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A man risen from the ashes: Poussière  Poussière (Dust), on the programme of the Théâtre du Train Bleu, one of Festival Off Avignon's prestigious venues, is a 40-minute puppet show directed by Sophie Mayeux, who is also the founder of the Compagnie Infra company.  Performed in a 60-70-seat hall, Poussière takes place inside a transparent cylinder, a capsule, I assume made of plastic, about one metre in diameter and one and a half metres high, placed in the centre of the stage (set design: Ionah Mélin). In the prologue we witness the end of the world; it could be a nuclear war, a rebellion of nature or a volcanic eruption. Smoke, dust and ash envelop the cylinder; you can't see a thing. In the same way that Phia Ménard, whose work I love, controls the flow of air in her show L'après-midi d'un foehn , a choreography of smoke and dust is created by directing the flow of air inside the cylinder. Then the curtain goes down and when it rises again we see a post-apocalyptic ...

Among the invitees of the 77th edition of the Festival d'Avignon – one of the world's prominent performing arts festivals, taking place from July 5th to 25th, 2023, was the Brazilian director, playwright and actor Carolina Bianchi who was invited by Tiago Rodrigues, the festival director and a Portuguese theatre-maker. Based in Amsterdam, Bianchi made her debut at the Avignon Festival, presenting the world premiere of her performance A Noiva e o Noite Cinderela (The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella), the first part of her Cadela Força (Bitch Power) Trilogy. Bianchi is the director of the collective Cara de Cavalo (Horse Face) and her works explore the gaps between theatre, performance, and dance while addressing issues such as patriarchy, phantasmagoria, historical agreements, gender crisis, colonial heritage, and excessive eroticism. She describes her artistic practice as involving “physical practices engaging in a lively conversation with imagination, intervening in the ...

In this year's 77th edition of the Festival d'Avignon, our performing arts editor and writer Ayşe Draz, along with our performing arts writer Mehmet Kerem Özel, engaged in conversations with the artists of the performances they watched between July 6th and 10th. The second conversation is with John Collins, the artistic director of the American group Elevator Repair Service, and Greig Sargeant, who plays Baldwin in the play. © Christophe Raynaud de Lage  Portuguese theatre figure Tiago Rodrigues, the festival director, states in his introductory essay for the 77th edition of the Festival d'Avignon – one of the world's prominent performing arts festivals –, held from July 5th to 25th, 2023, that "We do not accept a world divided by borders, for we believe that the organization of the world, its pasts and presents, must be based on the freedom of languages with their complex richness." Building on this notion, Rodrigues plans to emphasize a different language ea...

© Christophe Raynaud de Lage I was delighted to see the Compagnie Plexus Polaire at the 2023 edition of the Festival Off Avignon, a company I had never seen before but which had been on my radar ever since I came across the images of their adaptation of Moby Dick on the internet. The company was at the festival not with Moby Dick , but with Dracula - Lucy's Dream , an adaptation of another classic novel, Bram Stoker's famous Dracula . Performances took place at La Patinoire, which La Manufacture had temporarily converted from a skating rink into a theatre space, from 7 to 24 July, every day except Wednesday at 9.50 am. As the title suggests, the protagonist of the show is the beautiful and sexy Lucy, one of the minor characters in the novel, Count Dracula's first victim in England. Lucy is the friend of Jonathan Harker's fiancée Mina and is a sleepwalker.  The show begins directly in Lucy's dream, which she has one night while sleepwalking. Lucy sees herself in her...

© Christophe Raynaud de Lage  The 77th edition of the Festival d'Avignon, one of the most important performing arts festivals in the world, took place from 5th to 25th July. The programme of this first edition, prepared by the Portuguese actor, director, playwright and producer Tiago Rodrigues (1977), who was appointed director of the Festival for four years, included 44 performances. The first of the conversations that we had with the artists of the performances we saw between 6th and 10th July at this year's edition was with Belgian contemporary artist and storyteller Patrick Corillon (1959). Corillon (1959) took part in the festival with his show ' Portrait de l'artiste en ermite ornemental ' (Portrait of the artist as an ornamental hermit).  After studying at the Institut des Hautes Études en arts plastiques in Paris, Corillon decided to focus on travelling and on a practical experience of art through installations, scenographies, sculptures, book publishing, fi...