71 years of Shakespeare @FestivalAvignon III° Part ( 2001-2017)
STAGE PRODUCTION
The Life and Death of King John
1998 - stage direction Laurent Pelly
Twelfth Night
1982 - stage direction Ariane Mnouchkine
1984- stage direction Ariane Mnouchkine
2003- stage direction Antonio Latella
All's well that ends we
1998 - stage direction Irina Brook
The Winter's Tale
1980 - stage direction Jorge Lavelli
1988 - stage direction Luc Bondy
Love's Labour's Lost
1980 - stage direction Jean-Pierre Vincent
As You Like It
1976 - stage direction Benno Besson
A Midsummer Night's Dream
1959 - stage direction Jean Vilar
1990 - stage direction Jéròme Savary
Antony and Cleopatra
2015 - stage direction Tiago Rodrigues
Corionalus
1977 - stage direction Gabriel Garran
Hamlet
1965 - stage direction Georges Wilson
1977 - stage direction Benno Besson
1988 - stage direction Patrice Chéreau
1998 - stage direction Eimuntas Nekrosius
2001 - stage direction Krzysztof Warlikowski
2005 - stage direction Hubert Colas
2008- stage direction Thomas Ostermeier
2017 - stage direction Oliver Py
Julius Caesar
1998 - stage direction Romeo Castellucci
King Lear
1981- stage direction Daniel Mesguich
1983 -stage direction Footsbarn Travelling Theatre
2007 -stage direction Jean-François Sivadier
2013 -stage direction Ludovic Lagarde
2015 - stage direction Oliver Py
2015-LEAR MINIATURE - stage direction Oliver Py
Macbeth
1954 - stage direction Jean Vilar
1956- stage direction Jean Vilar
1985 - stage director Jean Vilar
1995-UBU ROI AVEC DES SCÈNES DE MACBETH- stage direction SilviuPurcarete
2001 - stage direction Sylvain Maurice
2002- stage direction Camille and Manolo - Theatre of Centaure France
Othello
1975- stage direction Georges Wilson
Romeo and Juliet
2003 - stage direction Oskaras Korsunovas
The Tempest
1969- stage direction Michel Berto
1986- stage direction Alfredo Arias
1988 - reading with Alain Cuny
1991 - stage direction Peter Brook
1999 - stage direction Giorgio Barberio Corsetti
Titus Andronicus
1969 - stage direction Jacques Guimet
1995 - stage direction Silviu Purcarete
The Life and Death of King Richard the Second - ( Richard II )
1947- stage direction Jean Vilar
1948 - stage direction Jean Vilar
1949 - stage direction Jean Vilar
1953 - stage direction Jean Vilar
1982 - stage direction Ariane Mnouchkine
1984 - stage direction Ariane Mnouchkine
2010 - stage direction Jean-Baptiste Sastre
The Life and Death of Richard the Third - ( Richard III )
1966 - stage direction Roger Planchon
1972 - stage direction Terry Hands
1981 - stage direction Robert Stura
1984 - stage direction Georges Lavaudant
1995 - stage direction Matthias Langhoff
1999 - stage direction Geneviève de Kermabon
2007 - stage direction Ludovic Legarde
2015 - stage direction Thomas Ostermeier
King Henry the Fourth - ( Henry IV )
1950 - stage direction Jean Vilar
1984 - stage direction Ariane Mnouchkine
1999 - stage direction Yann-Joël Collin
King Henry the Fifth - ( Henry V )
1999 - stage direction Jean-LouisBenoit
2004- stage direction Pippo Delbono
King Henry the Sixth - ( Henry VI )
1980– stage direction Théâtre école de Montreuil
1994 - stage direction Stuart Seide
2014 - stage direction Thomas Jolly
Falstafe
2014 - stage direction Lazare Herson-Macarel (THEATRE - YOUNG AUDIENCE)
STAGE DIRECTION
Alain Cuny --The Tempest - 1988
Alfredo Arias --The Tempest - 1986
Antonio Latella --Twelfth Night - 2003
Ariane Mnouchkine --Twelfth Night - 1982 // Richard II - 1982 // Henry IV - 1984 // Twelfth Night - 1984 // Richard II - 1984
Benno Besson --As You Like It - 1976 // Hamlet - 1977
Camille and Manolo --Macbeth - 2002
Daniel Mesguic --King Lear -1981
Eimuntas Nekrosius --Hamlet - 1998
Footsbarn Travelling Theatre --King Lear - 1983
Gabriel Garran --Coriolan - 1977
Georges Lavaudant --Richard III - 1984
Georges Wilson --Hamlet - 1965 // Othello - 1975
Geneviève de Kermabon --Richard III - 1999
Giorgio Barberio Corsetti --The Tempest - 1999
Hubert Colas --Hamlet - 2005
Irina Brook --All's well that ends we - 1998
Jacques Guimet --Titus Andronicus - 1969
Jean Vilar --The Life and Death of King Richard the Second - ( Richard II )- 1947 - 1948 - 1949 - 1953 Macbeth - 1954 - 1956 // King Henry the Fourth - ( Henry IV ) - 1950 // A Midsummer Night's Dream - 1959
Jean-Baptiste Sastre --Richard II - 2010
Jean-Louis Benoit --Henry V - 1999
Jean-Pierre Vincent
Love's Labour's Lost - 1980 // Macbeth - 1985
Jean-François Sivadier --King Lear - 2007
Jéròme Savary --A Midsummer Night's Dream - 1990
Jorge Lavelli --The Winter's Tale - 1980
Yann-Joël Collin --Henry IV - 1999
Krzysztof Warlikowski --Hamlet - 2001
Laurent Pelly --The Life and Death of King John - 1998
Lazare Herson-Macarel --Falstafe - 2014
Luc Bondy --The Winter's Tale - 1988
Ludovic Legarde --Richard III -2007 // King Lear - 2013
Matthias Langhoff --Richard III - 1995
Michel Berto --The Tempest -1969
Oliver Py --King Lear - 2015 and -LEAR MINIATURE - 2015 // Hamlet - 2017
Oskaras Korsunovas --Romeo and Juliet - 2003
Patrice Chéreau --Hamlet - 1988
Pippo Delbono --Henry V - 2004
Peter Brook --The Tempest - 1991
Robert Stura --Richard III - 1981
Roger Planchon --Richard III -1966
Romeo Castellucci --Julius Caesar - 1998
Sylvain Maurice --Macbeth -2001
Silviu Purcarete --Titus Andronicus - 1995 // Macbeth - 1995
Stuart Seide --Henry VI - 1994
Terry Hands --Richard III - 1972
Théâtre école de Montreuil --Henry VI - 1980
Thomas Jolly --Henry VI -2014
Thomas Ostermeier --Hamlet - 2008 // Richard III - 2015
Tiago Rodrigues --Antony and Cleopatra - 2015
2001 - 55th Edition
HAMLET - stage direction Krzysztof Warlikowski (Poland)
show in Polish with French surtitles - running time 2 hours 40 min
On the poster for Krzysztof Warlikowski's play, at the Rozmaitosci Theatre in Warsaw (directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna), Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is naked. He's wearing only a luxurious royal mantle that falls from his well-shaped shoulders and on his head there is a crown.
His pose is highly stylised and the poster looks like a fashion photo. In fact, he's wearing the costume for the coronation of Claudius, a costume that he never actually wears on stage.
He's trying something on and trying something out, as this whole play confronts Hamlet with contemporary sensitivity, with obvious ostentation, without compromise.
Piotr Gruszczynski, Ubu/Scènes d'Europe, n°16, Avril 2000. This version of Hamlet was first performed in 1999 and is still running in Warsaw. It has marked the recent history of Polish theatre. Krzysztof Warlikowski, who was assistant to Krystian Lupa, Peter Brook and Giorgio Strehler, has broken with the conventional image and has dropped the historical pomp. From different points of view, his Hamlet is naked, stripped bare. He is given a certain sexuality and reflects the brutality of the world in which he lives. The director uses very simple means: a square stage, a little larger than a boxing ring, where the actors exist in a passionate and physical way.
Cast : : Stanislawa Celinska (Gertrud) -Andrzej Chyra (Horatio) - Magdalena Cielecka (Ophélie) - Aleksandra Poplawska (Guildenstern) - Marek Kalita (Claudius) - Cezary Kosinski, Maria Maj, Robert Wieckiewicz (les comédiens) - Jacek Poniedzialek ( Hamlet ) - Maria Seweryn (Rosencrantz) - Adam Woronowicz (Laertes) - Miroslaw Zbrojewicz (Polonius). Production : Teatr Rozmaitosci (Pologne)
MACBETH - stage direction Sylvain Maurice (France)
Création en France --French translation : Jean-Michel Déprats - running time 2 hours 45 min
Macbeth combines all the ingredients of a modern thriller. "As he becomes a tyrant, Macbeth also becomes an expiatory victim of the society which he crushes. His need, revealed by his destiny is much deeper, more archetypal than the pull of ambition or a thirst for power, than the logic of murder, the dizzying effects of damnation. It is the tragic necessity of taking responsibility, and taking it alone, for the murderous processes that order the march of history, that is based on murder: the necessity of being given a role that one could define as the polarisation of chaos.
Sylvain Maurice's version of the play, is pared down to an aesthetic shadow, and sees in Macbeth, a modern-day hero. Negative but modern in his philospohical boldness. Guilty but young. Never have the usurper of the Scottish throne and his wife ever been so young, thus renewing the image of a play that tradition obstinately fixes in maturity. The key to this production is simplicity, the criminal couple, like the witches, are no longer such stock characters, they are portrayed as being like us all, but on the side of evil.
Cast : Désirée Olmi (Première sorcière, Lady Macduff) - Catherine Tolosa (Deuxième sorcière, Fléance, un messager) -Stéphanie Farison (Troisième sorcière, dame de compagnie,le jeune Siward) - Pierre-Alain Chapuis (Duncan, premier meurtrier, Siward) - Lyes Salem (Malcolm) -Michel Quidu (le capitaine ensanglanté, Seyton, le portier,le vieil homme) - Jérôme Ragon (Donalbain, un noble, le médecin) - Pierre-Yves Desmonceaux (Lenox, deuxième meurtrier, Hécate) - Boris Napès (Rosse) - Marc Berman (Banquo, Cathness) - Pierre Louis-Calixte (Macbeth) - Eric Challier (Macduff) - Nadine Berlandle (Lady Macbeth) - Paul-Emmanuel Gautreau ou Alexandre Pottier (fils Macduff (en alternance)).
Production : L'Ultime & Co, Le Carré-Théâtre des Ursulines de Château-Gontier, L'Hippodrome-s Château-Gontier, L'Hippodrome-scène nationale de Douai, L'apostrophe-scène nationale de Cergy-Pontoise, le Théâtre Jean-Vilar de Vitry-sur-Seine, le SAN de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelin ,le Palais des Arts de Vannes, le Théâtre de Chelles, le Palais des Arts de Nogent-sur-Marne et le Théâtre de Gennevilliers-centre dramatique national.
2002 - 56th Edition
THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH - stage direction Camille and Manolo - Theatre of Centaure France
Creation in France- running time 1 ho
In a sumptuous cathedral made of black canvas, the centaur marches to rhythm of Shakespeare's verse. While hooves trample on a sienna floor, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth look into each others' eyes and whisper their love to each other. We are in a dream belonging to two young artists, Camille and Manolo.
The mad dream of a utopic actor who is called The Centaur. Half-human, half-animal, The Centaur doesn' t exist but yet, in the shadow of the tent, the horse and the actor seem to be one single being. As bonded to each other as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are by their love, heroes of the bloody Shakespearian tragedy.
The director couple have chosen to highlight the absolute and exemplary passion of the Shakespearian couple whose love for each other mocks death and costs them their lives. To show the fusion of the lovers, the centaur uses his power and his grace. In praise of conquering childhood, of passionate love, before the lust for power comes to darken their tale.
Cast: Camille, Jean-Noël François, David Mandineau, Manolo, Jean-Marie Rase, Gaïa ou Aramaéa Rase Assistants director : Brigitte Cecchini, Charlotte Grünspan, Frédéric Pécarrère, Cati Réau, Éric Rossi, Nicolas Touache Voices sorceress :Johan Daisme and the horses : Banquo, Bhima, Coco bottom, Darwin, Diego, Graal, Laramis, Nuno, Manouchka, Queluz, Yudishtira Adaptation : Camille et Manolo
Coproduction :Théâtre du Centaure, résidence de création à la Ferme du Buisson-Scène nationale de Marne-la-Vallée, Parc de la Villette, Printemps des comédiens, Festival d'Aurillac
2003 - 57th Edition
TWELFTH NIGHT - stage direction Antonio Latella (Italy)
Creation 2003 - show in Italian with French surtitles
A shipwreck on the imaginary coast of the the Isle of Illyria separates Viola from her twin brother Sebastian. She disguises herself as a page in order to become part of the court of the Duke Orsino. Wearing these clothes and known by the name of Cesario, the young woman receives the favours of Olivia, who is promised to the Duke.
The height of the comedy of ambiguity, Twelfth Night combines all types of Shakespearian theatre. The fairy tale, the family tragedy, burlesque farce and the epic tale, each one in turn provides a decor for the sorrowful or marvellous love stories for the heros.
Cast :Silvia Ajelli, Angela Burico, Ottavia Casagrande, Cristina Cavalli, Anna Coppola, Elisa Lepore, Daria Panettieri, Giorgia Porchetti, Maddalena Recino, Anja Sesia, Elisabetta Valgoi, Alessia Vicardi
Production :Teatro Stabile dell'Umbria (Pérouse)
ROMEO AND JULIET - stage direction Oskaras Korsunovas ( Lithuania)
show in Lithuanian with French surtitles - running time 2 hours
The war between the Capulets and the Montagues explodes with the clatter of saucepans being beaten, here a knife is thrown, there a packet of flour bursts. Shakespeare's Verona becomes the domestic battleground of a pizzeria cut up into two clans. Juliet and Romeo find love on the zinc kitchen surfaces, under the starry skies of ustensils, chopping knives, saucepan lids and leaded kitchenware.
After Le Maître et Marguerite and Visage de Feu which marked the Avignon Festivals in which they were performed, 34 year-old Oskaras Korsunovas, attacks the societies which are stuck in their secular and unfounded hatred.
He denounces the parents who sacrifice their children on the altar of hatred and for their blind stupidity. Korsunovas removes the embellishments and the excessively prudish arrangements in Shakespeare's story which were part of the romantic century. He serves up some Elizabethan violence on a flesh and blood stage, where personified words and choreographic gestures harmonize in universal stage language. He magnifies the tortured but salvational love of the two children, united by the first love marriage in conjugal history.
Cast :Dainius Gavenonis, Darius Gumauskas, Gytis Ivanauskas, Dainius Kazlauskas, Rasa Marazaite, Vaidotas Martinaitis, Dalia Micheleviciute, Egle Mikulionyte, Saulius Mykolaitis, Arunas Sakalauskas, Rytis Saladzius, Rasa Samuolyte, Giedrius Savickas, Remigijus Vilkaitis, Tomas Zaibus choreography :Vesta Grabstaite
Co-production :Oskaro Korsunovo Teatras (Vilnius), Festival d'Avignon, Hebbel-Theater (Berlin), Festival “Arts & Ideas” (New Haven), THEOREM (association soutenue par le programme Culture 2000 de l'Union européenne), Fondation de soutien à la culture et au sport lituanienne.
2004 - 58th Edition
HENRY V - stage direction Pippo Delbono
show in Italian with French surtitles - running time 1 hour 10 min
Shakespeare's text recounts a battle, the story of a capricious king who “wants France”, in the same way as an irritable child demands a toy, here and now. In tackling a play from classical repertory for the first time, Pippo Delbono and his company wanted to turn Henry V's combats into the mother of all wars.
Played by a troupe where gesture takes precedence over the spoken word, an isolated phrase from the Shakespearian drama becomes a whole scene, a flag dance represents the game of strategy, a simple prop all the gold and all the ornate costumes.
A few objects, hardly any at all, to express the “je ne sais quoi” that drives humanity into murderous madness. In this production, in the form of an anachronistic folk parade, pre-war France whirls around to realistic songs, men and women twirl around, search for each other, hide from each other and lose themselves in a surrealistic ballet.
Each time Pippo Delbono puts on this heroic symphony, he works with a group of people from the place where it is performed. Forming an integral part of the production, this time a chorus of amateur actors discovered by the Cavaillon Scène Nationale have been asked to join the ensemble movements of this anti-martial poetry.
For this work of Shakespeare has been transformed into a long poem on courage and the struggle that every individual has with themselves. Sparsely played, the Shakespearian drama viewed as a rock opera urges the audience to conquer the impossible, to resist the unacceptable.
Cast : Pippo Delbono, Gustavo Giocosa, Pepe Robledo et un chœur d'acteurs amateurs réuni par la Scène nationale de Cavaillon et le Festival d'Avignon
Production : compagnie Pippo Delbono
2005 - 59th Edition
HAMLET - stage direction Hubert Colas
Creation 2005 - running 4 hours 30 min
Inexhaustible Hamlet... Since 1600, this play has been performed on stages all over the world and there is not one generation of actors or directors who have not asked themselves about the mysteries of this universal hero, who have not invested time and effort in investigating this emblematic work.
The fascination that this play holds has led to it being altered, truncated and manipulated many times.
Hubert Colas wanted it to be heard in its entirety, not side-stepping any of its complexities, its questions, its hidden secrets. He therefore gives all the protagonists time on stage so they can take part in the slow poisoning which gradually takes over their bodies, heads and heart.
The play is staged within a modular set which sometimes describes reality, sometimes imagination and it is directed entirely according to the text Shakespeare left us and which reacts on stage like a combustible fuel fanning the action and driving the bodies.
This Hamlet is one who burns on stage, in his search for truth and in finding nothing but lies. It is a political Hamlet who never forgets where he comes from, into which dynasty he was born, nor the despotic power which he may well carry himself.
This is a Hamlet who confronts himself and takes on all the other characters; who receives as much as he gives and provokes as much as he is provoked.
This is a Hamlet of evidence, not of examination, and who acts as a beacon to those around him, forcing them to remove their masks, relentlessly denouncing falsehood. Agitated when thoughts are rushing around in his head, when he perceives deceit, nevertheless he is astonishingly tranquil when he declares his truth and predicts his fate. All the nuances of the tragic ambiguity of every thinking and loving being are displayed in a series of scenes and in meetings between characters. They take us out of the shadow into light, from black to white.
Playing on its theatricality, with which he sometimes has much fun with his actors, Hubert Colas will have us understand that, on a stage, only words are real and that the articifices of performance should not distance them from their addressees, on the contrary, they should make them all the more clear.
Direction and scenography : Hubert Colas cast : Patrick Albenque, Geoffrey Carey, Claire Delaporte, Rojas Patricia, Garcia Nicolas Guimbard, Mireille Herbstmeyer, Pierre Laneyrie, Boris Lémant, Isabelle Mouchard, Thierry Raynaud, Frédéric Schulz-Richard, Xavier Tavera, Cyril Texier, Manuel Vallade Traduction and adaptation : Hubert Colas With the artistic collaboration of : Alain Gautré who directed a work about the clown
Production : Diphtong Cie, La Criée - Théâtre national de Marseille, La Halle aux Grains - Scène nationale de Blois, Théâtre des Salins - Scène nationale de Martigues Avec la partecipazione artistica: du Jeune Théâtre National
2007 - 61st Edition
LE ROI LEAR - stage direction Jean-François Sivadier - Translation :Pascal Collin
Artistic collaboration:Véronique Timsit, Nicolas Bouchaud, Nadia Vonderheyden
Creation 2007 - running time 3 hours 45 min
At the Avignon Festival, Jean-François Sivadier has played in Enfonçures (Hollows) by Didier-Georges Gabily in 1993 and in Henry IV by William Shakespeare directed by Yann-Joël Collin in 1999. In 2002, he directed La Vie de Galilée (Galileo) by Bertolt Brecht, and in 2005, a diptych Galileo by Brecht – La Mort de Danton (The Death of Danton) by Georg Büchner.
After Beaumarchais, Brecht and Büchner, it's the turn of Shakespeare (1564 - 1616) to be ovehauled by Jean-François Sivadier and his team for their production in the Pope's Palace Courtyard of Honour.
The English playwright wrote this piece in 1606, at the height of his maturity towards the end of Elizabeth 1st's reign. A mythical place demands a mythical play which layers and weaves the themes around the three images of this Lear as king, father and madman.
Making the most of the mystery which surrounds the king's choice to give away his power, the father's demands for words of daughterly love and after his tragic mistake about the real nature of his daughters, the madman who wanders in a storm which he has partly stirred up, Shakespeare and his Lear cross through fields of politics, desire, folly and paternity with tremendous force.
That force was so great that King Lear was used as a case study by the psychoanalysts Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, yet never really unveiled the secrets of a unique unending journey.
Cast :Nicolas Bouchaud, Stephen Butel, Murielle Colvez, Vincent Dissez, Vincent Guédon, Norah Krief, Nicolas Lê Quang, Christophe Ratandra, Nadia Vonderheyden, Rachid Zanouda Outstanding Collaboration:Vincent Rouche, Anne Cornu Scenography:Jean-François Sivadier, Christian Tirole
Associate production company:Théâtre national de Bretagne (Rennes) Jean-François Sivadier is an artist associated with::Théâtre national de Bretagne (Rennes)
co-production :Théâtre national de Bretagne (Rennes), Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, Festival d'Avignon, La rose des vents - Scène nationale Lille Métropole/Villeneuve d'Ascq, l'Espace Malraux - Scène nationale de Chambéry et de la Savoie, Italienne avec Orchestre, Théâtre national de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées
RICHARD III - stage direction Ludovic Legarde
by Peter Verhelst freely adapted from"Richard III" of William Shakespeare Translate : Christian Marcipoint
Creation 2007 - running time 1 hour 30 min
Flemish author Peter Verhelst writes poetry, novels, short stories, tales as well as works for the stage or film scenarios. He also takes part in the performances of his works. His first work of poetry, Obsidaan (Obsidienne), is reminiscent of Baudelaire's, with love, sexuality and death at the centre of his writing. In the 1990s, he began to produce dramatic works, adapted from classical tragedies such as The Oresteia, Romeo and Julietteand Edward II.
Using a very physical language which is sensitive, sensual and overflowing with poetry and imagination, this 45 year-old writer does not believe in making distinctions between poetry and prose, between dance and drama, instead he places the emphasis on the role of the actor in conveying the spoken word.
Since 2005, he has been involved in a serialized work called Utopiefabriek (Utopia Factory).
This Richard III has been totally re-written and only retains the dramatic thread of the play of the same name by William Shakespeare.
While the ambivalent character of Richard, a simultaneously seductive and repulsive hero, is present in Peter Verhelst's version, it is the women who have the most say, and the historical happenings occurring off-stage are told by a voice off stage, a messenger or a chorus as in antiquity. The consecutive “close-ups” on Richard and the women surrounding him give a better insight into why the hero is permanently chasing after the evil that seems to be his motivation.
This Richard, strangely enough, only talks of love, of The Absolute or of utopian politics to the point of delirium which makes him sound quite similar to our own contemporary dictators. He exposes a private side, manipulates and kneads private aspect which politicians seem to put to wide use nowadays.
The monstrosity of the king takes root first of all in his brain before expressing itself in strong and implacable words that the author brings out within a mixture of verse and prose which gives his meaning a real dynamic. To attain his goal, his dream, his destiny, this Richard devours and destroys everything in his path, convinced that there is no other way.
He clearly illustrates the idea that a desire of absolute purity can lead to the worst of atrocities, as is shown and underlined by the real tragedies of our most recent history, and which Peter Verhelst's stage-writing makes obvious to us in a most terribly efficient way. It is the first time the work of this Flemish author is being staged in France.
Cast :Suzanne Aubert, Pierre Baux, Anne Bellec, Francesca Bracchino, Geoffrey Carey, Antoine Herniotte, Camille Panonacle, Laurent Poitrenaux, Samuel Réhault, Christele Tual assistant dramaturge:Marion Stoufflet scenography:Antoine Vasseur
co-production :Compagnie Ludovic Lagarde, Maison de la culture de Bourges -Scène nationale, Centre dramatique régional de Tours, Festival d'Avignon, Le Trident-Scène nationale de Cherbourg - Octeville, Festival delle Colline (Turin), Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines - Scène
2008 - 62nd Edition
HAMLET - stage direction Thomas Ostermeier ( Music Theater ) Schaubühne Berlin Translation Marius von Mayenburg
Creation 2008 -show in German with French surtitles ,Running time 2 hours 30 min
It was in late 1601 or early 1602 that William Shakespeare(1564-1616) wrote his Tragic History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, inspired by extracts of Tragic Histories taken from the Italian works of Bandello de François de Belleforest (1556).
It was undoubtedly for the actor that he especially admired, Richard Burbage, that he wrote this tragedy, surely the most mysterious and Freudian, at the same time as he finished his most joyous comedy, Twelfth Night.
Accompanied by Maurius von Mayenburg, associate author at the Schaubühne of Berlin who translated and adapted Shakespeare's text, Thomas Ostermeier begins a journey through one of the brilliant English playwright's key works. Inexhaustible Hamlet, the first of a series of tragedies written at the end of Elizabeth I's reign.
Here, on the brink of paranoid madness, in the grip of his visions, anxieties and incapacity to take a decision, to choose, to assume his status as a man and crown prince, Hamlet plays with, hides from and wants to manipulate those around him, concealing behind deliberately chosen madness a murderous plan supposed to save him, free him from the “putrid swamp” that surrounds him.
Trapped by the court, trapped by the political world, then becoming truly mad, he turns against himself the weapons that ought to have served his liberation. Seeking honesty and truth in a universe where concealment and lies reign, Hamlet loses himself in his powerlessness to act, in a growing dilemma that overwhelms him and condemns him to death.
Thomas Ostermeier has selected a limited number of actors: six to play about 20 roles, favouring the scenes in which Shakespeare depicts, through the Danish court, a political system composed of murders, corruption and passions that serve the desire for power.
It is impossible, Shakespeare seems to say, to allow room for the complexity of thought when you must act, and act quickly, politically.
It is this inability to choose from the possibilities that makes Hamlet unfit for power and inexorably leads him to his death, itself a herald of the collapse of the Danish kingdom as it functioned at the time.
Cast: Robert Beyer, Lars Eidinger, Urs Jucker, Judith Rosmair, Sebastian Schwarz, Stefan Stern scénographie: Jan Pappelbaum
Production: Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz (Berlin), Festival d'Avignon, Festival d'Athènes
2010 - 64th Edition
THE TRAGEDY OF KING RICHARD II - stage direction Jean-Baptiste Sastre
The fallen king in the play that inaugurated the Festival in 1947, The Tragedy of King Richard II by William Shakespeare, is staged in the Cour d'Honneur by Jean-Baptiste Sastre, with actor Denis Podalydes in the title role.
Creation 2010 - running time 2 hours 45 min
What an odd history is that of Richard Plantagenet, crowned eighth king of England when he was 10, really assuming the prerogatives of his responsibility at 15, renouncing the throne at 32, before dying in prison, the following year, in 1400.
What a fascinating tragedy, what an astonishing fiction is that written by Shakespeare in 1595, based on the life of this monarch with his many contradictions, loved and hated, strong and weak, who asserted himself as both man and king, and not only as a sovereign of divine right.
A martyr king for some, a weak, capricious, indecisive, unjust king for others: every adjective was used to characterise this royal body who brought his kingdom with him in his fall. Shakespeare's play bears witness to the end of a world on whose rubble anarchy and barbarism reigned.
In this is the whole contradiction of the concept of power incarnated by Richard II, which was based on the fear of disorder and anarchy and which lead however to more chaos and violence.
At the invitation of the director Jean-Baptiste Sastre, Denis Podalydès will take on, in the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des papes, a venue contemporary with Richard II's reign, the role of this "non-king king" as he called himself, this king whose sovereignty was sickened by an exercise of power peopled by illusions.
The Tragedy of King Richard II relates his trajectory, but also that, symmetrical but despite everything opposite, of Henry Bolingbroke, the future Henry IV. Both of them faced death in a combat whose principal stakes were the quest for power, a combat that led each of them to a common pain.
The writer Frédéric Boyer has chosen a direct, edgy language that gives an account of the richness of Shakespearean speech excluding any romanticism. A choice that echoes Jean-Baptiste's passion for words and literature as the presence on the stage of the authors Jean Echenoz and Pierre Michon attests.
director Jean-Baptiste Sastre translation Frédéric Boyer scenography with Sarkis Cast: Axel Bogousslavsky, Frédéric Boyer, Cécile Braud, Jean-Charles Clichet, Florence Delay de l'Académie Française, Jérôme Derre, Vincent Dissez, Bénédicte Guilbert, Yvain Juillard, Alexandre Pallu, Denis Podalydès de la Comédie-Française, Anne-Catherine Regniers, Nathalie Richard, Bruno Sermonne
Production Festival d'Avignon
2013 - 67th Edition
LEAR IS IN TOWN - stage direction Ludovic Lagarde
Translation and adaptation by Frédéric Boyer and Olivier Cadiot for "King Lear"
Creation 2013 - Running time 1 hour 40 min
If the Lagarde-Boyer-Cadiot trio venture into this Shakespearean play, it is to grasp this man's traumas, linked to old age, kinship, war and the wearing effect of power. As in Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape, the Lear they imagine listens to the key scenes of his past again to attempt to understand what played out in them. Awkward and impotent, he invokes the demons to conjure up the dire fate in store for him, attached as he is to this old world permeated with magic and occult procedures from which he has come. A blend of cruelty and tenderness, of lyricism and pathos, of horror and dazzling visions, the play constantly shifts the glances that can be caught on it. In focusing their work on a paganism that ceaselessly calls on the forces of evil that must be fought by exorcisms, the translators remained entirely faithful to a text that presents all the names of demons, large and small, all the magic formulas evoked since time immemorial.
It will therefore not be Lear that will be presented in the Carrière de Boulbon, but a view on Lear, an auscultation of this character through a respectful compression of the text, done through cuts and not rewriting. A play that extracts the quintessence of this Shakespearean tragedy that goes beyond any historical framework, any psychological framework, to touch the heart of the enigmas that humanity has attempted to solve since the dawn of time.
It was on 26 November 1606 that this True Chronicle of the History of the Life and Death of King Lear and His Three Daughters was performed for the first time in London, more precisely at Whitehall before King James I. Once again, Shakespeare (1564-1616) did not invent either the name or the story of his hero since, in 1597, the figure of Lear was present in Raphael Holinshed's Chroniclesand various other narratives in verse.
All of them were inspired by the life of this king who supposedly lived in England in 800 B.C. according to the Historia regum britanniae, published by the historian and bishop Geoffroy de Monmouth.
direction Ludovic Lagarde scenography Antoine Vasseur dramaturgy Marion Stoufflet
Cast: Clotilde Hesme, Johan Leysen, Laurent Poitrenaux
Production La Comédie de Reims CDN coproduction Festival d'Avignon, Centre dramatique national Orléans/Loiret/Centre, Équinoxe Scène nationale de Châteauroux with the support of CENTQUATRE-Paris
Seventy-five minutes of dialogue between the artistic staff and the audience to debate about the show. With the team of Lear is in Town, moderated by the Ceméa.
Listen to the encounter http://www.festival-avignon.com/en/thought-workshops/2013/lear-is-in-town-dialogue
with Ludovic Lagarde and the artistic team.
2014 - 68th Edition
FALSTAFE - stage direction Lazare Herson-Macarel (THEATRE - YOUNG AUDIENCE)
Creation 2014 -From the age of 9 - Running time 1hour 15 min.
Young prince Hal, the future King Henry V, wastes his time and energy following around the old John Falstafe, a master in debauchery, to his father's dismay. But when the king's enemies declare war on him, the prince is called back to his destiny and his duty: to defend the crown by facing Percy in a duel, even if that means dying.
Dying? Falstafe will have none of it. In 1975, when he adapted Shakespeare's Henry IV for Marcel Maréchal, Valère Novarina had his play revolve around the fool's obsession with remaining young, in spite of his age, his paunch, and his baldness. Made for children as much as it was inspired by them, Lazare Herson-Macarel's version focuses on Falstafe's playful relationship to reality.
If, for Shakespeare, the world is a stage, for Falstafe, life itself is but a game.
Thus so is death. The old man would rather play a thousand different roles than that of the adult people want him to be, and he is determined to replace virtue and honour with illusion and levity. Although Percy is actually young, he embodies the deadly seriousness that Falstafe flees and foils. If the prince, as faithful a disciple as his shameless old companion ever had, ends up responding to the gravity of his circumstances by accepting his responsibilities, Falstafe remains to the end a bold coward and, thanks to successive about-faces, leaves the battlefield a victor.
What better place to build a theatre than a garden dedicated to youth? When, in 2009, Lazare Herson-Macarel invites his companions to build, far from Paris, a stage that will soon become the Nouveau Théâtre Populaire, it isn't to flee the capital, but to establish a place where they can guarantee for themselves “a youth lovely, heroic, and fabulous.” Borrowing from Arthur Rimbaud's A Season in Hell, Lazare Herson-Macarel chooses for his motto the perseverance to “to hail the birth of new labour, new wisdom.” Every August in Maine-et-Loire, the NTP organises a festival, which fulfills the conditions of this renewal.
Members of the company trade places, become alternately actors and directors, and are thus able to stave off the lethargy that habit engenders. The spirit of Jean Vilar no doubt guided the company to Avignon, seeing as how they already live his ideal of a theatre open to everyone every day in Fontaine-Guérin.
Text Valère Novarina after Henry IV by William Shakespeare Adaptation and direction Lazare Herson-Macarel Scenography and costumes Alice Duchange
Cast : Philippe Canales, Le Roi Joseph Fourez, Falstafe Sophie Guibard, Pistole et WorcesterL'Hôtesse Julien Romelard Le Prince et Percy
Production Compagnie de la jeunesse aimable Co-production Nouveau Théâtre Populaire (NTP), Théâtre Sorano-Jules Julien de Toulouse, Festival d'Avignon
HENRY VI - stage direction Thomas Jolly
2014 unabridged version Running time estimated running time 18h including intermissions
Thomas Jolly offers to what he calls the “ephemeral community” made up of actors and of the audience the opportunity to take part in an eighteen-hour performance to follow, almost step by step, the life of King Henry VI.
Three plays and fifteen acts, a hundred and fifty characters (be they historical or a product of the author's imagination), to take us through two wars and the various family conflicts that marked the reign of this king, much too kind and too pious. Amidst the chaos of a time of upheaval, between the end of the Middle Ages and the struggling beginnings of the modern era, William Shakespeare created a complex trilogy.
Thomas Jolly and his actors choose to make it theirs and to offer a genre-bending show. They create a universe in which historical landmarks fade away and reject the temptation of reconstitution, using every genre at their disposal, from farce to burlesque, from comedy to tragedy, to invite us to a celebration of the theatre. A thrilling and energetic theatre, built with simple means.
The Wars of the Roses, which turned England into a bloody battlefield between 1455 and 1485, finds its origins in a dispute over succession between two branches of the House of Plantagenet, who had ruled England since 1216: the Houses of Lancaster and York. Related by blood as direct descendants of King Edward III, they were nonetheless torn apart by ambition during the tumultuous reign of King Henry VI, a Lancaster. It was his cousin Richard, Duke of York, who opened hostilities in 1455, allowing his son to become King Edward IV in 1461, after deposing Henry VI.
Direction and scenography Thomas Jolly Direction assistant Alexandre Dain Translation Line Cottegnies Dramaturgy collaboration Julie Lerat-Gersant Lighting Léry Chédemail, Antoine Travert, Thomas Jolly Music and sound Clément Mirguet Costumes Sylvette Dequest et Marie Bramsen
Cast: Johann Abiola, Damien Avice, Bruno Bayeux, Nathan Bernat, Geoffrey Carey, Gilles Chabrier, Eric Challier, Armand Chomant-Planson, Alexandre Dain, Flora Diguet, Antonin Durand, Émeline Frémont, Damien Gabriac, Thomas Germaine, Thomas Jolly, Nicolas Jullien, Pier Lamandé, Martin Legros, Julie Lerat-Gersant, Olivier Leroy, Jean-Baptiste Papon, Charline Porrone, Jean-Marc Talbot, Manon Thorel, Antoine Travert
Production : La Piccola Familia, Théâtre National de Bretagne, Rennes Co-production Le Trident Scène nationale de Cherbourg-Octeville, Les Gémeaux Scène nationale de Sceaux, Comédie de Béthune Centre dramatique national Nord-Pas de Calais, Théâtre de l'Archipel Scène nationale de Perpignan, Le Bateau Feu Scène nationale de Dunkerque, Scène nationale Évreux Louviers, TNT Théâtre National de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées, TAP Théâtre Auditorium de Poitiers, Quai des Arts-Argentan dans le cadre des Relais Culturels Régionaux, Théâtre d'Arras Scène conventionnée musique et théâtre, Centre dramatique national de Haute-Normandie
2015 - 69th Edition
LEAR MINIATURE - stage direction Oliver Py
Creation 2015 - Running time 20 min
A gallop version of King Lear for three actors, a dancer, trestles and a public square.
Cast : Moustafa Benaïbout Émilien Diard-Detoeuf Thomas Pouget Laura Ruiz Tamayo
KING LEAR - stage direction Oliver Py
Creation 2015 - Running time 2 hours 35 min
King Lear, a play for the twentieth century?
Convinced that it could be, Olivier Py worked on a new translation of Shakespeare's play, which he directs in the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des papes.
A translation in free verse, sharp and in the present tense, to render the infernal machinery that is set in motion as soon as Lear asks the huge and unfathomable question that is at the heart of every family.
Before surrendering his power to his daughters, he wants to know which of the three will express her love for him most emphatically and thus receive the largest share of his legacy.
Cordelia's silence, more than just a proof of her integrity, shows the powerlessness of words when faced with reason wielded as an instrument. This silence drives Lear to madness, and everyone to ruin.
The sun and moon eclipses Gloucester worries about at the beginning of Kear Lear allow us to date the play; the rare succession of those two phenomena indeed happened in England in 1605. There are however several versions of the famous tragedy: the first was published in quarto in 1606, the last in the First Folio, a compilation of thirty-six plays by Shakespeare, published in 1623.
There are several different hypotheses as to the play's genesis, and Shakespeare seems to have been inspired by multiple sources: the figure of “Lir,” who first appeared in Celtic mythology, indeed plays a central role in several works of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Criticism of the theatrical performance - King Lear
https://www.la-croix.com/Culture/Theatre/Un-Lear-incertain-dans-la-cour-d-honneur-2015-07-05-1331648
ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA - stage direction Tiago Rodrigues
National Premiere - Representation in Portuguese with French surtitles.Running time 1hour 20 min.
It is a well-known legend. Plutarch wrote about it in his Parallel Lives,Shakespeare turned it into a tragedy, Mankiewicz into a cinematic masterpiece.
The year is 41 B.C., a republican general has just been given the eastern half of the Roman world to rule when, anxious to safeguard her people's independence, a young Egyptian queen goes to meet him in a gilded ship, surrounded by a crew disguised as nymphs.
Their relationship will last ten years, or perhaps is it still going on... How then can you tell a story whose every detail is already known? “By telling the story:” Tiago Rodrigues's answer isn't ironic posturing, it is at the very root of his theatre.
If the Lisbon director refuses to give in to “the monumentality of Antony and Cleopatra,” it is to allow us to watch his dancer-actors, Vítor Roriz and Sofia Dias, as through their own breathing they approach the tragic knot of this intimate and political relationship.
So that we can watch, all together, how it enters our present. To do so, he has composed, on the very bodies of his performers, a vast cosmogonic poem that requires us to dive deep into the eyes of the other, at the risk of losing what makes us an audience: our belief in the illusion of the theatre.
Myths are forever being modernised. In his Parallel Lives,Plutarch sees the story of the queen of Egypt, heiress of Hellenistic culture, only through the lens of her official relationship with Rome. By opening his tragedy with “Nay, but...”,Shakespeare focuses on the political discords that plague his own century.
As for Joseph Mankiewicz, he finds in Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton a way to put the passion of Hollywood at the service of this story of epic love. All three are there, implicitly, in Tiago Rodrigues's play.
But his third song, which speaks of the failure of the imperialistic diplomacy of the Roman republic, is an original approach: the desire for efficiency of our productivist societies forever reduces the number of spaces where we can take the risk to meet the other.
Text Tiago Rodrigues With quotation of Antoine et Cléopâtre after William Shakespeare Direction Tiago Rodrigues music extract from the soundtrack of the movie Cléopâtre (1963), composed by Alex North Translation from portuguese Thomas Resendes Scenography Ângela Rocha
Cast : Sofia Dias (Cléopâtre) Vítor Roriz (Antoine )
Production Teatro Nacional D. Maria II, Mundo Perfeito Co-production Centro Cultural de Belém (Lisbonne), Centro Cultural Vila Flôr, Temps d'images With the support of Governo de Portugal | DGArtes and du Museu da Marinha Residences at Teatro do Campo Alegre, Teatro Nacional São João, Alkantara
RICHARD III - stage direction Thomas Ostermeier
Creation 2015 - Representation in German with French surtitles. Running time 2hours 30 min.
An incarnation of absolute evil, as ugly of body as he is dark of soul: so is King Richard often perceived. Able to seduce with his words, this student of Machiavelli is a genius manipulator who positions himself at the heart of all the bloodiest political machinations that take place at the court of England.
A poisonous and perverted hero, he is as fascinating as Iago or Lady Macbeth, and the centuries haven't made him any less mysterious.
Thomas Ostermeyer is the latest to tackle Shakespeare's play, in a new translation by Marius von Mayenburg that changes English verses into German prose to keep as close to the text's meaning as possible and paint the portrait of a Richard III who, more than just a serial killer, also reveals the instincts hidden inside every man.
This king-actor, played by Lars Eidinger, uses his gifts to do on the stage what we might want to do, sometimes, in our lives. He creates with the audience a troubling complicity that gives another meaning to this bloody, disturbing, and overwhelming epic. Once again, Thomas Ostermeier manages to turn the theatre stage into the place where the past can become the present.
Richard III was written early in William Shakespeare's career, between 1592 and 1593, right after the Henry VI trilogy, of which it could be seen as a sequel. Its story is that of the end of the civil war known as the Wars of the Roses, which raged in England between 1455 and 1485. The rivalry between the Lancaster and York families indeed comes to an end with the battle of Bosworth; in the last scene of Richard III, the eponymous king is slain by Henry Tudor, who will ascend the throne as Henry VII.
Direction Thomas Ostermeier Translation Marius von Mayerburg Scenography Jan PappelhFloaum Dramaturgy Florian Borchmeyer
Cast : Thomas Bading Edward, Le Lord-Maire de Londres, Deuxième assassin Robert Beyer Catesby, Margaret, Premier assassin Lars Eidinger Richard III Christoph Gawenda Clarence, Dorset, Stanley, Prince de Galles (marionnette) Moritz Gottwald Buckingham Jenny König Lady Anne Laurenz Laufenberg Rivers, York (marionnette) Eva Meckbach Elizabeth Sebastian Schwarz Hastings, Brakenbury, Ratcliff et le batteur Thomas Witte
Production Schaubühne (Berlin)
2017 - 71st Edition
HAMLET - stage direction Oliver Py
Centre Pénitentiaire Avignon-le Pontet - Performances of Hamlet are contingent on leaves granted a few days beforehand by the judicial authority. In the event that a performance would have to be cancelled, ticket-holders would be personally notified.
Running time 1h15
On 8 July 2016, the inmates of the prison of Avignon-Le Pontet perform Hamlet in the prison's gymnasium.
Months earlier, they registered for a dramatic creation workshop led by Olivier Py, unsure whether this adventure would survive the everyday reality of prison, but on this day they're asked to take a curtain call.
The audience, made up of prisoners, staff, and politicians, are moved by their tight version of Shakespeare's masterpiece.
Rallying around the cry of “Free Hamlet!”, some aren't afraid to express their desire to see this adventure continue beyond the walls of the prison, next summer, during the Festival d'Avignon itself. All want a wider audience to share this intense version, rewritten “without blind spots” by the director, performed by ten men dressed just liked them and who bravely open up on a bare stage.
“It would be amazing,” says the actor playing Claudius. A year later, their dream is within reach: the inmates on leave taking part in this human and artistic adventure will perform at the Maison Jean Vilar, on their very own stage.
An unprecedented situation? “When I hear the trumpets of the Festival d'Avignon in prison, it's also unprecedented. Yet I feel like I'm at the very heart of our project of popular theatre: creating bonds,” says Olivier Py.
Centre Pénitentiaire d'Avignon-Le Pontet As part of its policy to make culture accessible to everyone, the Festival d'Avignon has developed since 2004 a partnership with the prison of Avignon-Le Pontet.
In 2014, on Olivier Py's initiative, this partnership intensified with the opening of a workshop he co-directed with Enzo Verdet.
Since then, he has directed three plays for and with the inmates: Prometheus Bound (2015), Hamlet (2016), and Antigone (2017). Olivier Py's project hasn't been beneficial to the sole participants of the workshop, either.
In 2015, rehearsals of Prometheus Unbound with the amateur actors were filmed by members of the video workshop. They then filmed the performance of the play, before doing the same with Hamlet the following year.
In 2016, the two movies retracing the adventure of Prometheus in prison found their place in the Nave of Images where are shown the audiovisual treasures of the Festival d'Avignon, dating back to 1947.
A programme that revisits the major moments in the history of the most important and oldest cultural manifestation in the world, whose wide-reaching work is often ignored.
Theatrical creation workshops led by Olivier Py, Enzo Verdet With the participants of the theater workshop Andria, Choukri, Hakim, Jean-Michel, Maamar, Paulu Pierre-Eric, Sylvain, Yannis, Youcef
Production Festival d'Avignon With the support of Fondation M6, Fonds interministériel de prévention de la délinquance / Ministère de l'Intérieur
https://www.theatre-video.net/video/Olivier-Py-avec-le-Centre-Penitentiaire-Avignon-Le-Pontet-Hamlet-Extraits-71e-Festival-d-Avignon
( 1 )Playing photos and comments from the Avignon Festival Archive.
( 2 ) For further information, please visit website : http://www.festival-avignon.com/fr/archives