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☆ A French Star Brings Her Career-Saving Play to New York
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-08 | by ( Laura Cappelle | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In 2003, three decades into her career, Dominique Blanc experienced every actor’s worst nightmare: The phone stopped ringing. Blanc’s character, lifted from a book by the French author Marguerite Duras, awaits her husband’s return from a Nazi concentration camp in 1945, uncertain whether he is even alive. The show grew out of a series of readings she did from the book with the director Patrice Chéreau, a longtime collaborator. In 2008, Blanc pitched him a light stage version, requiring only a table, chairs and old costumes from Blanc’s closet. While Duras’s book was translated into English as “The War: A Memoir,” its original title simply means “Pain,” and in her show, Blanc starkly recreates women’s anguish as their partners return from untold horrors.

Persons: Dominique Blanc, Jean Racine’s “, ” Blanc, “, ”, Florence, Marguerite Duras, Patrice Chéreau, Blanc Organizations: Florence Gould Hall Locations: New York, French

☆ An Arts Festival About Sports, for People Who Don’t Like Sports
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-06 | by ( Laura Cappelle | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When it comes to the biggest sports show on earth, many Parisians have reached the stage of begrudging acceptance. “The Olympics are coming — whether we like it or not,” a curator from the Pompidou Center, Linus Gratte, said as he introduced a performance there this past weekend as part of the “Hors Pistes” festival. For the Paris Cultural Olympiad — spearheaded by Dominique Hervieu, an experienced performing arts curator — the city has opted to go big. Any cultural institution could apply for the “Olympiad” label, leading to a sprawling lineup of sports-related exhibitions and performances, which started back in 2022. This has led to a degree of confusion over what, exactly, the Olympiad stands for: Its official website currently lists no fewer than 984 upcoming events.

Persons: ”, Linus Gratte, Dominique Hervieu Organizations: Pompidou Center

☆ ‘The Emigrants’ Review: A Troubled Show Finally Debuts
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-16 | by ( Laura Cappelle | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Yet as the technical crew moved furniture between scenes of Krystian Lupa’s new play “The Emigrants,” which finally had its world premiere in Paris on Saturday, they were watched as carefully as headline performers. Without these inconspicuous figures, the show can’t go on — and for much of the past year, a dispute with technicians has kept “The Emigrants” from the stage. Initially scheduled to debut last June at the Comédie de Genève, a prestigious Swiss playhouse, that production was canceled less than a week before opening night. At the time, the Comédie de Genève cited differences in “work philosophy” and “values” between its team and Lupa, 80, a longtime luminary of European theater. An article in the Swiss newspaper Le Temps said that the theater’s crew had been “mentally and physically exhausted” by Lupa’s attitude in rehearsal.

Persons: Krystian, Le Temps, Lupa Locations: Paris, Swiss

☆ Marie NDiaye Raises Questions She Has No Intention of Answering
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-18 | by ( Laura Cappelle | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

In 2008, Pap Ndiaye published “La Condition Noire” (“The Black Condition”), an essay on Black history and discrimination in France. NDiaye wrote a foreword for the book in the form of a short story about two sisters of different races. “I liked the idea that at school people didn’t ask you to define yourself by this,” she said of her youth. Until a work trip last year, NDiaye had been to Senegal, her father’s home country, only once, when she was 19. “I was doing what I thought I was made for, what I loved, but I didn’t really consider the future.”

Persons: Pap Ndiaye, NDiaye, Victoire, “, ” NDiaye, Paula, didn’t, ”, Joyce Carol Oates, Les, hadn’t Locations: France, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Minuit

☆ Trajal Harrell’s Dance Card Is Full
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-20 | by ( Laura Cappelle | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Harrell’s imagination was shaped, he said, by his “very idyllic Southern upbringing” in Douglas, as part of a well-to-do Black family. He came of age in the ’50s, and managed to buy land,” Harrell said. My grandparents were always using metaphors, like: ‘There’s more than one way to skin a cat.’”The academically gifted Harrell was pushed to be ambitious by his college-educated parents. After years as a freelance choreographer, in 2019, Harrell was invited to form a permanent dance company at the Schauspielhaus Zurich, one of the German-speaking world’s most high-profile theaters. What if there had been like a community of people to support her?,” said Harrell, who studied with the feminist thinker bell hooks at Yale.

Persons: ”, “, ” Harrell, Harrell, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, ” “ I’ve Organizations: Schauspielhaus, Yale Locations: Douglas, Schauspielhaus Zurich

☆ A French Festival Focuses (Timidly) on English
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-13 | by ( Laura Cappelle | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As soon as the Portuguese director Tiago Rodrigues took over at the Avignon Festival, France’s biggest theater event, he announced a symbolic move: Under his direction, there would be a special focus on a different language every year, starting, this summer, with English. There was wincing from some quarters: To many in France, English is already far too culturally dominant. Of several dozen productions in the official lineup of this year’s festival, which runs through July 25, only six plays are predominantly in English. So far, however, the most intriguing discovery has been the sole American entry, “Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge,” from Elevator Repair Service. From tables on opposite sides of the stage, Greig Sargeant (Baldwin) and Ben Williams (Buckley) spar with effective solemnity.

Persons: Tiago Rodrigues, hasn’t, Tim Etchells, Alexander Zeldin, “ Baldwin, Buckley, James Baldwin, William F, Buckley Jr, Greig Sargeant, Baldwin, Ben Williams Organizations: Avignon, France’s, Royal Court, Cambridge, Repair Service Locations: Portuguese, France, Avignon, British, ”, United States

☆ Review: To Revisit a Sexual Assault, She Drugs Herself Onstage
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-12 | by ( Laura Cappelle | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In “The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella” (“A Noiva e o Boa Noite Cinderela”), her new stage production at the Avignon Festival in France, she doesn’t merely open up about that experience. She relives part of it, night after night. This all-too-real performance single-handedly jolted Avignon alive over the first week of the festival, turning Bianchi — an unknown, Amsterdam-based artist — into a sensation at the event. I felt nauseated at several points, as if “The Bride and the Goodnight Cinderella” had tapped into my own fight-or-flight instinct. Bianchi enters in a stylish white ensemble, and proceeds to deliver a lecture from a heavy stack of notes.

Persons: Carolina Bianchi, doesn’t, Bianchi, ”, jolted, —, Pippa Bacca Organizations: Avignon Locations: France, jolted Avignon, Amsterdam, sobs, Turkey

☆ At Glamorous French Festivals, Poverty Is Only Onstage
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-06 | by ( Laura Cappelle | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Yet “Welfare,” which shared the opening honors in Avignon with a dance production, Bintou Dembélé’s “G.R.O.O.V.E.,” looks as absurd onstage as it is affecting on-screen. It’s as if the sitcom “That 70s Show” had opted to tackle welfare benefits, complete with well-cut, visibly new costumes. The stories told in Wiseman’s film are loosely reorganized here into a day in the life of a welfare center, as case workers deal with one exasperated claimant after the next. There are comedic moments in the film, but in Deliquet’s stage version, they start to feel involuntarily farcical. The energetic delivery of the cast may be because they need to project in the cavernous space, which holds around 2,000 spectators.

Persons: ”, Frederick Wiseman, Wiseman, Denis, Deliquet Locations: New York, Saint, France, Avignon

☆ When the Street Moves to the Opera House (and Subverts It)
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-06 | by ( Laura Cappelle | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“It’s a battle on so many fronts, it’s exhausting,” Dembélé said. It culminates in rousing excerpts from “Les Indes Galantes,” but prefaces them with a string of slow-moving scenes, outdoors then inside, that feel like a meditation on emancipation. In Avignon, “G.R.O.O.V.E.” starts at a symbolic spot: in front of the city’s Papal Palace, the imposing site most identified with the event. Ushers then lead the audience to the nearby Avignon Opera, where three groups are formed. “Through us,” Dembélé said, “the street moves into the opera house and subverts it.” Tiago Rodrigues, the new director of the Avignon Festival, said that was the reason he chose Dembélé to open this year’s edition: “It’s a show of the openness and spirit of diversity we want for the festival.”

Persons: “, ” Dembélé, Alice Diop, “ Saint Omer, ”, Dembélé, “ Les, Célia Kameni, ” Tiago Rodrigues Organizations: Lille Opera, Avignon Opera Locations: French, Avignon

Card 2 of 12Pink Floyd, ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and MeThe inside story of a Times reporter’s strange role in a foundational moment in early internet culture: “The Dark Side of the Rainbow.”Background Image: A video montage showing scenes from “The Wizard of Oz” with Pink Floyd song lyrics superimposed.

Persons: Pink Floyd, ‘, Oz ’, Oz

☆ At the Holland Festival, Many Shades of Strange
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Laura Cappelle | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When it was established in 1947, the Holland Festival signaled the Dutch desire to build bridges after World War II. Its mandate was simple: to bring international artists from a range of disciplines to the Netherlands, every summer. “You had three cultural exports at the time: tulips, cheese and the Holland Festival,” Emily Ansenk, who has been the event’s artistic director since 2019, said in an interview. While the 2022 edition tackled climate change and issues of representation, there is no overt theme this year. Still, as the theater portion of the Holland Festival kicked into high gear over this past weekend, common threads started to emerge.

Persons: “, ” Emily Ansenk, Elli Papakonstantinou, Susanne Kennedy Organizations: Holland, Holland Festival Locations: Netherlands, Amsterdam

☆ ‘Antigone in the Amazon’ Review: The Drama Is Brazil’s Land War
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Laura Cappelle | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Arriving after so much political action, the play feels like an afterthought. In “Antigone in the Amazon,” two Flemish actors from NTGent, Sara De Bosschere and Arne De Tremerie, address the audience at regular intervals, explaining the tricky process of making the show and the ethical issues it raised. At one point, they are shown onscreen performing a scene from “Antigone” for the residents of a remote Amazonian village, who sit in a circle around them. I occasionally wondered the same thing about “Antigone in the Amazon.” Still, it is a more balanced, effective production than “Orestes.” Two Brazilian performers, Frederico Araujo and Pablo Casella, join the Flemish cast onstage. A third, the Indigenous activist Kay Sara, was supposed to join them and play Antigone, but we are told early in the show that she had “decided to go back home, with her people.”

☆ An Unsigned Postcard Named Four Family Members Who Died in the Holocaust. Why?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-15 | by ( Laura Cappelle | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

By the time she started work on “The Postcard,” Berest had plenty of experience with biography. Together with an associate, she founded Porte-Plume, a niche press that specializes in ghostwritten family biographies and corporate books. “I’d always been attracted to the past, and I loved this job,” Berest said. Myriam, Berest’s grandmother, had married their son, Vincente, and survived the war with help from the Picabia clan. “It means that even people who were murdered pass things on to their children, to their grandchildren.”

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