la peur

The company Animal Architecte launches into an exploration of the relationship between architecture and power, delivering a light and playful piece of theatre.

Why do authoritarian powers still seem so obsessed with classical columns, starting with Trump and his planned ballroom? Why did the hashtag Empire explode on social media, reflecting a male fascination with order and imperial aesthetics?

And how can the Bauhaus, a small modernist school of applied arts in the Province of Saxony that operated for about a dozen years and has been closed for over a century, become a power issue today? What does a culture war sound like?

Roman Empire (j'essaie d'apprendre à vivre avec la peur) sets out to answer these riddles and to explore the relationship between power and architecture by summoning a few ghosts, Roman or otherwise, and by asking the question from the very place where it is posed: a theatre.

The majesty of the architectures evoked is met with a sober and rigorous form that is also zany, fragile and mischievous.