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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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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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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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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