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Avignon Festival: once upon a time Olivier Py

Olivier Py, director of the 76th Festival d'Avignon.

© Siegfried Forster / RFI

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

7 mins

When he won his nomination at the head of the largest theater festival in the world in 2013, he had only one name in his mouth: Jean Vilar.

Leaving, nine editions later, Olivier Py will enter - after this 76th Festival which closes its doors this Tuesday, July 26 - himself into the history of theater as a worthy successor to the founding father of the Festival d'Avignon, this utopia of a theater for all come true.

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Since its first edition in 2014, Py has given its nobility both to classical theater and to popular and experimental theater.

He defended tooth and nail living art in all its forms and for all ages, with demanding, undisciplined, unexpected shows.

He ventured and exposed himself in the Court of Honor, but also in the political arenas to demonstrate the major importance and central role of theater in a democratic society.

He defended the rights of intermittent workers and the reception of foreigners, fought by words and actions the ideas of the extreme right, was committed to equality and diversity.

Even if he temporarily closed the mythical, but expensive Carrière de Boulbon to open other places of creation, he crossed the walls of the City of the Popes to reach the inhabitants of the difficult neighborhoods of this city as historic and flamboyant as economically poor.

Py has always assumed his delusions of grandeur, never hesitated to speak like a pope, a fanatic or a minister, while directing this greatest theater event as an artist.

Under his own direction, he will have done everything: he programmed himself to stage and perform several plays, including Shakespeare's

in his own translation, and, this is not the least of things, focused on the scene of the Palace of the Popes.

On the other hand, in the face of art, he showed himself lucid and humble, bowing before the enthusiastic and unwavering spectators of the Festival.

As he admits to having understood everything about

thanks to the eight inmates of the penitentiary center of Avignon-Le Pontet with whom he had staged Shakespeare's play.

For nine years at the head of the biggest theater festival in the world, Olivier Py showed everything, achieved everything he had in mind, while remaining this colorful and enigmatic character at the service of a certain vision of theater .

Because he also suffered failures, provoked many debates and disputes, without ever forgetting to sow the seeds of the future, the world of theater owes him respect today and a big THANK YOU!

RFI

Olivier Py

Yes, you could say that I have a fault as a young author, that is to say that I put everything into this piece.

So it lasts ten hours.

It's my whole system of thought and the legacy of my research over these thirty, thirty-five years.

I projected myself in the figure of an old poet, but also in the figure of a young Harlequin, whom I am no longer, but who dialogues with this old poet.

I was a young Harlequin, today I am an old Harlequin.

The Harlequin, who is it for you

He is the one who still believes in something, something like the poem, the theater, the revolution.

In short, someone who still believes in a transcendence, not necessarily in a transcendence that needs a God, on the contrary even, one could say "a secular transcendence", a transcendence that is expressed in the link with others and in the collective.

And then, above all, the Harlequin is comedy.

I'm happy, because the audience laughed a lot for ten hours.

It's a real feat.

And we know that when we laugh, we are intelligent.

The young Harlequin and the old poet in "Ma jeunesse exaltée", a play written and directed by Olivier Py.

© Christophe Raynaud de Lage / Avignon Festival

Everyone who attended this ten-hour show experienced an enthusiastic, elated and deeply moved audience.

What characterizes the audience at the Festival d'Avignon

We owe everything to the public.

It is the public that makes the strength of Avignon.

It is the public that makes the legitimacy and the artistic requirement of Avignon.

This public is extraordinary, it is unique in the world.

Of course, there is also this magnificent, marvelous city, with its palaces, its places, its cloisters, its gardens, and of course there is a direction that has worked hard to make the Festival much more than a list of shows.

But first there is the audience.

It is the spectators who make the beauty of Avignon.

And what's going on between you and your audience

I was happy to see that there were a lot of young people in the audience.

Fortunately, my public has renewed itself.

My audience is heroic, because it has to endure ten hours of theater [

].

And, at the end, I like the way he first thanks the actors who make a great sacrifice.

At the end of these ten hours, when the public is standing and applauding for a quarter of an hour, it seems that there is no longer any boundary between the stage and the hall.

We are all the same community that tried to experience something exceptional for an entire day.

The Avignon Festival is Jean Vilar, theater for everyone.

After eight, even nine editions (if we include the "Covid" edition of Art Week in 2020) at the head of this unique institution in the world, what do you consider to be your greatest contribution? at this festival

Popular theater is ultimately quite simple.

It is the greatest artistic and intellectual, even political requirement, but tickets cost ten euros for those under 25.

That's all.

That's enough.

It needs no further definitions.

What we will have achieved is the public, it is to have created this community which understood that something of the order of the exceptional was happening there, but not at all reserved for an elite. , on the contrary, quite open.

Already in terms of prices, but we have also developed meetings, free admission, the change of ticket offices, which means that there is greater accessibility.

So, the popular theater, there are only those who have not come to Avignon who do not believe in it.

Everyone who comes to spend a day in Avignon discovers that it is possible.

Culture for all,

the democratization of thought, of the spirit, I would even say of a certain joy or a certain hope, it is possible.

In any case, it is possible for three weeks in Avignon.

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