Tatiana Baumgartner, Léa Katharina Meier
Terminale Hysteria
théâtre, performance
- 1h30
- G Hearing loops
- E Partially-sighted spectators welcome
- B Accessible to persons with reduced mobility
Coproduction: Arsenic - Centre d’art scénique contemporain, Lausanne, TU-Théâtre de l’Usine, Genève. Soutiens: Perform! Pro Helvetia, Fondation Ernst Göhner, Fondation Leenaards, Loterie Romande Vaud, service des Affaires culturelles du Canton de Vaud, Ville de Lausanne.
Welcome to Terminale Hysteria, a kitsch and cruel city filled with big cats, princesses with long nose, characters in three-piece suits and walking faeces.
Inspired by satiric television sketches, John Waters movies and Valerie Solanas’ play Up Your Ass, Tatiana Baumgartner and Léa Katharina Meier, alongside Maria Fernanda Ordoñez and Dominique Gilliot, are creating a grotesque universe with a frenetic and emancipating atmosphere. Terminale Hysteria is a farce that caricatures conservative ways of thinking, in order to point out their ridiculousness. Through laughs and silliness, the four performers will embody violent states and representations, in an attempt to rid themselves of oppressive norms for the duration of a show by reimagining the fears that inhabit them.
Punctuated by re-enactments of domestic violence, focus groups, board meetings, heart attacks and cabaret acts, Terminale Hysteria creates a playground for glee and the pleasure of moving beyond the nightmarish political visions that surround us.
Léa Katharina Meier is a visual artist and performer. She develops a work on ridiculousness and shame, fed by her failures.
Considering that these open up new possibilities for dissident subjectivities and poetic narratives, she wants to create a resource space that embraces vulnerability and monstrosity. Through universe that is aesthetically grotesque, tender and cruel, she aims to contribute to the construction of a dirty, pedantic humour. She has shown her work in numerous art spaces and theatres in Switzerland, Italy and Brazil (Arsenic, TU-Théâtre de l’Usine, Les Urbaines, MCBA, Tunnel Tunnel, Le Commun, Lateral Roma, Pivô arte e pesquisa). In 2021, she was the recipient of the Swiss Performance Art Award for her performance Tous les sexes tombent du ciel. In 2023, she took part in the Swiss Art Awards exhibition in Basel. In 23-24 she was a resident at the Swiss Institute in Rome and was awarded the prize of the Irène Reymond Foundation.
Tatiana Baumgartner is an actress and stage director based in Lausanne. She graduated from La Manufacture in 2013. The main theme of her research is the power relations that run through our lives, and through the public and private spheres. This theme has given rise to a play co-written and directed with actress Caroline Imhof: On n’est pas venus les mains vides! The play premiered in 2021 at Arsenic. The play depicts the implicit and blurred hierarchies that govern working relationships in the performing arts. Since 2014, she has been working with artist Léa Katharina Meier. Together, they created LES MAUVAIS JOURS FINIRONT! (2015), Lipstick Big Enough (2017), Ma maison est une maison sale (2018), Tous les sexes tombent du ciel (2021). In 2024, they present Terminale Hysteria at Arsenic in Lausanne and at the TU in Geneva.
Next to her stage activities, Tatiana is creating a contemporary tarot with the graphic designer Gaëlle Renaudin.