Séverine Chavrier

Séverine Chavrier is a musician, director and philosophy graduate and since July 2023 the director of La Comédie de Genève. From 2017 to 2023, she led the CDN Orléans / Centre-Val de Loire as its artistic director.

Séverine Chavrier has developed a unique approach to directing, in which theatre enters into dialogue with music, dance, images and literature. She designs her shows using all kinds of materials: the bodies of her performers, the sound of the prepared piano, the videos she often makes herself, not forgetting the spoken word she shapes by immersing herself in the world of the authors she loves.

Among her plays presented at various venues and festivals in France are Épousailles et Représailles, based on a play by Hanokh Levin (2009), Série B – Ballard J. G., inspired by James Graham Ballard (2011) and Plage Ultime for the Festival d’Avignon 2012. Between 2014 and 2016, she created two plays at Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne, Les Palmiers Sauvages, based on the novel I Forget Thee, Jerusalem (The Wild Palms) by William Faulkner, and Nous sommes repus mais pas repentis, based on Ritter, Dene, Voss by Thomas Bernhard. In January 2020, Chavrier staged a Spanish version of Les Palmiers Sauvages (Las Palmeras Salvajes) at Santiago a Mil Festival with a Chilean artistic and technical team. This new version of Faulkner’s text toured in Spanish-speaking countries.

In 2020, her creation about adolescence and music Aria da Capo premiered at Théâtre national de Strasbourg. With After All in 2021, she also developed a teaching activity and was artistic director of the 33rd class of students at Centre national des arts du cirque. In 2022, she created Ils nous ont oubliés by Thomas Bernhard at Teatre Nacional de Catalunya in Barcelona, continuing to explore the relationship between theatre, music, images and literature. In 2024, Absalon, Absalon!, an adaptation of Faulkner’s novel, was opening the Festival d’Avignon.