Festival d’Avignon, 6 July – 26 July
In July, as far as theatre lovers and experts are concerned, all roads lead to Southern France: the Avignon Festival, one of the artistically most intense and diverse theatre celebrations in Europe, features a rich international programme and an extensive showcase of the best in French performing arts.
This year the honour of opening the festival goes to an astonishing Holocaust story from Eastern Europe: the French director Arthur Nauzyciel's Jan Karski (Mon Nom Est Une Fiction) - Jan Karski (My Name Is Fictional) - is based on the identically titled novel by the Polish writer Yannick Haenel which has provoked heated debates in Europe, has been received with mixed reaction and even attacked for alleged falsification of history. This is a piece that stimulates reflection and forces the viewer to adopt a stance.
One of the most prestigious and, at the same time, most problematic of the Avignon Festival venues, the Cour d'Honneur du Palais des Papes, courtyard of the Palace of the Popes, will be 'warmed up' by the French choreographer Boris Chramatz with his Enfant (Child). Chramatz is an artist who is fascinated by machinery, a diversity of mechanic equipment which he loves to explore on the stage, preferably in interaction with human beings, pushing them (both humans and machines) to the limits. His Enfant, a new piece created especially for the Avignon Festival, features an ensemble of over twenty children and dancers of different nationalities. This time around, he is focusing on the wheels and cogs of children-parent relationships - machinery again, then, albeit in a metaphorical sense.
Incidentally, children's world takes centre stage in a number of works featured at this year's festival, one of the most intriguing of which seems to be Sun, a theatre production based on real life events: a story of two young children who secretly go to the airport to fly to Africa and get married in the sun.
Frédéric Fishbach's Miss Julie, of course, is made noteworthy by the director's choice of actress starring in the title role - none other than the subtle Juliette Binoche, perhaps better known among the general public for her screen roles in Trois Couleurs: Bleu, The English Patient, Chocolat, Les Amants du Pont-Neuf and the Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke's films. As a theatre actress, Juliette Binoche is keen to accept unusual offers, which include guest-starring at London's Royal National Theatre and dancing on stage. Fisbach's production of August Strindberg's Miss Julie for Paris' Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe is, without the shadow of a doubt, a serious challenge.
Festival d'Avignon presents an overview of the most essential French productions created during the past theatre season; the extensive programme comprises a selection of the very best.
The list of French theatre productions worth catching in Avignon definitely includes the French director Patrice Chéreau's latest piece, the London-based production of Jon Fosse's I Am the Wind. The magic of the Norwegian writer's world lies in the poetry and mysteries of things that just defy any attempts to put them into words.
The festival presents a rare opportunity to see a film version of Richard Wagner's Parsifal, staged by the Maestro of the Italian metaphysical theatre Romeo Castellucci; the piece premiered in January at Brussel's Royal Opera. For a quarter of a century, the director has been striving to liberate theatre productions from the dominating power of literature - studying the laws of human vision and hearing and peculiarities of acoustic and optical perception and building his own theatre on the point of intersection between these areas, providing the mind with material that would make it go in two different directions simultaneously. Also featured at the Avignon Festival - this time live - is one of Castellucci's latest works, Sul Concetto di Volto nel Figlio di Dio (On the Concept of the Face, regarding the Son of God).
Alongside the carefully planned main programme freedom and anarchy thrive in the Off programme: a bill of more than six hundred events that have been judged and approved by no-one except the performers themselves. You may not find another festival that equals Festival d'Avignon as far as the concentration of theatre per square metre of the city is concerned.
Programme : www.festival-avignon.com
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