Old Masters is a middle-aged collective composed of Marius Schaffter (performer and geographer), Jérôme Stünzi (stage designer and artist) and Sarah André (writer, artist and stage designer, aka André André). Since 2014, they have been appropriating and rearranging the most varied discourses, whether banal or expert, whether scientific, political, artistic or everyday. Conceiving theatrical representation as a total plastic work, they create universes with an always strong, unusual and radical aesthetic. Using their favourite weapons such as absurdity, sincerity, benevolence, irony, beauty, sadness and gentleness, Old Masters offers us to experience, collectively, what freedom could be today, a freedom that is situated, changing, always in search of itself.
In 2020, Old Masters creates Le Monde à l’Arsenic, a play that simply shows, in three steps, how to build (1) the world, (2) things and (3) words. It was also presented at the Théâtre Saint-Gervais in Geneva and will be featured in the Focus Old Masters at the Centre culturel suisse in Paris in January 2021 together with L’impression.
2018, Old Masters creates L’impression, a therapeutic stage piece about life in general, co-produced by TU – Théâtre de l’usine in Geneva and Arsenic in Lausanne.
In 2016 Old Masters wrote, created and staged Fresque a piece that, by means of a stage apparatus and a simple situation, tells the overwhelming story of two individuals and especially of a stage object, the module. Fresque has been shown in 2017 at the Centre culturel suisse in Paris and at l’Arsenic in Lausanne in 2018. May 2018, the piece has been selected and staged at the Stückemarkt of the Theatertreffen in Berlin. It’s been again presented in Berlin at the Ballhaus Ost September 2018.
Constructionisme, Old Masters’ first performance, created in 2014, is a performative apparatus for the creation, analysis and dissection of objects of study. Constructionisme won Premio in 2015, a prize for newcomers in the performing arts. Since its creation, Constructionisme has been presented in many festivals, museums or universities; in French, in English and in German; in Switzerland and abroad.
Old Masters collaborate regularly with the following artists in different roles : Nicholas Stücklin, Sofia Teillet, , Joana Oliveira, Charlotte Herzig, Jonas Bühler, Jérémy Chevalier. The association Pâquis production in Geneva, under the responsability of Laure Chapel, assumes cleverly its administration.
