Willem Dafoe is the brand new inventive director of the theater division of the Italian arts group La Biennale di Venezia, the Venice Biennale, for a two-year time period 2025-2026.
“Theater is in actual fact the unique house of his lustrous profession,” mentioned Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, chair of the board of administrators of the Biennale, which is the muse that oversees the Venice Movie Competition. “One of many founders of the legendary Wooster Group in 1977, the right management of his physique on stage has at all times stemmed from self-discipline, data, ardour and a profound consciousness of theater. I can’t wait, like everybody else, to be a spectator on the competition he’ll construct as inventive director and — from his lectern as an absolute maestro — to look at the younger women and men of the Theater Faculty develop of their artwork.”
Stated Dafoe: “I used to be first stunned then completely happy to obtain Pietrangelo Buttafuoco’s invitation.” He continued: “I notice that I’m often called a movie actor, however I used to be born within the theater, the theater educated me and galvanized me. I’m a stage animal. I’m an actor. Theater taught me about artwork and life.” Concluded Dafoe: “I labored with the Wooster Group for 27 years, I’ve collaborated with nice administrators from Richard Foreman to Bob Wilson. The route of my theater program can be charted by my private improvement. A kind of exploration of the essence of the physique.”
Dafoe started his inventive profession as a college pupil in Milwaukee the place at age 19 he joined Theatre X (1975-1977), one of many first experimental theater teams within the U.S., with which he carried out in Offending the Viewers by Peter Handke and in lots of performs by the director and inventive director John Schneider. In Europe, the place he lived in 1976, he labored on the legendary Mickery Theatre in Amsterdam — the center of different worldwide theater — the place he carried out on stage in Folter Follies, a piece by the founder, actor, director, playwright, producer and visible artist Ritsaert ten Cate.
“However he started his most necessary theater coaching in New York, the place along with director Elizabeth LeCompte and actors Ron Vawter, Kate Valk, Jim Clayburgh and Peyton Smith, he co-founded The Wooster Group, with which he would carry out on stage for over 20 years (1977-2003), collaborating in most of the productions, which featured a singular mix of languages and texts — from the classics to American counterculture, from Flaubert to Lenny Bruce — that made it the fulcrum of the underground scene in Nineteen Eighties New York, establishing collaborations with many artists: Ken Kobland, Jim Strahs, Richard Foreman, Trisha Brown, John Lurie, Bruce Odland, Steve Buscemi, Jennifer Tipton, Frances McDormand, Hans Peter Kuhn, Amir ElSaffar,” the Biennale mentioned.
In 2016, he participated within the Biennale Teatro program within the grasp class part, instructing a workshop devoted to performing.
Dafoe has been nominated for 4 Oscars. This yr he can be within the forged of the opening movie of the 81st Venice Movie Competition, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice by Tim Burton.
Biennale Teatro was based as an impartial division of La Biennale di Venezia in 1934, following its departments for artwork (1895), music (1930) and cinema (1932). “It has been directed by necessary figures on this planet of tradition and leisure, reminiscent of Renato Simoni, Luca Ronconi, Franco Quadri, Carmelo Bene, Lluís Pasqual,” the group mentioned.
Since 1998, it has been programmed yearly, together with by Giorgio Barberio Corsetti (1998-2002), Peter Sellars (2003), Massimo Castri (2004), Romeo Castellucci (2005), Maurizio Scaparro (2006-2009), Álex Rigola (2010-2016), Antonio Latella (2017-2020), and Stefano Ricci and Gianni Forte (2021-2024).