Blake’s Revolution

Blake’s Revolution was produced in La Cité Bleue, le Fécule (Festival des arts et cultures Unil-EPFL), le Festival d’Ateliers Théâtre (Théâtre de Carouge). April-May 2013.Watch the making-of documentary of Blake’s Revolution by Nirina Imbach. Flyer

The context is London 1794. While in France the Revolution leads way toTerror, the polemic reaches a high point in England. Influenced by the radical political texts of Thomas Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman, but also the more popular discourses of heretical sects such as the millenarians and antinomians, William Blake, poet, painter, printer and engraver composes a profoundly subversive prophetic poem in which the Revolution mingles with the Apocalypse.

This production took the plunge into the depths of Blake’s poetic universe in order to experience the inspiration, the energy of his language, his shifting metaphors, his skill at aphorisms, as well as the riches and plasticity of his visual imagination. With the help of a graphic designer from the HEAD (Lucas Oettli), a group of progressive rock music (Diaphonic), and contemporary dancers, the actors of Emmet sought to offer an oneiric pilgrimage where angels, prophets, devils, monkeys, tramps, mystiques, and philosophers exchange ideas according to a pattern of fruitful contradiction.

Adaptation and stage direction: Nicholas Weeks

Choregraphy: Catherine Egger

Graphic animations: Lucas Oetlli

Lights: Felix Klein

Actors: Fredrik Blanc, Géraldine Donaldson, Athéna Dubois-Pèlerin, Bernard Giovannini, Lukas Hobi, Tamta Iashvili, Léna Keller, Eliza Krawczyk, Stephen La Rivière, Irina Radu, Frédéric Steiner, Agnès Vallée.

Dancers: Zoé Egger, Laetitia Krummenacher, Katie McCraith, Laure Montandon, Franziska Ruef, Maud Tairraz, Antonia Westerholm.

Music – Diaphonic: Stéphane Félix, Cyril Jeanneret, Bastien Waeny, Thomas Weeks, Michael Zaradez.