Tiago Rodrigues is back. One year after inviting Julie Deliquet to create his show Welfare In the Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes, the director of the Avignon Festival invites two female artists to take over the prestigious stage in turn. With the Spanish Angelica Liddell (Dämon. Bergman’s funeral) and the Polish Marta Gornicka (Mothers. A Song for Wartime), The Festival is putting an end to decades of male occupation of the places. The 2024 edition of the event will be that of a wave of female directors who, from the Cour to the FabricA, via the halls of Vedène or the Gymnase du lycée Aubanel, will bend the square meters to their aesthetics.
In France, their ability to take over the big stages now seems established, even if it took a long time to establish itself. “Apart from Ariane Mnouchkine, we had few examples before our eyes, testifies Caroline Guiela Nguyen. This rarity boomeranged the question of our legitimacy back to us. » At 42, the director belongs to a generation that had to prove itself before conquering more space. His first show was given on the small stage of the Théâtre de la Colline, in Paris. “Obviously I had to start there, since I represented the emergence, she says ironically, welcoming Tiago Rodrigues’ initiative. It takes exemplary acts like hers for women to understand what they are capable of.” With Tear, presented at the Gymnase Aubanel, she storms a stage 18 meters wide and 15 meters deep to develop an astonishing subject: the embroidery of the wedding dress of the Queen of England.
If she had to cite only one image of her representation, it would be “that of the hands of the craftsman who sews 2,500,000 pearls onto satin”. The detail to express humanity, the scope of a place to host the diversity of stories and beings: the large stage is, for Caroline Guiela Nguyen, the place of hospitality before being that of power. It is not certain that she would accept the Cour d’honneur. In any case, not right away: “I make black boxes, I need to control every millimeter. For the moment, my performances reject the outdoors or the singing of birds at nightfall. »
Pink fabric cathedral
Let’s not be mistaken. Women do not have an urgent need for excess to assert their authority or their artistic power. A relative detachment which, without realizing it, disinhibits their approach to the stage. Ten years ago, Lorraine de Sagazan made her debut at the tiny Théâtre de Belleville in Paris. “I arrived ten years after a generation of women who were able to jostle and settle in. The battle now seems to me to be won, even if there are still battles to be fought. And even if we are required, probably more than men, to have a form of excellence. Now aged 37, she creates at the Aubanel Gymnasium Leviathana show that will be revived in 2025 at the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe. A move upmarket whose tempo she has mastered. “I was lucky, things happened gradually, I was able to gradually increase my abilities.”
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