Charles Chemin conceives and directs pieces between theater, dance and visual arts. He explores subjects where reality and fiction collide, where poetic form and raw documentary material coexist.
He is the artistic director of The Watermill Center's International Summer Program. This interdisciplinary festival hosts and blends artists in residence, emerging or well established, in order to create works in-situ together. The Watermill is an arts center founded by Robert Wilson in New York in 1991.
PIECES // He is associate director in Florence at La Pergola - Tuscany national Theater since 2019, where he writes and directs interno/esterno based on Maeterlinck, tour in Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, then PARADISI based on Dante. He creates shows at Craiova national Theater in Romania, like Athens by night, adapted from the two Athenian plays by Shakespeare.
He conceives and choreographs dance pieces in France and US with Caroline Breton: I hope, figures, bitches, where their research focuses on the layers of memory and new live forms of portrait.
He staged his first works since 2008 together with visual artist Carlos Soto in places like Performa Biennial New York or Moscow Contemporary art Biennial.
MUSIC // Charles directs operas, Le Messie du peuple chauve by Eric Breton at Avignon Opera, based on the eponym novel, Cubanacan by Roberto Valera, on the life of architect Riccardo Porro, at Havana national Opera. He developed music pieces like 20 silences with Dom Bouffard at Vicenza Festival, based on his research at NASA or collaborated with composers such as François Sarhan for the staging of Home Work with Ictus Ensemble at Bregenz Festival or Alexandre Desplat and Solrey for En Silence.
ROBERT WILSON // He works as a co-director for Robert Wilson's works since 2009, collaborating together on over twenty productions. Recently, he remounts with Wilson the historic I was sitting on my patio in collaboration with Lucinda Childs, develops and co-directs Mary Said with Isabelle Huppert, Jungle Book with CocoRosie at Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, and tours numerous shows, including Krapp's Last Tape by Beckett where he directs Wilson on stage.
PERFORMER // Trained as a performer by Meg Harper (Merce Cunningham Co), Robert Wilson and Philippe Chemin, he performed during 20 years in theatres such as Comédie-Française, Lincoln Center in New York, Festival d’Avignon, Festival d’Automne à Paris, Barbican Center.