Fleur Pellerin, Minister of Culture and Communication, and Jean-Claude Gaudin, Mayor of Marseille, in full agreement with the Regional Council Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur and the General Council of Bouches-of the Rhône, gave their approval to the unanimous proposal of the jury meeting on January 9, 2015 to appoint Francesca Poloniato as director of the Théâtre du Merlan, Marseille’s national stage.
Director of production of the Besançon national scene since 2011, after having been secretary general of the Centre chorégraphique national de Nantes then director of development of the Ballet de Lorraine-Centre chorégraphique national, Francesca Poloniato will pilot an artistic equipment whose ambition is to take its place and play its full role in a vast dynamic of urban development.
For the Théâtre du Merlan, she has built, under the title “Au fil de l’autre”, an imaginative and generous project based on a “band” of theatre and dance artists, called upon to work, alongside the national stage team. in dialogue and in complicity with all the «neighbours» of Merlan, whether it is the population or the relay structures of the educational, social and cultural fields that surround it.
While paying particular attention to its mission and its local audience, the project of Francesca Poloniato integrates an offer of accompaniment and support to the young artistic teams of the region in all the disciplines of the living art and logics of solidarity and network with the main cultural equipments of Marseille and its quarters and, beyond, the far south.
Paris, 22 January 2015