Joël Jouanneau
Nothing could be more singular than the itinerary of Joël Jouanneau who, since 1965, has been alternating directing, writing, teaching and management responsibilities, first with the Eldorado company, then with Claude Sévenier at the Centre dramatique national pour la jeunesse, connected to the Théâtre de Sartrouville (from 1999 to 2003). Author of some 20 plays, he addresses sometimes adults, sometimes children "big and small". Rural comedy, pirate comedy, island comedy, nocturnal comedy follow each other in his repertory. He stages them, without forgetting to deal with contemporary playwrights such as Thomas Bernhard, Martin Crimp, Jean-Luc Lagarce, Elfriede Jelinek, Jacques Serena, Yves Ravey, Imre Kertész or Robert Walser whom he has revealed to the public. He has also adapted Dostoyevsky (The Idiot) and Shakespeare (Richard III), impassioned with the radicalness of the great poets. Those who, like him, make language "the land of all adventures"; those who do not embellish realities, who do not conceal them but confront them, each in his own way, claiming total freedom of style and words. A fine balance between seriousness and lightness, his language, fluid and musical, also allows him to invent a theatre that evokes the magnificent and terrifying world of childhood when it is confronted with the apprenticeship of life and the loss of innocence, as well as to encompass more traditional subjects. He returns to the Festival d'Avignon after having presented The Hypothesis by Robert Pinget in 1987, his play The Noggin in 1989, Jamaican Poker/The Beggars' Meeting by Evelyne Pieiller in 1991, Endgame by Beckett and Rise Up and Walk after Dostoyevsky in 1995.