A Magus on Stage: Olivier Cadiot's Works Adapted to the Theatre (original) (raw)
If I could borrow the time travelling capabilities of the magus in Olivier Cadiot's Un mage en été (literally: A Magus in Summer) I should like to take my reader back to the Avignon theatre festival in 2010. As in other years, audiences and actors alike were frazzled by the scorching summer sun in the Rhône valley during the day, and left shivering by the cold breath of the mistral wind at night. As in other years, the intelligentsia and cultural mafia left Paris to set up camp in the former papal city for the month of July before disappearing on vacation in August. As in other years, the festival provided theatre venues with an opportunity to shop around for productions by renowned French and European directors. When then should I wish to set down my figurative Tardis at this particular festival? The reason is that one of the two associate artists of the festival that year, writer Olivier Cadiot, had never written anything for the stage apart from the unpublished Soeurs et frères (Brothers and Sisters). However, at the 2010 Avignon festival, two productions by director Ludovic Lagarde featuring adaptations of Cadiot's work were on offer, Un nid pour quoi faire (A Nest What For) and Un mage en été. That a writer should have been invited as associate artist at Avignon fits uneasily with commonplace labelling of French theatre from the immediate post-WW2 period to the present-day, as a 'director's theatre' (to borrow the title of one of David Bradby's works).
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