Encounter with Jean-Baptiste Sastre and Frédéric Boyer

This summer, in the Palais des Papes of Avignon, Jean-Baptiste Sastre will direct Shakespeare's Richard II in the Cour d'honneur, sixty-three years after its first production in Avignon by Jean Vilar. In order to reveal the king in his full dimension - the one of a fallen sovereign, convicted of tyranny and bad governance -  Denis Podalydès will be entrusted with the title role. Around him, a group of actors will embody the different characters : Pascal Bongard, Nathalie Richard and, more unexpectedly, the French writer Pierre Michon. In a scenography by Sarkis and a with new translation by Frédéric Boyer, Jean-Baptiste Sastre intends to «save this play from clichés, and conjure up all its brutality, melancholy and sweetness mixed together». According to Sastre, Shakespeare's masterpiece relates the history of the human being as a king, whose impossible balance can only lead to failure and destruction.