FESTIVAL D'AVIGNON 2023

77 th EDITION - FROM 5 TO 25 JULY
In 1947, a few weeks before the first Semaine d’art dramatique—which would become the Festival d’Avignon a year later—Jean Vilar, facing difficulties to organise this adventure that so fascinated him, stubbornly declared: “Avignon will bring us together, and thus Avignon will exist.” Now, in 2023, this enduring utopia of popular theatre will hold its 77th edition. The history of this festival is a score that is performed every year by its team and its partners, who prepare this great gathering of the performing arts from all over the world, a celebration made of discoveries and reunions, and built with the materials of memory to be a stepping stone for the future. The Festival d’Avignon is the reunion of the artists and the public, the desire to facilitate the access to something complex, all while preserving artistic freedom and working for cultural democratisation, and paying particular attention to those discovering the Festival for the first time. The Festival d’Avignon is a gathering powered by the curiosity for difference, by a quest for alterity, as much in the audience as on the stage. The rich diversity of those who come to listen to our stories can be meaningful only if its reflected in those who stand on the stage to tell those stories. The Festival d’Avignon is the meeting between hospitable locals and countless visitors. It’s the discovery of a territory which, for a magical moment in July, both belongs to and showcases the world. The Festival d’Avignon is an artistic and political event, a civic-minded celebration where pleasure and reflection meet as in a café. Avignon is a luminous café of ideas. A beating heart of the freedom of thought in a Europe threatened by war, antidemocratic populism, and inequality. The Festival d’Avignon is a multilingual event, that invites languages to converse and revels in the joyous mess of translation. From our vantage point in Avignon, we no longer see the world divided by borders: languages connect it together. The Festival d’Avignon is the meeting of the performing arts and of an ecological engagement essential if we want the performing arts to have a future. The Festival d’Avignon is a gathering carefully prepared to create the unexpected, the experience that can transform us, the encounter that will light the spark of hope. It is to this gathering that we invite you: the human assembly of theatre. Tenacious and passionate. Avignon will bring us together. Avignon will exist.
Tiago Rodrigues - Director of the Festival d’Avignon 20 mars 2023
SOURCE https://festival-avignon.com/en/edition-2023/programme/by-date