The Portuguese Tiago Rodrigues (Lisbon, 1977), one of the great stage directors of the old continent, has broken the mold: he is the first non-French director of the Avignon Festival since its foundation in 1947. And for his second edition at the helm of the great European performing arts competition has chosen Spanish as the guest language. Not only that: he opens it on June 29 with Angélica Liddell (Figueres, 1966) and with a show that, knowing her, can raise blisters because it is articulated through the funerals of the filmmaker Ingmar Bergman and… John Paul II: Dämon. Bergman's funeral. In addition, Avignon will be closed this year by the voice of Sílvia Pérez Cruz and will feature the dance of La Ribot, the Baró d'Evel circus or a production by the National Dramatic Center of Madrid, Chekhov's The Seagull with actors with visual disabilities directed by the Peruvian Chela de Ferrari. Paradoxically, thanks to this invitation, for the first time a work entirely in Catalan will be heard in Avignon: the masterful monologue Ricard (Història d'un senglar) by the Uruguayan Gabriel Calderón performed by Joan Carreras.
How is it being the first non-French directing Avignon, a myth of European theater?
It's a great honor. That the festival, the people at the Ministry of Culture, the city of Avignon, have chosen a foreigner to direct the festival speaks more about the values of French society than it does about me. It speaks of values of curiosity about other cultures, of the international dimension and history of this festival, of the will to be open to the world in a country in which, as in others in Europe, and not only, there are forces that are for the closure, isolation and who have many problems with the love of difference, which is in the genetic code of the Avignon Festival, founded by Jean Villar in 1947 and who quickly invited filmmakers, choreographers and directors from other countries to publicize other ways of looking at the world with the arts. I want to be able to contribute to that history and defend those values and defend creation.
The performing arts always enrich our sensitivity towards the world and they also do so in the human assembly of the theater, with others different from us by our side, living the same collective experience. A place for debate so that people do not fight among themselves. Democratic debate, rich dissent, happy controversy. This art proposal today seems to me more necessary than ever in societies like the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, increasingly polarized, incapable of dialogue, of understanding the other in their difference, of not agreeing but attempting collective constructions. And art allows it.
What is this role of the assembly today, in these societies in which the extreme right is ascending?
That we invite languages, like Spanish this year, is a gesture that says that we do not see the world necessarily divided into borders and nationalities, but above all connected by languages, in this case be Peru, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile or Spain. We celebrate languages, and also the possibility of translation. The difference invites us to understand the other, to translate, to learn, to accept imperfection, like me when I speak Spanish, half of it is trust and the other half is irresponsibility.
And there is a metaphor for the power of art to cross borders, to connect the human species. And the idea of inviting languages is also deciding to go through the forest of a language with the immense possibilities that exist in it. And there are not only Spanish-speaking artists, but also Gwenaël Morin, a French director who is going to stage a Don Quixote with Jean Balibar. And there will also be dozens of meetings. Enrique Vila-Matas, Paul B. Preciado, Albert Serra will be there. We want to take advantage of the history of that language to talk about historical complexities, current phenomena and to discover artists.
Is it a good time for theater in the Spanish language?
It is an important time to rediscover. Not only to show the best that there is, but also to push what can be. When we invite Tiziano Cruz, a young Argentine artist with two works, we are creating a space of discovery that may contribute to the future works having even more ambition and better conditions. When we invite Angelica Liddell for the first time to the Palace of the Popes, we are writing a chapter in Angelica's feverish love story with the festival audience. She is perhaps one of the few artists who has gone through the last three directions of the meeting. When we invited La Ribot for the first time to Avignon, being one of the great choreographers of Spain and Europe, we knew that we were having a world premiere. And also about Juana de Castilla, the history of Spain: we know that we are telling something about the course of it.
Is bringing Catalan to the festival with the Spanish language a political act?
We are interested when we invite a language to invite its complexities and its peripheries. On the one hand we have Tiziano Cruz, who also comes to speak of a friction between the Spanish language and the indigenous languages of northern Argentina, of the first peoples. On the other hand, when we invited Gabriel Calderón, a Uruguayan who works with Catalan festivals such as Montaña Alta and El Grec, and with the actor Joan Carreras, who has a Catalan version of one of his works that he initially wrote in Spanish, he It is Uruguayan, we thought it was a very nice circulation and it will surely have political interpretations, but for us Catalan is present because the work must be present but also in dialogue with the Spanish language, as happens in Spain.
What about Angelica Liddell? Why do all the Avignon directors like him?
She is a great artist of our time. Sometimes we forget because of the power of her transgressive aesthetics in the scene of her being the great poet that she is. She is one of the great authors of theater today. Not in the Spanish language, not in Europe, today on the planet. She has that literary force that drives her to works that have already marked the history of the festival, that can disturb the public. This year it is very important to present it on the most important, visible and popular scene in Avignon.
We do so knowing that there are possible controversies. But also knowing that today in Europe even in countries like France, the country of cultural exception, where culture has always been at the center of citizenship, even in France we see symptoms of fragility of the political commitment to culture. And we see some dangers, as in many European countries, that threaten the independence, the freedom of cultural institutions. And we know that presenting Angelica today in the Palace of the Popes, and I say this as a consequence, not as the reason for presenting her, is also to defend artistic freedom.
Risk in artistic creation is one of the great reasons for public service. The day when all culture, all art, is submissive to the rules of the market and there is no vision of public service, transgressive artists will disappear. In a country that has offered us Artaud and coming from a country that has offered us Lorca, Angelica in the Palace of the Popes is also a gesture of defense of freedom of expression and artistic freedom.
Do you think it is threatened today?
It worries me that the guarantor of artistic freedom in democracy can be more or less explicitly attacked, either by a kind of submission of the democratic powers to the fear of populist demagoguery, and that they do so preventively, or because the rise of extreme Right in many countries promises a real threat to freedom of expression in general.
Of course, there is also an idea of culture, of public service of culture, which defends creation that the rules of the market would never defend. That is why public service exists, it is one of the important parts of a democracy, and I believe that with today's populist demagogic ultra-liberal extreme right it is threatened. And in Avignon we understand that today there is very clearly a need to defend artistic freedom, the possibility of transgression. In Avignon I have not experienced any attempt at interference by political powers, but the reading I make of a society where the extreme right is increasingly represented is that the moment may come.
And what I have observed in Spain, for example, in Madrid, such as Paco Bezerra's text about Saint Teresa, is very worrying. These are not isolated cases, they are symptomatic of the problems in other European countries as well. Marta Górnicka, Polish, has had many problems creating her works in Poland. There is still an important force in theater in Poland that has allowed its work to continue, but we see how in countries where the extreme right is increasingly stronger or comes to power, culture is threatened. And with it freedom of expression.
Does Avignon's budget hold? The French Ministry of Culture is making quite a few cuts.
It is in a cycle of stagnation. Of course I look at the half-empty cup. It can also be called a cycle of stability. We have maintained public financing for almost ten years, which corresponds to a little more than half of the festival's income. The other half are seats and patronage. That other half that corresponds to what we can produce has grown. Last year we increased ticket income by 25% and this year we will have doubled patronage, we will be at 8% of the budget. Despite the cuts that the Ministry of Culture has suffered, which worries us because they do not allow it to develop the necessary cultural policies, we hope that the State and the local power that accompanies us can slightly increase the financing of the festival so that it maintains its importance, its strength and above all the quality of its public service mission which is creation, accompanying artists and democratic access to that creation.
He must be seeing more theater than he has in his entire life. Do you see new trends?
The pandemic has greatly influenced the thinking of artists, we are in a moment of search, but I can identify something in the news that the post-pandemic brings us: many theater and dance artists are interested in working in natural spaces. The relationship with the living. There are many artists interested in leaving not only the theater building or transforming it, many people want to do a work in a forest, next to a river, on a mountain, a hill. There is a desire to wander, to propose to the public to walk with the artists in natural spaces, for the public to build the space where the work takes place. And above all that we are in contact not with the built heritage but with an aspect of the natural heritage. And it happens with many different aesthetics, with very radical contemporary dance or with popular theater of stories, of narrative, many look for that space that moves away from the city, from the urban. I don't know how to rate it yet, but you can see it coming. It's already arrived.
Many artists are learning how to deal with it. For us in Avignon it is very interesting because we are a festival that grew up occupying spaces that are not theaters in origin, every year we invent how to do theater in a gymnasium, a chapel, a church, a cloister, a palace, a quarry. Last year we did it on a mountain, in a forest, and we understand that it is a very modern search for many artists of many aesthetics in many places.
