Prix de la Critique

Prix de la Critique is awarded every year at the end of the season by a jury composed of journalists specialised in the performing arts to the best performing arts from the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. These awards, which are unique in French-speaking Belgium, wish to honour shows, directors and actors, actresses and actors, authors and others, scenographers and technicians ¹⁾.

In each of the 14 categories, the jury selected three nominees. The winners will be unveiled at an exceptional evening at Théâtre 140 in Schaerbeek.

Every winner gets a statue. In 2018 a grant from the National Lottery was received to finance the making of a representative statuette of the Awards. François Schuiten designed the statue. Schuiten offers the Prix de la Critique a symbolic statuette: a new tribute to the living arts ²⁾.

“I wanted ,” he says, “ to have the emotion of an opening, like a half-opened scene, but also an opening to the world that the theater teaches us to decipher. A world represented by two hemispheres of black resin with, at the heart of everything, the idea of ​​diversity, as a fruit that opens, sensual, amazing. The flavours of this fruit are wood species, clear or dark, as the world in its diversity, forming intertwined contrasts, a multitude of actors: it is the scene of the world. This intermingling of wood in the heart of the star will be arranged differently by the master craftsman Karl-Heinz Theiss, making the object unique ” ³⁾.

François Schuiten and Karl Theiss discuss their sculpture for Prix de la Critique in this video by RTBF ⁴⁾.

The statue of Schuiten and Theiss were used for the seasons 2017/2018 and 2018/2019.