MILO for It was clear: it was impossible to return to Avignon without talking about Gisèle pelicot. For the Swiss director, turned into the essential name of the European theater, the Provencal city is no longer only known as the former headquarters of the Christian world, with its imposing palace of the potatoes dominating the Rhone, or the international capital of the performing arts. It is also because it is the place where the past fall was judged the abuses that Pelicot suffered for years, drugged by her husband and delivered to strangers to violate her.

“It has made everyone know about Aviñón On the map. Today, for many, it is above all the city where that trial occurred, ”Rau said Thursday, with dark circles that betrayed their scarce two hours of sleep while, around him, dozens of companies – some more amateurs than others – they promoted their shows in full lung, with improvised banners and emergency choreographies.

The result is The Pelicot triala scenic reconstruction of the trial, based on the minutes of the process and the articles appeared in the press, since the recordings were prohibited. It will premiere on July 18 with the participation of a handful of famous actors, but also the lawyers who took the case, militants of feminist groups and Pelicot’s own family. For Rau, persona non grata In Russia and censored in several parts of the world, the theater cannot limit himself to document the collapse of civilization: it must intervene to prevent this collapse from consummating. Participate in this double contest, with his work on Pelicot and with an itinerant show, The letterinspired by the theatrical classics and represents in various parts of the periphery of the city, with assumed informality.

Rau compares this place with the festivals of ancient Greece. “They were citizen political meetings, more than simple occasions to see works,” he says. He believes that competitions such as Aviñón or the Vienna Festwochen, which he runs since 2023, opens a parenthesis in common life: “They are spaces where suspended time allows you to think, create and discuss intensely.” Claims a theater “that does not indoctrine or excludes”, capable of summoning both the specialized critic and the residents of a town governed by the National regroupingas is common in the surroundings of Aviñón. “I look for a theatrical form that includes everyone from pleasure and with a real feeling of shared experience, instead of forcing the viewer to participate in a game that does not understand.”

Under a cloudless sky – Aviñón presumes to enjoy more than 300 days of sunny a year – the city becomes a theatrical machinery to full performance: 1,800 shows, 180 theaters, three million tickets for sale in just three weeks. The crown jewel remains the so -called program inwith its 42 shows: a careful selection of the best of international performing arts, whose functions are announced by the mythical trumpet of Maurice Jarrethat mark the ritual moment of crossing the threshold of the room. The Festival, 79 editions after the first, remains faithful to the spirit of its founder, the actor and director Jean Vilar, who in 1947 imagined him as a popular platform to take the theater to all, on the black days of the European post -war. Today he continues to offer a demanding, brave and dialogue program with the present, which is rarely formed to entertain and that aspires to function as a real contemporary agora.

This year, as usual, several of the great titles point to the social and political context. One of the most anticipated returns has been Thomas Ostermeierabsent from the contest for a decade. The director of the prestigious Schaubühne of Berlin presents a deeply reviewed version of The wild duck of Ibsenrewritten in 80% and transferred to contemporary Europe. It is his seventh rereading of the Norwegian author and aspired to be a frontal attack against liberal self -deception and family as the last refuge. The reception, however, has been unequal: his proposal is redundant, didactic and something dusty, without the political clarity or the scenic force of many of his previous works.

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In Aviñón, the voice of Boualem sensal. The Francoargelian writer, sentenced in his country to five years in prison for “attempting against the National Unity,” was honored Wednesday with a public reading of his texts. In addition, on the diverse program off —What brings together hundreds of unequal quality companies – a company presents an adaptation of its novel The German village. It is the first time that a work by Sansal is represented at the festival.

“Aviñón is a scenario where the future reinvents himself incessantly,” says the person in charge of the Festival, the Portuguese director and playwright Tiago Rodrigues. “In a world where authoritarianism sow war, threatens democracies, deny the climatic urgency and obscure any idea of the future, let’s take advantage of each shared moment to imagine new ways.” Rodrigues himself contributes to that horizon with the work The distancean interplanetary dialogue between a father and his daughter in 2077. She has left Mars; He remains in a ruined land. The future, at this scenic festival, is located in the outer space. Confirms it too Planetsby Jeanne Candel, another piece of science fiction starring two drifting astronauts, very applauded in this first week of festival.

Rodrigues admits to having conceived this edition “in dialogue with the present.” Throughout its program, the festival addresses issues such as the war in the Middle East – a thirty artists participating in the contest, including its director, signed A gaza gallery At the start – the rise of authoritarianisms or the threat that represents the extreme right for artistic creation throughout Europe. For Rodrigues, that political vocation is not conjunctural: it is part of the theater DNA. “This summer, artists from more than 15 countries meet in Aviñón with a common goal: to build an ephemeral utopia but real: to be together,” says the director. “We do not tell stories just to survive, like Shezade en Arabian Nights. We count them to live together, and to learn to do better. ”

The simile is not accidental. The festival opening piece, Cerealfrom the Caboverdiana choreographer Marlène Monteiro Freitasone of the most unique creators of contemporary dance. It is a free adaptation of Arabian Nights which proposes a carnival and hallucinated immersion in the dark that comes at dusk, understood as symbolic territory dominated by collective madness and where anything can happen. “Cereal It is a dive at night, in the broadest and most metaphorical sense of the term, which blurs our referents and where reality and fiction are confused, ”explains Freitas.

Eight performers travel the imposing courtyard of the palace of the potatoes between white gates, masks of Japanese wrist, grotesque spasms and ritual gestures without apparent logic, in a universe where the bachanal, the eschatological and the absurd coexure with a powerful choreographic gesture, of punk spirit, loaded with images as original as disconcerting. Something new, provocative and, at times, somewhat irritating: just what is expected of an avant -garde festival. The public, as expected, was divided. There were mass dropouts, some boo and many applause. It was, in short, a controversial start, as only Aviñón knows how to offer them.

To invoke Sherezade’s stories this year responds to more than a literary reference. After dedicating editions prior to English and Spanish, the invited language in this edition is Arabic, a powerful gesture in a region turned into the extreme right. The festival responds to this unstoppable advance with a notable presence of artists from all over the Arab, with a great tribute to the legendary Egyptian singer Oum kalthoum and proposals as promising as those of the Palestinian director Bashar Murkus or the Lebanese core Ali Chahrour, two already common creators in Avignon.

The dance this time charges an unusual prominence: one in four shows is danced. Among them are the two of the only Spanish representative, the dancer Israel Galván, very dear to this festival: one around the figure of the father, next to the director Mohamed El Khatiband the other, next to Monteiro Freitas to explore, through the body, the limits of language, which could already be seen in Barcelona in 2024.

The only Spanish representative is the Bailaor Israel Galván, very dear in Aviñón, who will present two shows in this edition

Another of the choreographic proposals of this appointment is Brelpresented in the overwhelming mineral scenario of some quarries on the outskirts of Avignon. It is a charming show, although of intermittent interest, sustained by the scenic presence of Anne Teresa De Keersmaekerwhich goes up on stage. At 65, the great flamenco choreographer retains its burlesque and voluntarily clumsy style, this time in dialogue with Solal Mariotteyoung 23 -year -old dancer formed in the break dancewhich discovered the repertoire of Brel watching videos on YouTube. The generational cross does not end Don’t leave me They give the result an undeniable beauty.

The curtain will remain raised until July 26 and there are still several main dishes to arrive. Among them, an adaptation of The satin shoeof Paul ClaudelEmplematic Piece of eight hours, rarely shown in its entirety. The Acenta-Française, under the direction of Éric Ruf, will put it on stage along a full night, between ten o’clock at night and six in the morning, when the first ray of Sol Asome on the walls of the Palace of the Popes. More than a function, a kind of vigil. A reminder that, in Aviñón, the theater can still be a total experience.