L’École Parallèle Imaginaire

École parallèle imaginaire is a travelling school and collective of artists associated with theatre director Simon Gauchet, whose work investigates how theatre can be created by and for a territory. Rooted in situated and landscape-based practices, the collective conceives theatre as a tool for making territory through duration, shared experience, and collective fiction.

Born in Saint-Malo and trained at the Théâtre National de Bretagne (TNB), Gauchet’s practice draws on both Western and Oriental theatre traditions, shaped by encounters with Indonesian and Japanese performance and a residency at Villa Kujoyama. His work often bridges theatre history and maritime imaginaries while reactivating adventure, dream, and expedition – with their logbooks, risks, uncertainties, and spirit of discovery – as dramaturgical forms.

Water is a structuring element in his work, connecting places, geographies, and distant temporalities. Rivers, canals, seas, and islands function simultaneously as material environments, historical archives, and speculative spaces. In projects such as Le Radeau utopique, Le Naufrage utopique, L’Université flottante, and others, Gauchet explores insularity, crossings, and the search for utopia – whether by looking for Thomas More’s island in the bay of Saint-Malo, or revisiting the myth of Atlantis near Santorini, Greece.

Always working with local collectives—amateurs and professionals alike – École parallèle imaginaire integrates inhabitants into the very fabric of its creations. These projects are not only searches for lost islands, but for hope: for collective utopia, joyful theatre-making, and the experience of becoming a community. Against narratives of inevitable catastrophe, École parallèle imaginaire asserts the enduring power of shared imagination. As written on the sail of the small yellow boat used in Le Naufrage utopique: “l’imaginaire vaincra le réel”. – K. Mamadnazarbekova