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The colossal adaptation of Faulkner’s masterpiece about plantation America and segregation opens the Festival this Saturday. How to stage such a universe? “Libé” attended the rehearsals.
From the cult novel by William Faulkner, Absalon, Absalon! by director Séverine Chavrier is the very first show which will open the Avignon festival, this Saturday June 29, at FabricA. It is also one of the most anticipated. How can such an obsessive and burning book be adapted for the theater? How can we bring to the stage the words of the great writer of the South, painter of plantation America and segregation? “I don’t pretend to stage Faulkner, Severine Chavrier cut. The question is rather: in what way does this material allow me to dream? Can Faulkner help me to make theater? Probably yes. A full theater, an overflow theater, an excessive theater, as does the director who had already rubbed shoulders with it in 2016 with her adaptation of Wild palm trees.
That day, a month before the premiere ofAbsalon, Absalon! in Avignon, the atmosphere of the rehearsal we are attending is a little tense. “I’m already very late,” justifies Séverine Chavrier. The two trucks specially chartered for the festival will soon begin loading the set from the Comédie de Genève, the theater which she took over as director in July 2023 and where she is working on the play. The actor Laurent Papot is a few minutes late on set, which deeply annoys the director. He tries to influence a staging idea, it’s a clear “no”. “Okay, okay… I don’t want to
