The Comédie de Genève, a reflection of the city’s multiculturalism. Several of this season’s performances will be played in various languages. With surtitles in French & English, the Comédie opens its doors to the international community of Geneva.
Book online your tickets on our ticketshop from Monday 26 June.
31.08 – 02.09.23
One Song – Histoire(s) du théâtre IV
MIET WARLOP/IRENE WOOL & NTGENT
Theatre – performance / Belgium
Co-produced with La Bâtie – Festival de Genève
© Christopher Matthews by Orph
Somewhere between a sporting event and a punk concert, One Song was a big hit at the Festival d’Avignon. Fans with scarves bearing the name of an imaginary club sit in stands; a coach in a tracksuit shouts inaudible instructions into a rubbish megaphone; a cheerleader wanders around the stage; musicians wearing bibs warm up.
A metronome is switched on, and off we go.
One Song, one song only, played over and over again by musicians/sportspeople committed body and soul until they lose their breath in a crazy, funny, fascinating, frightening and energising performance.
Venue Grande salle
Rates from CHF 40 to CHF 10
Duration 1h
Language English
Recommended age 12+
Featuring Simon Beeckaert, Elisabeth Klinck, Willem Lenaerts, Milan Schudel, Melvin Slabbinck, Karin Tanghe, Joppe Tanghe, Wietse Tanghe
and alternately Stanislas Bruynseels, Rint Dens, Judith Engelen, Marius Lefever, Luka Mariën, Flora Van Canneyt, Jarne Van Loon
05 – 07.09.23
Mitten wir im Leben sind/Bach6Cellosuiten
ANNE TERESA DE KEERSMAEKER & JEAN-GUIHEN QUEYRAS / ROSAS
Dance/Belgium
Co-produced with La Bâtie – Festival de Genève
© Anne Van Aerschot
Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, who has long had a deep connection with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, reveals the power, vitality and fluidity of his Suites for Cello Solo.
On stage, internationally renowned cellist Jean-Guihen Queyras, three dancers and two female dancers (including De Keersmaeker herself) bring Bach’s score to life, alternatively enhanced, challenged or put into perspective by the choreography.
Enjoy this dialogue between classical music and contemporary dance, this brilliant journey into the Baroque period!
Venue Grande salle
Rates from CHF 40 to CHF 10
Duration 2h
Language without words
Recommended age 12+
Featuring Boštjan Antončič, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Marie Goudot, Julien Monty, Michaël Pomero and Jean-Guihen Queyras (musician)
15 – 16.09.23
The Romeo
TRAJAL HARRELL / SCHAUSPIELHAUS ZÜRICH DANCE ENSEMBLE
Dance/Switzerland – United States
co-produced with La Bâtie – Festival de Genève
© Christopher Matthews by Orph
American choreographer Trajal Harrell dreamed of a dance. A dance that would be performed by women and men of different backgrounds, generations and cultures, all over the world. Everyone knows this dance, but everyone attributes a different history and origin to it. This dance is therefore a myth, and its name is “Romeo”. Like the young Shakespearean hero, it exists to defy death, fear and sadness, to choose love over difference.
Harrell, who has directed the Schauspielhaus Zürich Dance Ensemble since 2019, continues his speculative history of dance, which he sees as a universal language from which singularities can be expressed.
Venue Grande salle
Rates from CHF 40 to CHF 10
Duration 1h40
Language without words
Recommended age 14+
Featuring Frances Chiaverini, Vânia Doutel Vaz, Maria Ferreira Silva, Rob Fordeyn, Challenge Gumbodete, New Kyd, Trajal Harrell, Thibault Lac, Christopher Matthews, Nasheeka Nedsreal, Perle Palombe, Norel Amestoy Penck, Stephen Thompson, Songhay Toldon, Ondrej Vidlar
12 – 21.10.23
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
SIMON MCBURNEY
Based on the novel by Olga Tokarczuk
Theatre/United Kingdom
© Marc Brenners
In the bitter cold Polish winter, men are dying in strange circumstances. Janina, a delightfully eccentric pensioner with a passion for astrology and poetry, leads the investigation. She soon suspects that the animals in the forest are planning their revenge. Has Nature decided to take up arms?
Simon McBurney adapts Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, a sharp and inventive thriller by Olga Tokarczuk, winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize for Literature, to the stage. The acclaimed British actor and director brings his creative genius and technophile verve to bear on a story, language and subject matter that is as contemporary as it gets.
Venue Grande salle
Rates from CHF 40 to CHF 10
Duration 3h (intermission included)
Language English surtitled in French
Recommended age 12+
Warning The show contains jump scares, simulated smoking and drug use, swearing, nudity, depictions of death, blood and violence, and staged animal abuse.
Featuring (to be confirmed) Thomas Arnold, Johannes Flaschberger, Tamzin Griffin, Amanda Hadingue, Kathryn Hunter, Kiren Kebaili-Dwyer, Weronika Maria, Tim McMullan, César Sarachu, Sophie Steer, Alexander Uzoka
08 – 12.11.23
The Confessions
ALEXANDER ZELDIN
Theatre/United Kingdom – France
© RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre)
After LOVE and Une mort dans la famille (at Comédie de Genève in 2021 and 2023), Alexander Zeldin continues his bittersweet exploration of social realities and family stories. With his characteristic empathy and humour, the British director follows in Alice’s footsteps from birth to death. He draws an intimate portrait of a woman who digs her way, takes blows but never stops fighting, and seeks to impose her choices even when life plays tricks on her.
Venue Grande salle
Rates from CHF 40 to CHF 10
Duration approx. 3h (intermission included)
Language English surtitled in French
Recommended age 15+
21 – 23.11.23
Out of Context – for Pina
ALAIN PLATEL
Dance/Belgium
© Chris Van der Burght
Offered as a posthumous gift to Pina Bausch, Out of Context – for Pina uses the beauty and emotional power of involuntary movements – spasms, convulsions, and other tics – as the subject of the show. On a bare stage, bodies buried under red blankets reveal themselves in fluid tableaux, moving from animal expressivity to amorous parades to travel through the stages of life and the ages of dance.
Created in 2009 and danced by its nine original performers, Out of Context – for Pina, the only play that laGeste (les ballets C de la B + kabinet k) has revived, will exceptionally stopover at the Comédie.
Venue Grande salle
Rates from CHF 40 to CHF 10
Duration 1h25
Language without words
Recommended age 14+
Featuring Elie Tass, Emile Josse ou Quan Bui Ngoc, Hyo Seung Ye, Kaori Ito, Mathieu Desseigne Ravel, Mélanie Lomoff, Romeu Runa, Rosalba Torres Guerrero, Ross McCormack
07 – 15.12.23
Préparation pour un miracle
MARC OOSTERHOFF
Dance – Circus – Magie nouvelle/Switzerland
© CieMoost
Préparation pour un miracle is a sort of initiation, a journey into the absurd. The man on stage, who lines up magic and disasters, wishes he was not here, that he could get out of the light. A hero in spite of himself, he tries to escape, but all the ways out that he considers turn out to be devilish. No sooner has he passed through one door than he reappears through another. Even the theatre’s poles conspire to bring him back on stage.
In this high-flying circus act, Marc Oosterhoff uses magic to reveal a surreal world and create a hybrid character who owes as much to Camus or Beckett as to Buster Keaton.
Venue Grande salle
Rates from CHF 40 to CHF 10
Duration 1h
Language without words
Recommended age 8+
Featuring Marc Oosterhoff
17 – 20.01.24
Monster Truckiller
ISUMI GRICHTING & CHRISTIAN CORDONIER /
Cie YOU SHOULD MEET MY COUSINS FROM CHERNOBYL
Theatre/Switzerland
© Pierre Daendliker
In a dingy cellar filled with chicken drumsticks and cheap ice tea cartons, two young adults host a radio show, play video games, and talk about their dreams while waiting for time to pass. They do little or nothing, and yet they are there, fully themselves.
Through the detours and trappings of parody, this disconcerting, funny and shamelessly chavvy show lends incredible density to the void.
It’s pidgin English, a language generated by an unsophisticated translation software. As if to “play it up”, like an American film. Above all, it’s a rather unique theatre language, a way of staging post-teenage idleness during long afternoons. Their aesthetics draw inspiration from post-punk culture, from manga, from homemade radio shows, from an apparently unaffected way of expressing oneself. We’ve seen all the shows by these “cousins of Chernobyl”. The way they approach the stage is unique and striking. Their rare and precious “youth culture” is natural to them, as is their art of living and making theatre. NKDM
Venue Salle modulable
Rates from CHF 40 to CHF 10
Duration 1h15
Language “Pidgin” English surtitled in French
Recommended age 13+
Featuring Julie Bugnard, Christian Cordonier, Isumi Grichting
02 – 03.02.24
Chapter 3: The Brutal Journey of the Heart
SHARON EYAL & GAI BEHAR / COMPAGNIE L-E-V
Dance/Israel
© Stefan Dotter for Dior
The last opus of Sharon Eyal’s dance trilogy devoted to love, this show is an emotional journey of intensity and contrast.
The dancers often stand on demi-pointe and seem ready to take flight, fearless and insatiable. Their bodies, as if tattooed with imaginary landscapes, draw the map of unknown territories, which a bright red heart is about to chart. And here we are, subjugated, bewitched, drawn with all our being to these bodies and hearts, which pulsate and pour out.
Venue Grande salle
Rates from CHF 40 to CHF 10
Duration 55 min
Language without words
Recommended age 12+
Warning The show contains loud music and smoke.
Featuring Darren Devaney, Guido Dutilh, Juan Gil, Alice Godfrey, Dana Pajarillaga, Keren Lurie Pardes, Nitzan Ressler
