More than a topic, an obsession. Willem Dafoe, at his first stint as the Venice Theatre Biennale director, authored an edition that is strictly personal, cut to measure to his idea and experience of what theatre is.
More than a topic, an obsession. Willem Dafoe, at his first stint as the Venice Theatre Biennale director, authored an edition that is strictly personal, cut to measure to his idea and experience of what theatre is. A gathering of forces, more than a mere exposition, where the bodies of actors are the focal point of theatrical gesture, the matrix of conveyed meaning even more so, and earlier so, than words are. Theatre is Body – Body is Poetry: it’s right there in the title.
An icon of auteur cinema, Dafoe founded the Wooster Group with Elizabeth LeCompte, whom he awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. He grew as a performer in New York avant-garde theatre, and always maintained a privileged relationship with stage acting. His performances are based on motion, on sound, on ritual, on bodily presence, and are an expression form that lives beyond language. They are primordial and emotional.
The 2025 Venice Theatre Biennale looks at the maestros of the past while embracing the salient issues of today. One of the current edition’s references is the 1975 Biennale by Luca Ronconi, a milestone of new theatre and of the Biennale’s history.
Holman, Yana Eva Thönnes, Princess Bangura, and Anthony Nikolchev. Some are back in Venice after decades, like Thomas Richards, Eugenio Barba, and Julia Varley. Different story for No Title, a performance authored and performed by Dafoe, co-starring Simonetta Solder and dedicated to Richard Foreman, the undiscussed master of American avant-garde theatre.
Biennale College enriches the programme with international workshops that will amplify our reflection on bodies as the centre of theatrical action, while Spazio Cinema is a programme dedicated to theatre film, with rare material, testimonies, and archive surprises. One of these is Dionysius in ’69, the filming of Richard Schechner’s version of Euripides’ Bacchae by Brian De Palma, Robert Fiore, and Bruce Rubin.
More than a manifesto, Dafoe’s is an itinerary. His vision comes into being as a tension between past and present, ritual and experience, gesture and listening. His theatre goes beyond representation and speaking to the mind alone: it fully impresses the body.
