Actor, writer and director Tiago Rodrigues, from Portugal, is the first foreigner to head up the Avignon Festival, now in its 77th year. In addition to maintaining the tradition of presenting innovative performing arts projects from around the globe to the diverse public that attends the festival, he is also keen to bring people together and promote social dialogue.
"The Festival d’Avignon is an artistic and political event, a civic-minded celebration where pleasure and reflection meet [as they would] in a café. Avignon is a luminous café of ideas," he writes in the festival programme notes.
"In a society that values comfort, staying at home, technological access, the ease of everything coming to us – theatre can be that pocket of utopian resistance, where we move towards meeting strangers, face the mystery of something that we don't know if we're going to like it or not," Tiago Rodrigues told RFI’s Carina Branco prior to the festival.
With Europe "threatened by war, antidemocratic populism, and inequality", the festival is more important than ever, a place of discovery and solidarity.
This is why he’s proud of the balance the festival has struck between well-known artists and those yet to be discovered. Creating an element of surprise for him is the key to remain "a kind of international institute of the unexpected".
One example he cites is French contemporary dance artist Bintou Dembélé who will open the festival on 5 July with "G.R.O.O.V.E", a three-hour explosion of hip-hop, voguing and classical opera.
"She is a legendary figure of French scene who has been working on mixing hip hop with contemporary dance. It's a choreographic language that seems to me absolutely unique at European level and that deserves to be discovered," Rodrigues explains.
Avignon’s regulars will be there too, including Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker from Belgium, Switzerland’s Milo Rau, Philippe Quesne and Mathilde Monnier both from France.
But 75 percent of the program is made up of artists who are coming to Avignon for the first time, such as France's Pauline Bayle, Germany's Susanne Kennedy and Trajal Harrell, from the United States to name just a few.
Rodrigues admits he is keen to bring some personal touches to the well-established festival, notably starting an annual trend of having a language as a "guest of honour". This year, despite his linguistic heritage, it happens to be English.
Rich diversity
When asked about this during an interview at a press conference prior to the festival, he laughed and said "first of all, it would annoy the French" and that was "a good enough reason in itself to do it".
On a more serious note, he says that it’s a way of honouring the language.
The English language has become an "impoverished" version of itself, "spoken for utilitarian, economic reasons," he told RFI.
It "doesn’t reflect the rich diversity and innovation of the English that is spoken today in many parts of the planet".
Rodrigues is hoping to use theatre and dance as ways to "to have an understanding of what the European continent is, a polyglot continent, open to other languages, interested in translation and the happy confusion of translation and thinking about the encounter of cultures," he explains.
Let Avignon be "a bridge to mend the awfulness of Brexit," he told the Institut français in London during a visit last month.
There are eight projects performed in English at the festival this year, and several works are inspired by works originally written in English.
British playwright and actor Tim Crouch is bringing two shows to the festival for the first time. "An Old Oak", is the portrait of a man who is mourning the death of his daughter. Written in 2005, the piece has been performed over 360 times around the globe, each time with a different partner who only learns their part a few hours before.
His other piece "Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel" sees him play the role of the fool from Shakespeare’s "King Lear", asking the audience "what has theatre become since the pandemic, the lockdowns, and overdigitalisation?"
A country where cultures meet
"L’Addition" by fellow British playwright and actor Tim Etchells is a comic duel between a customer and the waiter, performed in French, with each show staged in a completely different venue. Played over and over again by duo Bert & Nasi, with nonstop dialogue or silence, "the scene" starts spinning out of control. Who has the power? Is this a comedy or a nightmare?
Alistair McDowall's "All of It" comes directly from the Royal Court Theatre in London, directed by Vicky Featherstone and Sam Pritchard. It features three monologues, all written for the same actress, Kate O’Flynn.
Britain's Alexander Zeldin will also be present with "The Confessions", inspired by interviews he conducted with his own mother about her experience as an activist.
Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro? This question is the base of a conversation between writer James Baldwin and conservative thinker William F. Buckley Jr. in 1965. The reeanctment is brought to the stage by John Collins and Greig Sargeant of the New York company Elevator Repair Service in "Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge".
"I think that the fact of being the first foreign artist to direct the Avignon Festival speaks more about a part of French society, which wants an open, hospitable, diverse democracy. A country where cultures meet, of languages," Rodrigues concludes.
The festival will close on 25 July with Rodrigues' own creation "By Heart", an interactive piece that first won over the French public almost a decade ago.
Running parallel to the main Avignon Festival is the "Off" programme which features numerous events in the small theatres and outdoor venues around the city, many of which are free and cater to spectators of all ages.
There are also several exhibitions including "L’Oeil Présent" – by Christophe Raynaud de Lage, Avignon Festival’s official photographer who reveals treasures from his archives, capturing all the magic of the stage over the years.
