Élise
Vigneron

Director, puppeteer, visual artist

 

«By highlighting the fragility and metamorphosis of matter, by bringing bodies and pictures to life, I invite the audience to participate in a sensitive experience, and to enter the metaphoric language of a silent theatre.»

Élise Vigneron

Trained in visual arts, circus, and puppetry at the École nationale supérieure des arts de la marionnette in Charleville-Mézières, Élise Vigneron has developed a creative language at the crossroads of visual art, theatre, and movement.

Her performances often draw inspiration from emblematic literary works, which she translates for the stage through a poetic, visual, and metaphorical language made of images, materials, sounds, gestures, and sometimes words. The notions of metamorphosis and in-betweenness inhabit her work, taking shape through the staging of ephemeral materials. Each project questions anew the audience’s perception and place through specific scenic setups that foster a shared, sensory experience.

Elise Vigneron is the 2026 laureate of the Villa Kujoyama in Kyoto for a residency in collaboration with dancer and choreographer Azusa Takeuchi.

Satchie Noro / Cie Furinkaï & Élise Vigneron – Théâtre de l’Entrouvert have been selected by the European platform Aerowaves for the work Mizu.
Aerowaves is co-funded by the Creative Europe’s Platform Programme for the promotion of emerging artists of the European Union Commission.

She regularly collaborates with artists and researchers from diverse backgrounds: theatre directors Argyro Chioti, Tibo Gebert, and Julika Mayer; choreographers Anne Nguyen and Satchie Noro; circus artists Eleonora Gimenez, Marion Collet, and Fanny Soriano; dramaturgs Marion Stoufflet and Manon Worms; musicians Thibault Perriard, Émilie Lesbros, Pascal Charrier, Robin Finker, and Julien Tamisier; and scientists such as glaciologist Maurine Montagnat and climatologist Xavier Fain

She is currently an associated artist at La Halle aux grains, scène nationale de Blois (41) and at Théâtre de Châtillon (92).
She is also an artiste compagnon at Théâtre Joliette, scène conventionnée art et création – expressions et écritures contemporaines in Marseille (13), and an artiste complice at Le Vélo Théâtre, années n+1 – scène conventionnée in Apt (84).

Élise Vigneron has received several major distinctions for her work as a puppeteer and director:
> 2022 – TRAVERSÉES received the Young Critics Award at the 21st International Puppet Festival in Bielsko-Biała, Poland.
> 2019 – She was awarded the International Creation / Experimentation Prize by the Institut International de la Marionnette.
> 2018 – ANYWHERE received the Henry Bauchau Prize.
> 2017 – ANYWHERE won the Vice Major Award at the International Festival of Ostrava in the Czech Republic.
> 2011 – TRAVERSÉES received both the Innovative Show Award and the Scenography Award at the International Festival of Lleida in Spain.