We know and love Angélica Liddell in Avignon. It’s a flame. It disturbs and questions, it fascinates and terrorizes. “I am in the world to experience the misery of men and to tell of it,” she said, presenting this new creation: Dämon – Bergman’s funeral. She has worked with the actors of the Swedish Dramaten and her company. Among other great artists, she was nourished by the cinema of the master of Farö and struck by his concern to compose the scenario for her funeral, wishing for the same coffin as that of John Paul II, who died in 2005. A coffin of light wood . Bergman died on July 30, 2007. His spirit will haunt the main courtyard, a land of ghosts. The performers wear costumes created by the filmmaker and Angélica, a frail figure with black hair, a pale face, and a powerful voice, chose a black coat to face the demon dressed in red.
Eight little-known summer festivals worth checking out
Another powerful woman, Séverine Chavrier, the intellectual of this 78th edition. Today director of the Comédie de Genève, after Orléans, she adapted the long novel by William Faulkner Absalon, Absalon! She also started yesterday. Ten years ago, she presented Wild Palm Treesby the same writer. We dive into the Civil War, we dive into the heart of the complex and painful relationships between people. New translation, sophisticated video, very present music, a dozen performers and nearly five hours of show.
Spain guest of honor
A regular at the festival, Caroline Guiela Nguyen, director of the Théâtre national de Strasbourg, draws on the past, as for her touching Saïgoncreated in 2017, or projects us into a strange future, as in Fraternity, presented in 2021. With Tear, which calls for tears, we are in the present: we follow, from one continent to another and in several languages, the design of a wedding dress for a real princess, through three characters in Paris, Alençon, Bombay. A dress cut from the emotion and real lives of people.
“Absalom Absalom!” », adapted from Faulkner’s work and directed by Séverine Chavrier. (© LTD / ALEXANDRE AH-KYE)
Among the famous landscape directors, there is also Lorraine de Sagazan; it offers a show which delves into French society and observes and analyzes the functioning of justice, under the title Leviathan. We think of the biblical monster. But Guillaume Poix, who developed the text, refers to Leviathan of the philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). Long interviews, investigations, reports, the file is solid. But it is first and foremost dramatic play.
There are many Spanish-speaking artists, the guest language this summer. Thus the dancer and choreographer La Ribot, with Joan Fiction. Accompanied by the conductor Asier Puga and the dancer and actor Juan Loriente, she returns to Joan I of Castile, who inspired one of her pieces in 1992. We will find Lola Arias, from Argentina, who, with The days outside, looks at the fate of women who were imprisoned because they were different, cisgender, transgender, but who found their place at work, in society. We don’t know Tamara Cubas at all, who came from Uruguay with Sea of Silence. Its theme is migrations; its languages, those of the exiles.
Polish Marta Gornicka, for her part, brings together 21 Ukrainian, Belarusian and Polish women for a choral performance, set to traditional music. Mothers – A Song for Wartime is an artistic gesture that corresponds to the commitments that Martha Gornicka carries throughout the year.
But we obviously have to count on fictional heroines to make women’s voices heard even louder: Elizabeth Costello for Warlikowski, and of course Hécube for Tiago Rodrigues.
