 |
And they're off! Fringe events bring performers from around the world
by Rosslyn Hyams
Article published on the 2008-07-10 Latest update 2008-07-11 09:59 TU
One of the puppets from Khasukuda
(Photo: Chapelle du verbe incarné)
They’re off! The Avignon Festival Off, the fringe events, starts 10 July. Hundreds of stage companies take part with shows of all kinds, from comic reviews to dance, from all over Europe and as far away as Taiwan.
The fringe, the Avignon Off, got going on the eve of the official festival opening with a noisy parade through the city’s main street.
There are hundreds of stage productions to be seen, in French or other languages. They include Spanish flamenco guitar, Baratanatyam Indian classical dance, a Vietnamese version of the Greek classical play, Antigone and puppets from Taiwan.
Greg Germain, who is based near Paris, has been programming artists and playwrights from French-speaking lands overseas, for ten years at the Avignon Off.
In 2008, at the Chapelle du Verbe Incarné, the home of Germain’s Toma, there’s a backbone of seven productions - plays, dance and music, from Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guyana, or from the French-speaking islands of the Indian Ocean.
For an Amazonian experience, Khasukuda, which means lands of night in the Arawak language, is written by Rubens Makosi from Guyana. He is also a musician and plastic artist. The instruments and the music he says, tell their own story.
Jean-Marc Hervé, a puppeteer and fellow plastic artist who works with Makosi, is from the wet and windy west of France but he says that Khasukuda tells traditional stories that people from anywhere can relate to.
The jungle of human relationships, envy and oppression and revolt - these are the themes of Jean Genet's Les Bonnes (the Maids), which is also on the Toma programme this year. Jandira de Jesus, originally from Brazil and now living in Martinique, directs this three-woman power-play-play with a voodoo twist.
There’s plenty more at Toma, to take you, and maybe your breath away…
… and it’s all day long from 10 July to 2 August in the Avignon Off at the Chapelle du Verbe Incarné.
