Encounter with Nathalie Garraud and Olivier Saccomano

After having welcomed this summer the performances of two major international productions, the FabricA has returned this autumn to its original function. The one for which it had been thought through and built, i.e., permitting, throughout the year, the residency of artists involved in creations for the next Festival d'Avignon.

The first company to invest the premises, du Zieu is run by the director Nathalie Garraud and the author Olivier Saccomano. It is currently preparing Spectres de l'Europe (Spectres of Europe), a cycle on the figure of the foreigner that will lead, this season, to two creations. The first, L'Avantage du printemps (The Advantage of Spring), will be the subject of final rehearsals at the FabricA at the end of October, before being presented in Baghdad. The second, Othello, variation pour trois acteurs (Othello, Variation for Three Actors), will be performed in July 2014 in the different communes of the Grand Avignon metropolitan area.

This residency of the du Zieu company is the occasion to once again hold the monthly encounters of the Festival d'Avignon. This rendezvous has been imagined in two parts: a public run-through of L'Avantage du printemps (45 min.), for an introduction to the artistic universe of Nathalie Garraud and Olivier Saccomano, followed by exchanges on the creation they will present next summer at the Festival d'Avignon. This first encounter around the 2014 Festival is emblematic of the new director Olivier Py's two main lines of action: on one hand, the desire to have a new generation of artists heard and, on the other, the determination to have the Festival d'Avignon make itself known on its territory, notably through light and itinerant theatre forms.

A few words from Nathalie Garraud and Olivier Saccomano on these creations:

L'Avantage du printemps

“This short play for two actors, L'Avantage du printemps, came out of a commission given to German, Iraqi, Egyptian and French actors, on the theme of clichés and cultural stereotypes circulating between the East and the West. In a Europe where art and politics are regularly asked to cast doubt on their own capacities, we fantasize on the non-European all the more as he has to deal with what Europe no longer wants to see or know: war, revolution, misery. Around this game of mirrors, we imagine a fiction: the meeting of a programmer of a major French theatre and a young post-Arab Spring director.”

Othello, variation pour trois acteurs

“This variation on Othello, conceived as a simple and itinerant form, is a first approach to the figure of the foreigner, as it is constructed in Western societies. In our adaptation, the stress will be placed on certain motifs of Shakespeare's text able to shed light on our historical and political situation. In a merchant republic (Venice), the marriage of an Arab general (Othello) and the daughter of a wealthy senator (Desdemona) has created a scandal. But the state needs this foreigner to lead a military intervention in Cyprus, the Western trading post coveted by Ottoman rival. Fantasies about the foreigner (desirable and detestable), the political and historical construction of a dim affect (jealousy, which is known other than the flip side of anxiety), the manipulation of information (that builds unfounded certainties), going through clichés (to which everyone is tempted to cling), are the main lines that will guide our research.”