Author: Yana Meerzon

Avignon 2019: Staging the impossible. On exile, community and hope in Christiane Jatahy’s Le Présent qui déborde – Notre Odyssée II

Avignon 2019: Staging the impossible. On exile, community and hope in Christiane Jatahy’s Le Présent qui déborde – Notre Odyssée II

  


Photo, Christophe Raynaud  De Lage:    Le Présent qui déborde. Notre Odyssée II, O Agora que Demora

Exile, migration, refugee crisis, loss of home and family, and death are among many realities and concerns that the discussion of history, memory and collective identity today in Europe and elsewhere demands.  Avignon 2019 pays special attention to these urgent topics with more than a few productions telling stories of displacement.

Le Présent qui déborde – Notre Odyssée II,  O Agora que Demora is an epic tale of today’s exile based on Homer. It was written, produced, filmed and staged by Christiane Jatahy, a theatre maker from Brazil, currently an exile herself, who lives now in Belgium. An exploration of the Le notion “borders”, as a geographical, political, cultural and artistic phenomena, Le Présent qui déborde is a second part of Jatahy’s diptych, Our Odyssey, with tis first part Ithaca premiered on 16 March 2018 at the Ateliers Berthier de l’Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, in Paris.

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Avignon 2019: Imagining two plays that embody the ghosts of Europe. ‘Dévotion’ and ‘Nous l’Europe’

Avignon 2019: Imagining two plays that embody the ghosts of Europe. ‘Dévotion’ and ‘Nous l’Europe’

 

Devotion,    Photo Christophe Raynaud de Lage

Moving along with the themes of history, memory and forgetting – the focus of Paul Ricœur’s famous philosophical book on the limits and ethical implications of understanding the past –  Avignon  2019  offers two chorus performances  — Dévotion – Dernière offrande aux dieux morts  and Nous, l’Europe, Banquet des peoples —  that propose two different responses to the question what  constitutes the collective identity of the Europe of the future.

Dévotion – Dernière offrande aux dieux morts, written and directed by Clément Bondu together with the 2019 graduation class of l’École supérieure d’art dramatique de Paris (PSPBB). This is the staging of the version of the new Europe as it is experienced and imagined by the iGen / Gen Z generation of the 20 something plus. Angry, confused, desperately seeking love and hope, this generation is fed up with the cynicism of the world, its politics, its everyday life and its arts. A product of digitalization, urbanization and overt commercialization of the everyday, the iGens also struggle with the cultural heritage of the old Europe, the heritage that seems incapable of providing them with either a cure from cynicism or a direction into the  better future they are  seeking.

With no clear plot or developed characters, the production builds a theatrical environment of borrowings, references, and cultural stereotypes. An empty stage, it uses old and new theatrical technologies, live video recording, dance and direct narration to evoke the atmosphere of Parisian night clubs and the world of modern politics, full of hollow slogans and promises. Visually and thematically, it presents Europe swinging on the edge of the abyss, ready to fall into the hands of new dictators and devastating darkness. Hope is nowhere to be seen.

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Avignon 2019: Seeking Truth: on history, memory and fiction in Alexandra Badea’s Points de non-retour [Quais de Seine}

Avignon 2019: Seeking Truth: on history, memory and fiction in Alexandra Badea’s Points de non-retour [Quais de Seine}

 

Points of no return. [Quai de Seine]    Photo Christophe Raynaud de Lage
Following the themes of the Avignon 2019, Alexandra Badea’s Points de non-retour [Quais de Seine], a second part of the trilogy that Badea developed during her residence at Théâtre de la Colline under the patronage of Wajdi Mouawad and his long standing collaborator and  dramaturge Charlotte Farcet, connects current European migration to the history of its colonial wars and oppression.

Unlike the first part, Thiaroye, that focused on the 1944 massacre of Senegalese infantrymen in Thiaroye reflected in the stories of its fictional characters Biram and Régis the descendants of the massacre’s victims, Quais de Seine focuses on Nora, a young journalist from France, and a connecting protagonist of the trilogy. It gives Nora (played by Sophie Verbeeck) a chance to find truth about her own family, to uncover silence that surrounds the disappearance of her father, the absence of her grandfather and the secret origin of her own name.

Based on the recent history of France, the trilogy is also personal to Badea.  A French writer of Romanian origin, Alexandra Badea came to France in 2003 to practice her French writing skills. A naturalized citizen since 2013, Badea remains highly sensitive to the questions of responsibility that comes with the privilege of holding a citizenship. To Badea, the right of citizenship imposes moral duty, as holding citizenship invites the artist to better understand the official history of the country she now belongs to and that of the people whose stories do not appear in this country’s authorized narratives or history books. These untold, forgotten or purposefully silenced stories that make the history of French colonial invasions in sub-Saharan Africa, the massacre in Thiaroye, and the Algerian war of independence, are in the centre of dramatic focus in Points de non-retour.

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Avignon 2019: Architecture: between history and philosophy

Avignon 2019: Architecture: between history and philosophy

 

 

Architecture ; Photo Christophe Reynaud  de Lage

 

Walter Benjamin once said that storytelling is a form of ¨artizan communication¨, a narrative positioned between an act of historiography and an act of philosophy (1970).

Pascal Rambert’s production Architecture is an example of such theatrical storytelling. Not your typical history play, with historical figures easy to recognize and identify, Architecture proposes a troubled and urgent view on the 20th century European history as reflected in the story of one fictional family. In its themes and conflicts, the play dialogues with the masterpieces of the European theatre and the philosophy of Wittgenstein, to who language was the greatest tool of communication but also of deception.

An echoing of Brecht’s epic, Mother Courage,  Architecture begins in the modernist Vienna of Arthur Schnitzler’s plays, with Weber family preparing for its European voyage. The action spins over the milestones of European history, to which the family loses its members and dreams. It closes with the events of Anschluss, when in March 1938 Austria has become a part of the Nazi Germany.

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On Words in Motion: Brodsky / Baryshnikov

On Words in Motion: Brodsky / Baryshnikov

On Words in Motion: Brodsky / Baryshnikov. Photo: Janis Deinats

In scholarly debates on contemporary theatre, the question about language has primary importance. Critics as well as scholars, interested in diversity on stage, often discuss the advantages and the limitations of using two or more languages, the working of surtitles, and the rules of hospitality when a producing company decides not to translate their productions to the host audience.

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The Europe Theatre Prize 2017 : A round up of all the events!

The Europe Theatre Prize 2017 : A round up of all the events!

Ashes to Ashes
Huppert et Irons à Rome..

Yana Meerzon, from the University of Ottawa, attended the event.

The 16th ceremony of the Europe Theatre Prize and the Europe Prize Theatrical Realities took place from December 12 to  17,  2017, in Rome. The  event  included presentations of the artists’ work, public discussions, round-tables and selected productions.  

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Roma Armee : Doing it right! Production of Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin.

Roma Armee : Doing it right! Production of Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin.

Roma Armee
photo: Ute LangKafel

Doing it right!

Yael Ronen, an Israeli theatre director working for the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin, has a reputation of one of the most socially, culturally and politically aware theatre artist of Europe. The Gorki’s latest creation –  Roma Armee that premiered in Berlin in September 2017 – is a proof in point. Devised by the international team of eight performers, all ethnic Roma, this production speaks directly to the most dangerous tendencies in the post-Brexit Europe: such as rising nationalism, xenophobia and racism.

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The Virgin Suicides: dying in the age of suicide.

The Virgin Suicides: dying in the age of suicide.

Virgin Suicide
Photo: Judith Buss

A Production of the Munich Kammerspiele winner  of XIV Europe Prize Theatrical Realities, 2017

Inspired by the 1993 novel The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides and  the 1999 film adaptation by Sofia Coppola, Susanne Kennedy’s production looks at the difficult issue of teenage suicide that has become a curse of today’s society. An exploration of the impossible journey through a near-death experience, the production is structured after the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It follows the death voyage of the now deceased 13 year old girl, Cecilia, from the highly religious Lisbon family in the  US.

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43- Filth : trapped in our useless and muddy reality of being?

43- Filth : trapped in our useless and muddy reality of being?

A production from Tallin, Estonia: the winner of XIV Europe Prize Theatrical Realities, 2017.

43-Mud, photo Tiit Ojasoo,  Europe prize in Rome

The end of the world has come, there is nowhere to go, we are trapped in our uselessness and muddy reality of being… that is the message that Theatre N099 and its performance No 43 – Filth want to convey.  The statement is not new, the passion it carries is not surprising, the methods it uses are curious.

The collective “we” the company uses – both in its promotional material and on stage – is recognizable but bothering. Do we really come from mud and die in it? Are we all the soul-less golems with no faith or fear left? Is there any hope left? The Estonian directors Tiit Ojasoo and Ene-Liis Semper seem to have no positive answer.

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