Latest news with #AvignonFestival
LeMonde
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- LeMonde
Avignon Festival: Arabic makes a tentative entrance on stage
After English in 2023 and Spanish in 2024, Arabic – the fifth most spoken language in the world – is taking its turn as the guest language of the Avignon Festival in southeastern France. This is a strong statement by Tiago Rodrigues, the festival director, made against a tense geopolitical backdrop. In such a polarized context, Arabic finds itself, as he writes in his editorial, "held hostage by merchants of violence and hatred who assign it associations of insularity, fundamentalism, and a so-called clash of civilizations." The 79 th edition of the festival features many choreographers and poets, but very few playwrights. Tamara Al Saadi, who is French-Iraqi, Essia Jaïbi, Tunisian, Bashar Murkus, Palestinian, and Wael Kadour, Syrian: The number of playwrights can be counted on one hand. Their rarity makes their presence in Avignon all the more valuable. "What does it mean, today, to invite the Arabic language to a festival like Avignon? Which kind of Arabic is being invited? Do we want to listen to and read this language, or do we want to see bodies moving around it? Why is there more dance than performances with text? What does it mean for an Arab body to dance to the Arabic language in a European festival?" said Jaïbi, a playwright, who admitted she did not have the answers to her own questions. However, when dancer Mohamed Toukabri asked her to write a piece to support his choreography, she did not hesitate: "I entered this project with the questions that run through me."
Broadcast Pro
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Broadcast Pro
Saudi Theatre and Performing Arts Commission to participate in Avignon Festival
Through this presence, the commission aims to highlight Saudi performing arts, introduce contemporary Saudi theatre and foster opportunities for cultural exchange with international audiences. The Saudi Theatre and Performing Arts Commission is set to participate in the 79th edition of the Avignon Festival in France, taking place from July 14 to 22. This year's edition puts a spotlight on the Arabic language, offering a timely platform for the Kingdom to present its cultural heritage. As part of its programme, the commission will present four traditional Saudi performance styles, Al-Khatwa, Khabiti, Liwa, and the Ardha from Wadi Al-Dawasir, offering international audiences a glimpse into the Kingdom's folkloric traditions. In addition, the commission will stage the theatrical production Tawq, directed by Fahad Al-Dossari and featuring performances by Ahmed Al-Zekrallah, Fatima Al-Jishi, Maryam Hussein, Abdulaziz Al-Zayani, Khaled Al-Huwaidi and Shahab Al-Shahab. The commission's participation reflects its ongoing efforts to promote Saudi performing arts on global stages, elevate contemporary Saudi theatre, and create avenues for cultural dialogue and artistic exchange.
France 24
07-07-2025
- Business
- France 24
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Times
23-06-2025
- Politics
- Times
Provence puts full stop to gender-neutral language
The front line in a French-language fight over gender equality has shifted south to Provence, with a ban by the conservative-led regional council on institutions using 'inclusive' speech. In the build-up to the summer festival season, Renaud Muselier, president of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (Paca), the third-richest of France's 13 regions, has ordered public agencies to stop using terms adopted by the left and feminists in recent years that give equal importance to men, women and non-binary people. The politically loaded system, mainly used only in written form and rejected by President Macron as clumsy and confusing, uses a 'median dot' to include masculine, feminine and plural forms when referring to people. Traditionally, the masculine form prevails, as it does in most gendered European languages. Under the inclusive system, a group of male and female students becomes 'les étudiant·e·s' instead of 'les étudiants'. The third person becomes a newly coined hybrid word, 'iel', instead of 'il' or 'elle', with 'iels' as a new neutral plural. Job adverts for staff sometimes seek 'un·e collaborateur·trice·s' and businesses email their 'cher·e client·e·s' (dear customers). Germany, Spain, Italy and other EU states are facing similar language campaigns. The Paca council, which subsidises the region's busy arts world, including the Avignon theatre festival and the Cannes film festival, has begun cutting funds to institutions that ignore an April charter 'forbidding inclusive writing in the regional public administration and all subsidy applications'. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the hard-right National Rally, hailed the Paca charter as a victory for common sense. The first victim was Kourtrajmé, a small, award-winning cinema school for underprivileged youngsters in Marseilles, which lost its €70,000 annual subsidy in April. The school had persisted in using terms that it knew were 'about left-wing activism', Muselier's spokeswoman said. In a response similar to the reaction to President Trump's anti-diversity moves in the United States, the region's cultural institutions, including its festivals, are discreetly revising their websites and communications to avoid offending the local strictures, le Monde newspaper reported. The region's family planning agency had also modified its website. 'Very few organisations are talking openly about it out of fear of suffering the same punishment as Kourtrajmé, but in the training, social and cultural sector, the pressure from the region is well known,' it said Marie Antonelle Joubert, the director of the cinema school, said: 'I am stunned to see that, because we use a language that displeases politicians, they refuse to finance a unique school that enables … youngsters from Marseilles to join the cinema industry.' The regional politicians were stuck in the 20th century, she added. Jean-Marc Coppola, the left-wing deputy mayor in charge of culture in Marseilles, the capital of the Paca region, called the regional move 'a blow against freedom of thought'. Françoise Nyssen, a former minister of culture under Macron who is president of the Avignon Festival, said the question was difficult. 'Inclusive writing can sometimes be complicated for people with dyslexia and developmental disorders,' she said. The conservative-led French senate passed a bill in 2023 outlawing the use of inclusive language in official documents but the draft fell by the wayside when Macron called snap elections to the lower house last year. The centre-right minority government led by François Bayrou, has no plans to revive it.
Nahar Net
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Nahar Net
War takes center stage as Lebanon's theaters are back
by Naharnet Newsdesk 22 May 2025, 14:26 As Lebanon suffered a war last year, Ali Chahrour was determined to keep making art, creating a performance inspired by the plight of migrant workers caught up in the conflict. Months after a ceasefire largely halted the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, Chahrour's work premiered in Beirut in early May with plans to take it to stages across Europe including at France's famed Avignon Festival. "This project was born during the war," said the 35-year-old playwright and choreographer. "I did not want to stop making theatre, because I don't know how to fight or carry weapons, I only know how to dance." On stage, two Ethiopian domestic workers and a Lebanese Ethiopian woman speak, sing and dance, telling stories of exile and mistreatment in "When I Saw the Sea", directed by Chahrour. The play pays tribute to the migrant women who were killed or displaced during the two-month war between Israel and Hezbollah which ended in November, and the year of hostilities that preceded it. Hundreds of migrant workers had sought refuge in NGO-run shelters after being abandoned by employers escaping Israeli bombardment. Others were left homeless in the streets of Beirut while Lebanon's south and east, as well as parts of the capital, were under attack. Chahrour said that "meeting with these women gave me the strength and energy to keep going" even during the war, seeking to shed light on their experience in Lebanon which is often criticized for its poor treatment of migrant workers. - 'Escape and therapy' - The war has also shaped Fatima Bazzi's latest work, "Suffocated", which was shown in Beirut in May. It was revised after the 32-year-old playwright was displaced from her home in Beirut's southern suburbs, a Hezbollah stronghold heavily bombarded during the war. The play originally portrayed a woman dealing with her misogynistic husband, and was reshaped by Bazzi's own experience, forced to escape to Iraq until the ceasefire was finally reached. Determined to continue the project the moment she returned to Lebanon, Bazzi had kept in contact with the cast in video calls. "We took advantage of this in the performance, the idea of separation and distance from each other, how we worked to continue the play," she told AFP during a recent rehearsal. At one point in the play, the characters are suddenly interrupted by the sound of a bomb and rush to their phones to see what was hit this time, with their reactions becoming scenes of their own. To Bazzi, working on the play has allowed her and the cast to "express the things we felt and went through, serving as an escape and therapy". - 'Children of war' - Theater stages across Lebanon did not lift their curtains during the war, and though they are now back, the local scene is still burdened by the effects of a devastating economic crisis since 2019. "We postponed an entire festival at the end of last year due to the war," said Omar Abi Azar, 41, founder of the Zoukak collective. The group runs the theater where Bazzi's latest piece was performed. "Now we have started to pick up the pace" again, said Abi Azar, whose own play was postponed by the war. "Stop Calling Beirut", which Abi Azar created with his collective, tells the story of the loss of his brother more than a decade ago and their childhood memories during Lebanon's civil war, which ended in 1990. Zoukak itself was born out of a crisis during a previous war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006. "We are children of war. We were born, raised and grew up in the heart of these crises," said Abi Azar. To him, "this is not a challenge, but rather our reality". "If this reality wanted to pull us down, it would have dragged us, buried us and killed us a long time ago," he added, seeking hope in art.
