News
Theatre
November 2009: Double world premiere, in French and in German, of Dominique Caillat’s new play, Darwin’s confession, commissioned by the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences on the occasion of Charles Darwin’s bicentennial. The French language play will be directed by François Rochaix. The German version will be directed by Martin Burr of “Imprimerie Theater Basel”. The productions will tour Switzerland throughout November and December 2009, with over 40 performances in 11 cities.
Dominique Caillat’s libretto concept for an oratorio, The Children’s Passion, won a literary award from the Swiss Cultural Foundation Pro Helvetia. In the meantime, she has written a draft of the libretto in English and is working on French and German translations. The search for partners for the project is in full swing.
Dominique Caillat’s play about the Middle-East conflict, État de piège, opened to public and press acclaim on November 20, 2007 at the Théâtre de Carouge in Geneva, in a remarkable production by François Rochaix, with Elzbieta Jasinska, Pierre Dubey and Laurent Sandoz. The play ran for four weeks and had 25 performances, all of them sold out (103,4% seat occupancy).
The production was sponsored by the “Société Académique de Genève” within the framework of the 2005-2008 Forum on Democracy and Terrorism and was accompanied by public debates. Guest speakers included: prof. Alexis Keller (Harvard University, Université de Genève), Gabriel de Montmollin (Publisher, Labor & Fides), Adam Maor (Israeli pacifist) and prof. Albert de Pury (theologian).
Literature
Book publication
LA PAIX OU LA MORT (DEATH OR PEACE)
Behind the Stage of the Israeli-Palestinian Drama
(in French)
was published in November 2007 by Labor & Fides, Geneva. In her book, Dominique Caillat tells about years of research in the Middle-East, looking at the origins and the development of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and describing the “making of” her recent play on the subject, État de piège.
Essay
In November 2008, Le Temps, Geneva’s prestigious daily paper, published an essay by Dominique Caillat about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on two full pages, entitled Proche-Orient : quel espoir ? >> (Middle-East: Any Hope Left?)
Speech
On February 20, 2008, Dominique Caillat was the guest speaker at the annual assembly of the “Société Académique de Genève”, addressing a group of prominent academics and businesspeople at the University of Geneva. Her speech, entitled Proche-Orient: Rêve et réalité (Middle-East: Dream and Reality) summed up 11 years of recurrent research in Israel and Palestine that led Caillat to write two plays and a book.