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The Avignon Festival 2006 - A Personal Encounter (Part II)The Artistic Associate and the Programming (2)Jacqueline Fletcher visits the 60th Avignon FestivalDateline: 26th July, 2006What is referred to in theory as 'alterity' or the state of 'otherness' has its drawbacks as well as its advantages. When one is born into the state of 'otherness' one becomes an intrinsic and perpetual traveller: someone who spends a lifetime estranged or in strange environments, someone who habitually crosses borders and boundaries, someone who has the freedom to choose their own attachments, but is equally at the risk of rejection, someone who learns to listen and watch carefully, to scrutinise their surroundings, in other words someone who acquires a modus vivendi from the necessity of living among the unfamiliar. This is something else that also explains some of the choices for this year's festival. Music and sound, the sounds of language form an integral part of the festival. Nadj has said that free improvised jazz is a form of music that re-trains the ear. It is not easy-listening music because it deliberately eschews the familiar range of harmonies and melodies that taints our sense of listening with habit. Equally, improvised jazz exhibits 'a formidable capacity for invention and instantaneous exchange. It is a veritable communal language…' (1) So, throughout the festival there have been concerts by jazz musicians from Hungary and elsewhere. Likewise, the musicality of language, its habitual rhythms and patterns have been challenged by a number of directors bringing work this year. Foremost among these is the Russian director Anatoli Vassiliev whose work is much respected in France. In his Theatre Laboratory/School in Moscow Vassiliev explores the use of voice and sound.
While Vassiliev took a degree in Chemistry before entering a drama school in the conservatoire tradition, his theatre work has been experimental and has been widely recognised in France. He was awarded the Palmes académique and the order of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 2004, he was invited by the ENSATT (one of the most prestigious academies in France) in Lyon to set up a research and training department for theatre direction, the only full-time four-year programme of its type in France. The rhythms of language, the physical manifestation of writing, are apparent also in the work of Arthur Nauzyciel, director of the American-English translation of Koltès Black Battles with Dogs (Combat de nègre et de chiens). In the '80s Koltès was seen by many to carry the rejuvenation of French playwriting on his young shoulders. An accomplished pianist with a taste for jazz and travel, he attended a school of journalism, developed a passion for theatre but refused to be co-opted into the establishment. While his work ostensibly deals with contemporary issues such as colonialism, alienation and the ills of a modern capitalist industrial society, he was primarily concerned with the ways in which European cultural identities are constructed using the non-European, non-Western, non-industrial as 'the other'. His style is not that of the Anglo-American tradition of social realism. He considered the theatre to be 'the opposite of life'. The influence of classical tragedy can be seen in a tendency towards the formal, in a distinctly rhythmical and poetic language and a violence that places him firmly within a 20th century European theatrical tradition reminiscent of Genet. (3) According to Nauzyciel, who directed the play for 7Stages at the Lorient Theatre in Atlanta, "it was important to make a translation that conveyed in English the particular rhythm, the physical embodiment of the language…French theatre has a reputation for being a theatre of language. For the Americans, he seemed very French because the characters talk a great deal and there is little action." (4) While these productions seem to have grand ideas about the role language plays in shaping the spectator's experience, both failed to live up to their promise. (1) Josef Nadj, quoted in 60th Festival d'Avigon, 2006, p. 12.
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