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, theater and circus, Elise Vigneron joined the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette de Charleville-Mézières from which she graduated with honors in 2005.

From 2005 to 2011, she worked as a puppeteer and set designer for the company Le Théâtre de Nuit directed by Aurélie Morin on the creations Perpetuum Mobile (2005), Mystoires (2007) and La Loba (2011). She collaborates with choreographer Gang Peng on the Hip-hop dance show Sur le fil (Suresnes Danse 2007) and with puppeteer Aurélie Hubeau on the show L’intruse by Maurice Maeterlinck (International Festival of Puppet Theaters in Tournai 2006).

Accompanied from 2008 to 2011 by the Vélo Théâtre, a stage approved for object theater in Apt (84), she created a solo, TRAVERSÉES, freely inspired by the play Thresholds by Patrick Kermann. This first show marks the milestone of a visual writing close to the plastic installation mixing a strong presence of the elements (water, earth, fire, air) with disturbing images. His creation at the Mondial de Théâtre de Marionnettes festival in Charleville-Mézières immediately opened up wide international distribution. Élise Vigneron created THÉÂTRE DE L’ENTROUVERT in January 2010. TRAVERSÉES received the prize for innovative form at the International Puppet Festival of Lleida (Spain) in 2011.

From this show, she extracted a short and musical form known as TRAVERSÉES / FRAGMENTS with the musicians Émilie Lesbros (singer) and Pascal Charrier (guitarist) in 2011.

She created the piece IMPERMANENCE in 2013 in collaboration with the circus artist Éleonora Gimenez. The poems written by Tarjei Vesaas led her to explore ephemeral and unstable materials. This show gave birth to hers first experiment around ice.

From 2014 to 2017, she was an associate artist with Espace Jéliote, a Theater approved for puppetry arts in Oloron Sainte Marie (64).

In ANYWHERE (creation 2016), a piece freely inspired by the novel by Henry Bauchau Oedipus on the road, Élise Vigneron deepened her research on the transformation of ice, from solid to gaseous, by staging an ice puppet, Oedipus figure. This show won the best price at the Ostrava International Puppet Festival (Czech Republic) in 2017.

She created L’ENFANT, from The Death of Tintagiles by Maurice Maeterlinck in a stage form (creation 2018 at TJP, CDN Strasbourg Grand-Est) and as an In Situ form (creation 2019 at Théâtre du Gymnase in Marseille).

In July 2019, she co-created with dancer Anne Nguyen the piece Axis Mundi as part of “Vive le Sujet!” “, SACD program, Avignon Festival.
She received the Henry Bauchau Prize in 2018 for the staging of the show ANYWHERE and the Creation / Experimentation Prize awarded by the International Puppetry Institute in September 2019.
In 2020, she received a research grant from the AVIAMA Association for a study trip to Japan.
From 2015 to 2020, she is supported by Les Théâtres, direction Dominique Bluzet in Aix en Provence and Marseille (13). It is associated with the Théâtre du Bois de l’Aune in Aix-en-Provence (13) for the 20/21 season, with the Cratère, Scène nationale d’Alès (30), with the Théâtre de Châtillon (92) and the Halle aux grains, scène nationale – Blois (41) over seasons 22-23, 23-24 et 24-25. Élise Vigneron is an associate artist at the Vélo Théâtre, Apt (84).