The National Theater and Concert Hall (NTCH) and Avignon Festival signed a partnership agreement in Taipei yesterday to cultivate young artists for the festival’s project, making the arts center in Taipei the French festival’s first and only partner in Asia.
NTCH general and artistic director Liu Yi-ruu (劉怡汝) and Avignon Festival director Tiago Rodrigues signed a three-year pact to collaborate on projects including the first edition of “Transmission Impossible Project” set to be held during the French festival next year.
“We were very interested in taking part in the project when Tiago first brought up the idea, because Taiwan needs to put in every effort to reach out to the world, and gain all kinds of ‘energy’ from the world for our artists to enrich their source of creation,” Liu said about the newly formed partnership at the signing ceremony.
Photo: CNA
Liu and Rodrigues both mentioned the values and vision they share are what brought the NTCH and the Avignon Festival together, with Rodrigues pointing out that both sides “believe about the importance of artistic creation, theater and performing arts as a beating heart of a democratic society.”
“For the next three years, we will receive young Taiwanese artists to take part in the festival, to work directly with great, experienced, famous artists from all over the world, but also to see the performances at the ‘Festival d’Avignon,’ participate in debates, in exchanges, in workshops, and live a very full life in the Festival of Avignon,” Rodrigues said.
The hope is “this will allow them to transform their view of the performing arts, to evolve, but also to share the richness of the Taiwanese performing arts,” he added.
The first edition of “Transmission Impossible Project” would be led by French choreographer Mathilde Monnier, and other artists set to take part in the project to be announced in April next year, Rodrigues said.
Rodrigues took up the post as director of the Avignon Festival in September last year, and Liu said this year’s festival in July already reflected “a subtle tenderness” commonly shown in works by the Portuguese director, writer and actor.
Taiwan is the last stop of Rodrigues’ visit to Asia and it is his first visit to the country, where three of his works had been shown since 2021, including As Far As Impossible, a play about humanitarian workers, at the National Theater in Taipei in March. Rodrigues’ adaption of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard was also staged in March at National Taichung Theater, with French actress Isabelle Huppert playing the main character “Lioubov.”
This year’s Avignon Festival shared the theme of memories with the NTCH’s Artquake festival, Rodrigues said.
The Artquake in Autumn festival runs from Oct. 5 to Nov. 19.
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