institutional framework, as well as a brief acting career and a very positive experience working as assistant director under Jean-Michel Ribes, in 2001 Pierre Guillois was invited by Matthew Jocelyn to become an affiliated artist of the Atelier du Rhin, the Alsace regional drama centre based in Colmar.
In this new role he began to get involved with large-scale cultural projects in some of the most underprivileged parts of the city. Starting out as an assistant to Guy Bénisty, Pierre Guillois soon took over the leadership of this scheme, organising and leading numerous theatre workshops.
Buoyed by this experience, he was appointed as director of the Théâtre du Peuple de Bussang in 2005, relishing the opportunity to work with both professional and amateur performers.
The company was founded upon a certain number of core values:
Getting the very best out of amateur performers
Engagement with local communities
Providing sufficient resources to nurture bold artistic ambitions.
It soon became clear that new writing was going to be at the centre of this project. In addition to his own writing, Pierre has commissioned pieces from David Lescot, Rémi De Vos and Marion Aubert, as well as inviting Olivier Tchang Tchong and David Bobee to share their own explorations of the concept of popular performing arts.
Pierre Guillois likes to explore hybrid performance styles inspired by the cabaret tradition.
