“
Stop the war
”.
Stop the war.
The message, projected in giant letters on the medieval stone of the Palace of the Popes, ended the opening performance of the 76th edition of the Avignon festival, the main theatrical event on the European continent.
It was the definitive stimulus to raise an ovation of several minutes, one of the most enthusiastic in recent years, in a meeting known for the hardness of its audience, never shy about deserting and booing.
This time, possessed by an undoubted
pathos
, he gave her a long applause that ended the premiere of
The Black Monk
, a production inspired by a semi-unknown tale by Chekhov directed by the Russian Kirill Serébrennikov.
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Kiril Serébrennikov, the Russian filmmaker who challenges "the idiot who has pressed the war button"
Invited to the event for the fourth time in recent years, the filmmaker and theater director, exiled in Berlin to escape persecution by the Putin regime, thus seemed to attend his definitive consecration.
At least France has already adopted him as a prodigal son: he presented his latest film, a biography of Tchaikovsky, at the Cannes festival — which had revealed the director in 2018 with
Leto
— while he finished shooting an adaptation of
Limonov
, the book by Emmanuel Carrère, and premiered a play in Hamburg and an opera in Amsterdam.
Serebrennikov is everywhere.
Without a doubt, his triumph in Avignon will end up making him a new central personality of European culture.
Hidden under a cap and dark glasses from which he never separates, dressed in an eternal black T-shirt, earrings in his ear and silver rings on his phalanges, this Jew of Ukrainian origin, declared homosexual, converted to Buddhism and accused of embezzlement of public funds in his Moscow theater - falsely and unfairly, according to his backers - he spent several years under house arrest before being allowed to leave for Germany last spring.
The only stain on his file as a perfect dissident artist is that, in his release, in exchange for the 129 million rubles (1.6 million euros at the exchange rate at the time) that the State demanded of him, an oligarch like Roman Abramovich would have mediated , close to the Russian power.
“Several friends helped pay the fines and the lawyers.
Abramovich is not a friend, but he helped me ”,
Le Monde
, which dedicated the cover of its weekend supplement to him, in a further sign of legitimation.
In any case, his opinion of Putin leaves no room for doubt.
In Cannes he did not quote him by name.
He preferred to describe him as "the idiot who has pressed the war button".
Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov, during the general rehearsal of his work at the Palais des Papes in Avignon.NICOLAS TUCAT (AFP)
For his return to Avignon, the Russian director has chosen a 20-page story that Chekhov signed in 1893, little represented and perhaps closer to the imagination of writers such as Dostoevsky or even Edgar Allan Poe.
The work is based on a classic situation: a landowner with a lush garden of fruit trees, a well-to-do but dysfunctional family, a daughter to marry and an adopted son, a tortured intellectual who has returned to spend a few days at that
locus amoenus
to rest.
But the predictable start is interrupted by the hallucinations that the latter begins to suffer without warning, during which he is possessed by the monk of the title, a spirit that supplies him with a shot of black bile and other low instincts.
“That monk is ourselves.
He is the projection of our inner world, of our doubts, fears and unconscious questions that arise, sometimes, and that we prefer not to listen to”, Serébrennikov clarified at a press conference.
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Avignon seeks solutions to the great crisis in Europe
Even so, the internal torture of the protagonist has an inevitable political echo in the face of the hectic current situation in Europe, as if it were a symbol of the reflux of hatred and violence from which we are never entirely safe.
The use of different languages by his actors —Russian, German, English— underlines that reading.
Serebrennikov seems to describe the two souls of the continent.
The first is calm and urges common understanding in bourgeois and well-thinking after-meals.
The second leads us inevitably to psychosis, pettiness, nationalism and war.
The director interrupts the four acts of the montage with various musical interludes, as is often the case in his films, which take place in three mobile greenhouses,
that change position during the show and through which laborers walk who will later become singers and dancers.
Little by little, the dance takes over the text and the stage, in the same way that the black monk takes over the protagonist.
Serebrennikov believes that dance and music are what allow "the public to see what is invisible."
For the director, this continues to be the main mission of contemporary theater: to resurrect the dead, to haunt our ghosts, to find accommodation in the worst of shadows.
The hurricane mistral that blew in the ancient capital of Christendom managed to provide the function with a plus of Hellenic drama.
The work, full of dark poetry, alternates the great simplicity of its scenic device with some more spectacular moments, like a handful of amazing projections on the walls of the Palace of the Popes.
It is an unhealthy nightmare, a grotesque hallucination, an ode to the mysterious and the beauty of the unintelligible, which is only weighed down by a somewhat explicit and vulgar final act, presided over by a gimmicky and spasmodic ballet that adds nothing to what It has already been said before without the same emphasis.
He is saved by the last shot, an appropriate term due to its cinematographic nature: a starry firmament in which “everything turns to twilight”, as one character laments.
The light of the European sky is beautiful,
The inaugural parade of the Avignon Festival, in which the so-called 'off' companies participate, more than 1,600 shows outside the elitist official program. NICOLAS TUCAT (AFP)
The city of 1,600 shows
Every July, Avignon becomes the capital of a cultural center that vibrates especially in summer.
The region of Provence, which hosted up to 900 art festivals in 2021, has other assets such as Arles, where these days the largest photographic contest on the continent begins;
Aix-en-Provence, home to a prestigious lyrical art festival that also kicks off on these dates, and Marseille, which in the last decade has been gaining ground by equipping itself with new cultural facilities.
However, Avignon still serves as the epicenter of this southern scene.
The festival continues to be, 75 years after its foundation, an unmissable event due to the courage of its programming, which is never far from commenting on current political and social events.
After the 2020 edition, suspended due to the pandemic, and the 2021 edition, which was held at half speed, the festival returns to relative normality this year.
It was demonstrated by the celebration of the traditional parade that crosses the streets of the center, in which the companies that will represent the more than 1,600 shows that will premiere in the city until July 26 participate.
They are divided between the elitist official program, made up of an exquisite selection of 40 works from all over the world, and the so-called
off
, much more popular, which has become the largest performing arts market in Europe and is attended by programmers from French theatres. , plus hundreds of thousands of fans.
Within the first, the Barcelona company El Conde de Torrefiel stands out, which from July 20 will present its work
An inside image
.
They will be the only Spanish representatives of this edition.
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