Viva Arrabal

This new programming by France Culture in the Cour du Musée Calvet is based on the idea that literature, poetry, and theatre are not only weapons but also a way to distance oneself, to “disorient” oneself from current events. “A great writer must dare venture out like Don Quixote,” says Enrique Vila-Matas, special guest for this programme. The audience is therefore invited to a wild ride alongside some emblematic works, in the language of Cervantès but also in that of Diderot. With humour and whimsy, guaranteed.

Viva Arrabal

Playing the game of inviting the Spanish language to the Festival d'Avignon inevitably meant paying tribute to one of its greatest living artists, Fernando Arrabal. At the age of 92, Arrabal's life has spanned two centuries and two millennia. As we commemorate the centenary of the Surrealist Manifesto, let's not forget that Arrabal was certainly the last witness and actor of this movement. In fact, he describes himself as a "follower of confusion" and the last survivor of what he calls "the modernity of wonders", i.e. the ensemble of "Dada, Surrealism, Pataphysics and Panic". He is also the child of betrayal and of the painful Spain that murdered its citizens. Arrabal's father and uncles were all massacred by General Franco. And the poet was banished from his country after publishing his Letter to General Franco and producing the masterpiece whose song, Viva la muerte, everyone knows. Over the course of an evening, we pay tribute to the man of the theatre, the poet, the film-maker, the intellectual, the painter, the man, the courageous citizen and his childhood destroyed by Franco's regime. Drawing on a range of material, including his first play, Pique-nique en campagne (Picnic in the Countryside), which is terribly topical, we offer a wonderful portrait that will enable new listeners to discover Arrabal, and those who know him to rediscover an intense, funny, tragic, powerful and whimsical body of work. An hour and a half for a poetic portrait and an out-of-time, arrabalesque dive.

With Hervé Pierre, Nathalie Richard, Etienne Galharague, Nassim Haddouche, and student actors from Ensemble 31 of the Cannes and Marseille Regional School of Actors (ERACM): Eliot Piette et Arron Mata
In the presence of Fernando Arrabal
Directed by Sophie-Aude Picon
Original music by Philippe Thibault
Assistant director Claire Chaineaux
Program composed by Pauline Thimonnier based on the following texts: Pique-nique en campagne (1952), Baal Babylone (1959, extracts), La Pierre de la folie (1963, extract), Lettre au général Franco (1971, extract) and Théâtre panique IV (1967, extract)