Germain Meyer
A theatre-builder in the Jura
Swiss Theatre Award 2016
Germain Meyer was born at Charmoille, in the canton of Jura, in 1946. He studied literature at the University of Fribourg and obtained his doctorate in theatre sciences at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1974 with a thesis on “Antonin Artaud and the Theatre” supervised by Roland Barthes. Then in 1986 he followed in Artaud’s footsteps to Mexico, where he was a teacher and animator for the department of popular culture in a rural region of the country. Working with peasants and indigenous people, he directed some ten productions throughout Mexico. He gave lectures on the art of directing, for example at the Universities of Potosi and Mexico as well as in cultural centres and at festivals. In 1985 he published a work on the method he developed in Mexico entitled “Teatro campesino”. Back in Switzerland, in 1989 he was co-founder of the Association jurassienne d’animation culturelle (AJAC). He devised a theatre policy for the Jura based on four key areas: training, creation, mediation and dissemination. In recognition of his work on behalf of the canton and in cultural mediation, he received the Prix des Arts, des Lettres et des Sciences from the Republic and Canton of Jura in 2006 and the Canton of Bern Cultural Mediation Prize in 2011.
Meyer staged 18 productions with the AJAC, working regularly with the ensemble of the L’Estrade amateur theatre in Moutier while teaching directing, acting and theatre mediation. Between 1992 and 2003 he coordinated theatre workshops at schools in Jura and initiated and ran the first and only certificate course in theatre in Switzerland at the cantonal grammar school in Porrentruy. To this day, Germain Meyer remains a multi-talented driving force of the theatre in Jura and proves that, with perseverance and commitment, theatre can take root even in a peripheral region.
“Rigour: like the rigour he admired in Artaud and his desire for a theatre of the conscience, and that he sought out in Mexico. Accessibility: like the people’s theatre championed by Jean Vilar, dramatising a special moment in which expectation blends with desire. Germain Meyer cultivates these treasures. In his canton of Jura, he fought to give this art a place in the school curriculum, even setting up the only school certificate course in theatre anywhere in Switzerland. He encouraged even his youngest pupils to take risks. He loves marionettes and background performers: those who are rebellious and sometimes invisible but have much to tell us. Because Germain Meyer believes passionately in theatre as a vehicle for ideas, a place to experiment with another world.”
Anne Fournier, jury member
