Olivier Py celebrates Shakespeare in brilliant polyphony

The director and future ex-director of the Festival d’Avignon celebrates “the great Will” with two versions of his most emblematic play: “Hamlet”. We were at rehearsals.

“The most famous play by the most famous playwright! “ This is how Olivier Py will tackle Everest Hamlet, the long and complex work conceived by William Shakespeare (1564-1616) circa 1600, three years before Queen Elizabeth I passed the crown of England to James, King of Scots and son of his sworn enemy, Mary Stuart … Far from the wars of a tormented 17th century, and without doublets or tops of shoes but in sneakers, it is in a small room of the Théâtre du Châtelet, in the heart of Paris, that four performers brought together by the director ( Moustafa Benaïbout, Damien Bigourdan, Céline Chéenne and Bertrand de Roffignac) begin rehearsals, in mid-May 2021, of Hamlet in imperative. In other words, six weeks with beating pace to develop the daily soap opera (at noon) of the Jardin Ceccano: a very strong adventure launched by the director of the Avignon Festival in his second year, in 2015.

Bold as always

After The Republic, by Plato, adapted by Alain Badiou with students from the Regional School of Actors in Cannes and Marseille (Eracm), which inaugurated the principle, then the story of the Festival told by Thomas Jolly the following year, or even The odyssey deployed during the last Festival to date by the group 1er Acte and Blandine Savetier, Olivier Py himself takes up the challenge. By ensuring in turn the sharing dimension: the students of Eracm, just like a dozen amateurs recruited in Avignon and two former prisoners of the Pontet prison, where he leads workshops, are invited to surround the four professionals. . In each episode, this twenty performers will have to assume a part of improvisation. What festival-goers adore, who have favored this meeting from the start… free.

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