Avignon On

The 61st Avignon Theater Festival has clearly recovered from the professional strikes, audience dismay and artistic bickering that have plagued it in recent years. With 75% of seats sold by the first week of the month-long event, the public is back in force, lured by the program of Invited Artistic Director Fédéric Fisbach, which marks a return to the vision of Festival founding father Jean Vilar, to make theater accessible to all. Far from elitist, the program features a number of artists unknown to the public – Gildas Milin, Faustin Linyekula, Eléonore Weber – alongside longstanding Festival guests Valère Novarina, Romeo Castellucci and Rodrigo Garcia and established French directors Ariane Mnouchkine, Julie Brochen and Jean-Pierre Vincent. Fisbach sets the example with the choice of shows he brings : “Les Paravents”, Jean Genet’s reputedly un-playable and initially scandalous play about the Algerian War, created in 2002 with the Youkiza Marionnette Theater of Japan, and “Feuillets d’Hypnose”, created from extracts of the journal kept by French poet René Char about his activities with the French Résistance. Political engagement marries art in these shows meant to touch a wide audience either through puppetry, bringing to life the 96 characters of “Les Paravents”, or a 24/7 sit-in in the Cour d’Honneur, bringing the convictions of Char and Vilar home again to a festival that was roundly criticized in 2005, under the direction of Flemish choreographer Jan Fabre, as an incomprehensible exercise in artistic self-gratification. Avignon in 2007 seems to have put those troubles behind it by putting the text and the public at the fore.

Photo: Christophe Raynaud de Lage/Festival d'Avignon