Old Masters
Old Masters is a middle-aged collective made up of Marius Schaffter (actor and playwright), Jérôme Stünzi (set designer and visual artist) and Sarah André (author, visual artist and set designer, aka André André). Since 2014, they have appropriated and reorganized the most varied discourses and practices, banal and expert, whether artistic, scientific, political or everyday. Conceiving theatrical representation as a total plastic work, they create universes with a powerful, unusual and radical aesthetic. Using their favorite weapons which are absurdity, sincerity, benevolence, irony, beauty, sadness and gentleness, Old Masters invite us to experience, collectively, what freedom could be today, a freedom situated, changing, always in search of itself.
Story of our creations
In 2024, Old Masters is one of the winners of the Swiss Performing Arts Awards, a prize which crowns three seasons of intense international tours, in France, Germany, Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe with different pieces from the repertoire of the collective (Home Of My Spirit, Bande originale, Constructionisme, etc.)
The collective created in 2022, Home Of My Spirit a play for young audiences, written from fragments of all the plays previously created by the collective. In a logic of sustainability, the piece combines scenographies, objects, lights, music, texts and existing choreographies in a new form and addresses it to a young audience. Home Of My Spirit presents itself as a safe space for the imagination, a minimal and generous world where everyone finds their place, in their fragility and their creative power. Designed from its creation in a multilingual version, the play is currently touring in Germany, France, Switzerland and possibly in the Italian-speaking world.
Bande originale, created in 2021, presents itself as the manifesto of a small group of beings, both ultimate survivors after the apocalypse and post-neolithic ancestors. Their speech interweaves political demands, philosophical observations and biographical stories with humor, violence and gentleness. Old Masters asserts, through these avatars, its vision of the collective, a total solidarity based on absolute despair. The scenography of Bande originale was awarded at the 2022 Swiss Design Awards. Also in 2022, Sarah André created a full-length graphic novel of the play, with which she won the Töpffer Geneva Comic Strip Prize. Resumed in 2023, Bande originale tours in France (Printemps des comédiens, Biennale internationale des Marionnettes, etc.) and will be adapted into an installation version to be presented in unusual places.
In 2019, Old Masters created Le Monde in Lausanne, a play that simply shows, in three steps, how to build (1) the world, (2) things and (3) words. The play was also presented at the Théâtre Saint-Gervais in Geneva and was featured at the Focus Old Masters at the Swiss Cultural Center in Paris in January 2021 with L’impression.
L’impression, created in 2018, is a therapeutic play about life in general, co-produced by the TU – Théâtre de l’usine in Geneva and Arsenic in Lausanne.
In 2016, Old Masters wrote, published and produced Fresque, a piece which, through a device and a simple situation, offers the moving story of two individuals and above all of a stage object, the module. The piece was notably selected and then presented in May 2018, at the Stückemarkt of the Theatertreffen in Berlin. It was invited to the Parallèle Festival in Marseille in 2022 and is still touring today.
Old Masters’ first work Constructionisme, created in 2015, is a performative device for creating, analyzing and dissecting objects of study. Constructionisme won the Premio in 2015, the Performing Arts Encouragement Prize. Since its creation, Constructionisme has been regularly presented at numerous festivals, museums and universities, in French, English and German, in Switzerland and abroad.
Our collaborations and support
Old Masters regularly collaborates with the following artists in different capacities: Nicholas Stücklin, Sofia Teillet, Joana Oliveira, Charlotte Herzig, Jonas Bühler, Jérémy Chevalier. The Paquis production association in Geneva, and more precisely Laure Chapel, skilfully ensures its administration. Tristan Barani has been in charge of international distribution since 2020.
The Old Masters collective is supported by the Old Masters association, based in Geneva. Its committee is made up of Manuel Loup (President), Martin Camenisch (Secretary) and Mélanie Tanquerel (Treasurer). The association counts among its supporting members various personalities from the performing arts, including Sandrine Kuster (Théâtre Saint-Gervais), Olivier Kaeser (independent curator), Simone Toendury (programmer at La Bâtie-Festival de Genève) and Laurence Wagner (Belluard Bollwerk Festival).
Awards and other distinctions
- Winner of the Swiss Performing Arts Awards 2024
- Winner of the Swiss Design Awards 2022 for the scenographic installation of Bande originale.
- Prix Töpffer Geneva 2022 for Sarah André for the graphic novel based on Bande originale.
- Space and Time grant from Legs pro culture Foundation, in 2018.
- Fresque is nominated at Theatertreffen’s Stückemarkt in Berlin in 2018.
- Winner of Premio, encouragement prize for the performing arts 2015, for Constructionisme.