by Mirela Sandu Gheorghiu, photo: Diana M.
One of the defining constants of the BABEL Festival’s identity is the organization of workshops dedicated to actors — privileged spaces for meeting, learning, and discovery. These workshops are aimed both at the actors of the “Tony Bulandra” Theatre and at festival participants, creating a dynamic context for artistic and professional dialogue.
This year, the workshop series opened with a distinguished guest: Franco-Swiss director Dorian Rossel, who leads the workshop titled “Inhabiting Space / Playing Life.” An artist with a deep vision of contemporary theatre, Rossel offers a sensitive and rigorous exploration of the actor’s craft, of their relationship with the stage space, and with their own instrument: the living body.
Born in 1975 in Zurich, Rossel has followed a complex and cosmopolitan artistic path. He studied in Switzerland, England, and France, pursuing Arts and Philosophy in Grenoble, then graduating from the “Serge Martin” Theatre School in Geneva. His career began on stage, but also extended into film and social projects such as hospital clown programs. He has collaborated with a wide range of European artists — from Julien Basler and Olivier Lopez to Francis Reusser and Robert Sandoz — and between 1998 and 2005, he founded the Collectif Demain, with which he created experimental performances in non-conventional spaces, exploring the intersections between theatre, dance, and visual arts. His productions — often performed in continuous loops for 5–6 hours — have animated cities such as Beirut, Moscow, Kiel, and Geneva, transforming urban space into a scenic organism.
Beyond his directing activity, Dorian Rossel is also a respected pedagogue, teaching in numerous national theatre schools: La Manufacture, ESAD, ERACM, and Saint-Étienne. His pedagogical and artistic philosophy is deeply humanistic: theatre, he says, is a “living art, made of love and joy.”
For Rossel, acting means discovering a delicate and singular strength. The stage becomes a place where certainties are suspended, where the senses are reawakened, and where the actor becomes a sculptor of time and space. The body, the voice, the words, the silences — all become tools for transmitting emotion, meaning, and presence. The actor is invited to become aware of their contribution to the overall performance, to seek truth, freedom, and the joy of play.
“A theatrical performance means being together for a determined period of time, and then playing between being yourself and being another,” Rossel states. Through this workshop, he offers participants a deep immersion into the creative process — a return to the essence of theatre as an art of presence, storytelling, and authentic vibration.
In a present dominated by accelerated rhythms and an oversaturation of information, the encounter with Dorian Rossel is an invitation to return to living in the moment. An exercise in listening, introspection, and sharing — in which actors rediscover the profound meaning of their craft. Or, to paraphrase Rimbaud, perhaps they even relearn that theatre must be reinvented.