An Oak Tree

Tonight, a man comes to the theatre to find answers. This man is a father who lost his daughter, and since then, nothing’s been the same. He still feels the presence of his child—and it’s towards a tree he turns… With this gentle study of mourning, British playwright, director, and actor Tim Crouch questions art and theatre in their capacity to turn one thing into another: a child into a tree, an actor into a character, and vice versa. A metamorphosis he experiences anew every night by inviting a new actor to play the role of the father – male or female. An actor as carefree as the audience, who doesn’t know what the play is made of, and discovers it line by line in the present moment of the performance. For the past twenty years, Tim Crouch has created a theatre focused on the audience and on the power of words. An Oak Tree, his second play, was written in 2005 and has toured the world, with over 360 performances and 360 different actors. This will be its French premiere.

An Oak Tree by Tim Crouch is published by Oberon Books.

Interview with Tim Crouch

Teresa Coutinho

A graduate of ESMAE, Teresa Coutinho completed her final year of training at ESTC. In 2016, she entered the École des Maîtres under the direction of Christiane Jatahy, working with the Kassys company, Jos Houben at the École Jacques Lecoq in Paris and Beatriz Batarda. As an actress, she has worked with Christiane Jatahy, Rogério de Carvalho, Ricardo Neves-Neves, Raquel Castro, Maria João Luís, Maria Duarte, the Os Possessos company and Nuno M. Cardoso. She created and wrote O Eterno Debate (2018), Ways of Looking (2017) with Guilherme Gomes; Agora eu Era (2017) with Catarina Santiago Costa and Pedro Moura; Indicação para se perder (2014) with Constança Carvalho-Homem and Amanhã ã mesma hora (2012). She assists Tiago Rodrigues, Faustin Linyekula, Beatriz Batarda and Natália Luiza and, in 2018, is in charge of the international tour of Tiago Rodrigues' Ça ne se passe jamais comme prévu. She joins Mónica Calle's team in Virgem Doida. In film, she works with Marco Martins, Gonçalo Waddington and João Sousa Cardoso.

Adama Diop

Adama Diop is an actor and director born in Dakar, Senegal. He arrived in France in 2002 to train at the Conservatoire National d’Art Dramatique de Montpellier under the direction of Ariel Garcia Valdès. In 2005 he joined the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique de Paris. He then performed under the direction of Bernard Sobel, Cendre Chassane, Cyril Teste, Marion Guerrerro, Patrick Pineau, Arnaud Meunier, Julien Gosselin, Stéphane Braunschweig, Frank Castorf, Arthur Nauzyciel, Tiago Rodrigues... In 2022, he performed the role of Othello under the direction of Jean-François Sivadier. In 2023, he will pursue his project to set up a theatre school in Senegal before directing Bunker by Baptiste Amman, the graduation show of the 31st class of the St-Etienne Comedy School.

David Geselson

A man of cinema and theatre, David Geselson carefully combines his career as a director, author and performer. An actor under the direction of Élie Wajeman, François Ozon, Rodolphe Tissot and Vincent Garenq, he recently took to the stage in the Cour d'honneur of the Palais des papes in La Cerisaie directed by Tiago Rodrigues. After writing his first four works freely inspired by real events, such as En Route-Kaddish, Doreen, Lettres non-écrites and Le Silence et la Peur, the director is offering his latest fiction to the audience at the Avignon Festival. "Until now, I've chosen to fictionalise biographies that had an impact on history, and that history had an impact on in return.

Natacha Koutchoumov

Natacha Koutchoumov was born in Geneva, Switzerland, of Russian and Italian descent on her father's side, and Scottish and French on her mother's. She began acting as a teenager, taking workshops at the Geneva Conservatoire. She began acting in her teens, taking workshops at the Geneva Conservatoire. After graduating from high school, she moved to New York and spent a year at Fordham University, concentrating on theatre. She then moved to Paris, where she studied modern literature at the Sorbonne. She passed the entrance exam for ENSATT in Paris, where she continued her acting training for three years. Since graduating, she has worked regularly in theatre and film, both in France and Switzerland. She teaches regularly at the HETSR (Manufacture - Haute école des arts de la scène de Suisse Romande), the HEAD and the ECAL. In January 2017 she was appointed co-director of the Comédie de Genève with Denis Maillefer1. In February 2022 she announced that she would not be seeking a second term in 2023.

Cynthia Loemij

Cynthia Loemij began dancing at the age of ten, taking classes in Latin American dance and ballroom dancing. She graduated as a dance teacher from the Rotterdam Conservatory of Dance in 1991. She became a permanent member of Compagnie Rosas in the early 1990s, taking part in the creation of the shows Mozart/Concert Aria's, Amor constante, más allá de la muerte and Woud. Since then, she has appeared in practically all of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker's new shows, becoming a key figure in the company. In 1999, she took part in writing the dance-theatre piece Quartett, based on Heiner Müller, in collaboration with Jolente De Keersmaeker, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Frank Vercruyssen, and performed the duet with the latter. From 2006, she took on the role of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker in the revival of Fase, the choreographer's landmark piece, usually alongside Tale Dolven, but also with De Keersmaeker. In 2010 she collaborated with video artist Manon de Boer on two audiovisual works, Mirror Modulation and Dissonant, which attempt to put the spectator as much as possible in the place of the dancer and her emotions. She also took part in Thierry De Mey's film Prélude à la mer (2009), which combined a choreography by De Keersmaeker (inspired by Vaslav Nijinsky's ballet Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune) with the ecological problems surrounding the Aral Sea. That same year she founded the OVAAL choreographic project with Mark Lorimer, another Rosas dancer, which presented her first work To Intimate.Cynthia Loemij is also a teacher at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels.

With Tim Crouch and a new guest at each performance: Teresa Coutinho, Adama Diop, David Geselson, Natacha Koutchoumov, Cynthia Loemij, Vítor Roriz
Text Tim Crouch
Translation for surtitles Catherine Hargreaves
Setting Tim Crouch, Karl James, Andy Smith
Music Peter Gill

Stage Manager Jonny Reed
Production Francesca Moody
Associate Producer Grace Dickson

Production Francesca Moody Productions
With the support of Onda - Office national de diffusion artistique and for the 77th edition of the Festival d'Avignon: British Council