Mimos in Périgueux 2025: “The New Hallucinations of Lucas Cranach the Elder”, the grand return of an emblematic show

The Mossoux-Bonté company will be reviving “The New Hallucinations of Lucas Cranach the Elder” this Wednesday, July 2 and Thursday, July 3, at the Palace

"I am very happy to be back with Mimos . It's an extremely interesting crossroads, an opening to inventive forms that are often different from each other," says Patrick Bonté. The company he leads with Nicole Mossoux is a regular at the Périgueux (Dordogne) Festival of Gesture Arts, which continues until Saturday, July 5. This time, it will be performing an iconic creation, "The New Hallucinations of Lucas Cranach the Elder," this Wednesday, July 2 and Thursday, July 3, at 6 p.m. at the Palace (1).

The show, created in Tilburg, Netherlands, in 1990, was presented at Mimos in 1992, where it made a lasting impression. It was one of the first performances by this Belgian company, which will celebrate its 40th anniversary in 2026.

How did she become interested in this German Renaissance painter? “While visiting the National Gallery in London, we were struck by the portrait of a little princess with an ambiguous gaze who could have been a saint or a murderer. It was very intriguing. We wanted to know what she had done before, and what she would do after. It gave us the desire to fantasize about the Renaissance. Not to reproduce the paintings of Lucas Cranach, but to know how it speaks to us.”

The company has created a theater of images featuring Lucas Cranach's characters. They move within an original arrangement, a trompe-l'oeil wall pierced with openings where they appear in fragmented forms, creating a strange and mysterious atmosphere.

The show, which ran for twenty-four years, has been revived with a new cast. "Some scenes are very different. There are others, very scripted, that we have kept. And we have composed new music that better corresponds to our expectations today," adds Patrick Bonté, who is preparing his company's anniversary tour and has begun creating a show for fall 2026, "Passions humaines."

(1) As part of the “in”. Prices: from 10 to 20 euros.