Roussillon-en-Provence is preparing to welcome the 24th edition of the Beckett Festival. For the first time, schoolchildren are taking part in this tribute. The CE2 pupils at the Poulies school in Abbeville have made a film about Beckett, Waiting for Mr. Godot. This creation will be screened on 16 July at 8pm during a round table discussion led by specialists on the playwright, À la rencontre de Beckett. The 24th The festival is scheduled for July 15-20, 2024. Roussillon is the essential meeting place for theater and literature lovers.
Roussillon an emblematic village
Roussillon-en-Provence, located in the Lubéron regional natural park, is renowned for its ochre quarries, in the 19th century an entire industry was created and developed around ochre. Of the various factories set up to produce and market this mineral throughout the world, only the Mathieu factory remains, transformed into an ochre eco-museum, which can be visited and hosts the Beckett festival in the open air in July, because Roussillon is an emblematic place.
A place of memory
It was in Roussillon that Samuel Beckett took refuge during the Occupation. The Irish writer, having joined the Franco-English Gloria network of the Resistance, had to flee Paris with his companion Suzanne. They took refuge from 1942 to 1945, with the Bonnellys, wine growers. Beckett became a farm worker and participated in the estate’s grape harvest. This period had a capital importance in his life and in his work: it was in Roussillon that he decided to make French his literary language of choice. It was in Roussillon that he had the inspiration for his play which would make him famous, Waiting Godotthe founding act of the theater of the absurd, and the only work where he clearly mentions a period of his life: Vladimir reminds Estragon, We were together in Vaucluse…I will put some my hand in the fire…we did the grape harvest, look, at a man named Bonnelly, in Roussillon…everything is red there…(acts II)
In 1997, people from Roussillon who were passionate about Beckett, helped by personalities from the artistic and cultural world, created the Association La Maison Samuel Beckett, in order to organize cultural events in honor of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Roussillon became a place of memory, a privileged place for meetings around Samuel Beckett, the only one in France.
The 24thth edition of the Beckett Festival
This year the Festival takes place in Roussillon, Ménerbes and Banon. It begins on July 15 at 9 p.m., at the Ôkhra-ecomuseum of ocher in Roussillon, with for the first time a show in English surtitled in French, The End, by the famous Irish company Gare Saint Lazare Ireland.
At the Dora Maar cultural center in Ménerbes, Tuesday July 16 at 7 p.m., the festival offers a round table To the Beckett meeting : four specialists in the works of Samuel Beckett, academics from the Sorbonne, Avignon, Aix-Marseille and Amsterdam, enter into dialogue to help people discover or rediscover the playwright’s canonical plays. It is on this occasion that the film made by CE2 students from the Poulies d’Abbeville school (80) will be presented, In waiting for mr godot. This 50′ film is made up of two parts, the first presents the educational project, the second extracts from the work performed by four groups of children, each character being represented by a group of schoolchildren. A very moving achievement.
Wednesday July 17 at 9 p.m., the festival offers outdoors at Ôkhra-ecomuseum of ocher, The Last Tape by Samuel Beckett, directed by Jacques Osinski, with Denis Lavant.
Every year on his birthday, Krapp records a detailed account of his condition and actions during the past year. Each time, he listens to one or another of the tapes recorded decades earlier and comments on them…
This is the third participation of the Denis Lavant/Jacques Osinski tandem at the Beckett festival: Heading for the worst in 2018, Game over in 2023.
The festival continues, still in Roussillon, on Friday July 19 at 9 p.m., with Fragments by Hannah Arendt, directed by Charles Berling, with Bérengère Warluzel.
Through her philosophical and political texts and her poetic escapades, Hannah Arendt has built a singular and major body of work. Bérengère Warluzel has immersed herself in it, choosing these Fragments which resonate particularly today.
Last evening, Saturday July 20 at 7 p.m. at the Le Bleuet de Banon bookstore: Carte blanche to Valère Novarina.
A man speaks to animals, that is to say, to beings without a response. He pronounces The Speech to the Animals, emblematic monologue written by Valère Novarina and performed by actor André Marcon. Show followed by a reading by Valère Novarina of his poetic tribute to the great French comic actor, For Louis de Funès and a meeting with the public.
And this year again, from July 15 to 20, at 8 a.m., under the Roussillon campanile, a show by Rufus, Words are holes in the silencea confidential meeting at daybreak, to share the secret of Sam and all his work.
Throughout the festival, Ôkhra-écomusée de l’ocre exhibits each year around twenty emblematic photographs by the famous photographer-reporter Roger Pic, some of which have been around the world. They invite you to discover or re-discover the famous actors who have brought his plays to the stage, since their original creation by Roger Blin.
For the second consecutive year, the artistic director of the festival is organizing, before the festival, workshops for the general public, in the region’s media libraries (Apt, Roussillon, etc.) to introduce the work of Samuel Beckett.
Beatrice Flammang
The Beckett Festival in Roussillon-en-Provence
