Outwitting The Devil, Akram Khan’s latest work, truly stood out within the line up of very diverse works featured at the 2019 Avignon Festival. Performed at the magnificent Cour d’honneur du Palais des Papes this work resonated the architectural grandeur of the space and echoed its spiritual splendour. It reflected the palace’s glory through its own choreography, mythic themes and hypnotic sound and lighting designs.

Akram Khan, a British dancer and choreographer of Bangladeshi descent, captivated the world of contemporary dance in the early 2000s. A student of the kathak, a traditional Indian dance, he performed in Peter Brook’s Mahâbhârata. Later he created highly experimental solo and ensemble work that would draw his viewers’ attention to the hybrid language of dance as invented by Khan himself, the language in which traditional elements of the Indian dance would neighbor and dialogue with many components of  western performance. To enrich his vocabulary, Akram Khan engaged dramatic narrative and humor, approximating in his style the so-called tanz-teatr as developed by the German choreographer Pina Bausch. …

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Provocation – artistic, political, personal – is the signature style of the Russian theatre director Kirill Serebrennikov, the creator of the performance OUTSIDE that had its world premier at Avignon 2019. It is Serebrennikov’s third production to be featured at the festival, and it is as provocative and personally urgent to the artist as his previous works were. Made without any financial support from the Russian government, as the director’s assistant Anna Shalashova said at the press-conference with the Avignon public on July 17, OUTSIDE was created with as much artistic and inner freedom as it was possible given Serebrinnikov’s current situation. …

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Le reste vous le connaissez par le cinéma written by Martin Crimp, translated by Philippe Djian and directed by Daniel Jeanneteau, is among the most politically urgent works in the Avignon 2019. Not only that it builds on the enigmatic and ever wise text of Martin Crimp, it also references the new realities of today’s France with its over-populated banlieues that drastically redraft the face of the country’s cities.

An adaption of Euripides’ tragedy The Phoenician Women that was itself a take on Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, Crimp transforms the old Greek story into a thesis play with the Chorus centre stage. In this version of Oedipus’ myth, Jocasta does not kill herself. Upon learning the truth of her son/husband, she lives to see his shame and her sons’ death. The play opens with Jocasta’s account of the past and a warning that the guilt of the parents does not simply go away. The blind Oedipus, locked up by his sons Eteocles and Polyneices, has cursed them for this deed. He declared that neither of them will rule the city without his brother. Now, Polyneices, who exiled himself to Argos and married a foreign woman, has returned to Thebes to claim his inheritance. Eteocles is of course not interested in sharing power. After a short mediation between the brothers organized by Jocasta, they resume the fight and kill each other. …

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Let me tell you a secret – I love the old good comedy, its extensive gestures, inappropriate jokes, actors playing off each other, a quick change of a costume, a bit of dancing and singing; all that routine that seems to be fading away from the professional stages across the world, giving its place to serious, self-conscious, experimental and politically aware theatre. Please, do not get me wrong – all that seriousness is very important in the world that is falling apart due to its wars, economic crushes and changes in the environment. But comedy – people coming together to laugh and cry at their own follies – is vital too. …

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A defining text of Western literature, Homer’s the Odyssey has recently resurfaced as the point of reference in many theatre productions wishing to speak to the conditions of contemporary migration. A narrative of the travel that focuses on being on the road, on the endeavours and the trials that an exilic traveler faces, the Odyssey allows contemporary theatre makers to approximate the impossible. Theatre often speaks in allegories and metaphors – contextualizing these metaphors through the actual experiences of today’s refugees brings these metaphors to life.

Avignon 2019 has seen several examples of staging the Odyssey.   …

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An imaginative, dynamic, and visually striking production SOUS D’AUTRES CIEUX continues the Avignon 2019 theme of exile and making history. Kevin Keiss’s adaption of Virgil’s The Aeneid directed by Maëlle Poésy, the performance from Dijon takes us back to the mythological time of Trojan wars and the rise of Roman empire. Constructed from the fragments of Virgil’s poem that Keiss translated from Latin, the few episodes the company wrote themselves, and the scenes they developed during the rehearsals, SOUS D’AUTRES CIEUX focuses on the journey of Aeneas. A hero of the Trojan war, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite (or Venus in this version), Aeneas is one of the more controversial figures of the Western literary canon. A soldier of his own command, in Virgil’s tale he a toy in the hands of Gods thrown into what Paul Ricouer calls a collective singular of history against his will. …

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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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