The Avignon 'In' Festival makes 2016 programme public
The Avignon Festival, one of the biggest annual stage events in Europe, will be three days shorter in July 2016, than in previous years, falling below its previous at least three-week stint. The programme is none the less rich however. Among the 40 or so productions, artistic director Olivier Py, has chosen the usual mix of classical repertory and new pieces of drama or dance.
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From 6th to 24th July, the Festival in the City of the Popes where one of the dramatic highlights is the stage in the mediaeval Papal Palace, is serving up Gogol’s Dead Souls and Visconti’s The Damned, as well as Dostoyevski’s Brothers Karamazov.
The Brothers will be staged by 34 year-old Jean Bellorini, the director of the public-funded Saint-Denis Theatre, the Gérard Philippe. He’ll be tackling the magnificient open-air disused quarry venue, La Carrière de Boulbon, 15 kilometres outside Avignon, and which was not used last year to save money.
Russe Kirill Serebrennikov takes on Dead Souls.
Presenting his third consecutive Festival programme, Olivier Py, said his inspiration this year had come in large part from great works of literature.
Founded by Jean Vilar in 1947, in the wake of World War 2, 2016 marks the 70th Avignon Festival (it missed one year in 2003 due to strikes over changes in professional status of performance artists and technicans).
In this landmark year, the famous Paris-based troupe formed in the 17th century, La Comédie-Française will perform The Damned in the high-walled Pope’s Palace in the centre of Avignon. Belgian Ivo van Hove will direct.
Py and his team have also selected festival premières and French premières, classics or new writing, from directors and companies from further afield such as Chile, Syria, Lebanon and Israel or Iran.
The Mehr Theatre group hails from Iran, and director Amir Reza Khoohestani’s play is called Hearing. He says he "set out to find a connection with the way things are today and the experiences of the teenagers and children" who grew up in the Iran-Iraq war.
Something probably completely different, but she’s full of surprises, so maybe not, Angelica Liddell will no doubt serve up a rare theatrical mixture once again, between East Asia and Spain, last time it was with China and the US, with Ping Pang Qiu (2012) , this year ¿Qué Haré yo con Esta Espada?, which is called What Will I Do with this Sword in English, and is about a Japanese cannibal.
Other directors from across Europe who are firm favourites at the Avignon Festival keep up appearances, such as Krystian Lupa with Austrian Thomas Bernhard’s play, Heroes Square.
As every year, the Festival has a theme. Py describes this year's as “political impotence and the rise of populism and nationalism, which in a strange way, attract artists more than they do politicians.”
Another returning director, too young yet to be accused of Avignonitis, Frenchman Julien Gosselin, today 29, is putting on a 12 hour show, 2666. He adapted his previous Avignon piece from Michel Houellbecq’s Elementary Particles. 2666 is an adapation of the 1,350 page eponymous novel by Chilian writer Roberto Bolano, who died in 2003.
Besides all this, the particular element introduced to the Festival by Py and Co., in 2014, recurs this year. They have selected two dance performances from Lebanon by Ali CHahrour, a play from Damascus, While I was Waiting, written by Mohamed al Attar and staged by Omar Abusaada and one from Israel. Amos Gitaï adapts his film, The Last Day of Yitzhak Rabin, to the stage. From Greece, the Blitztheatregroup will adapt a work by Friederich Hölderlin with 6a.m. How to Disappear Completely
Py and colleagues also remain true to their wish to shine a light on performance art around the Mediterranean, not least of all because Avignon itself is only about 60 kilometres from
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