There are two sides to Thiago Rodríguez, the Portuguese director who has led the Avignon Festival since last year. One — gentle, introspective, dedicated to dissecting intimate human conflicts — has long been evident in his stage productions. This includes Hecuba, Not Hecuba, his latest premiere in Avignon, in which a mother fights for justice after her son is abused by a state institution.
On the other hand, Rodrigues also proved to be a militant, politically outspoken leader for the French festival, an event in the international theatrical calendar. Tensions have been rising in France since the far-right National Rally party came out on top in the first round of snap parliamentary elections last weekend, and Rodrigues’ response was forceful: Avignon, he told the France Info television stationit would become a “festival of resistance”.
On Thursday, Rodrigues put together an evening of last-minute programming aimed at “mobilizing against the far right” ahead of the second round of voting this Sunday. After the performance of Angélica Liddell’s ‘Dämon: El Funeral de Bergman’, the Cour d’Honneur, Avignon’s largest stage, was given over to willing artists, politicians and union leaders from 1am to 6am.
Choreographer Boris Charmatz opened the evening with about 100 dancers performing a group reinterpretation of “Revolutionary,” a provocative 1922 dance by Isadora Duncan. JoeyStarr, a French rapper, recited a poem by Léon-Gontran Damas.
Despite the late hour, the nearly 2,000 seats were packed and a roar filled the air when Rodrigues, whose father was an anti-fascist activist in Portugal, finally appeared on stage. “My name is Thiago Rodríguez and I work for the Avignon Festival,” he said modestly. “This is a night of democratic union, strength and hope.”
Shortly before, around midnight, a performance of “Hecuba, Not Hecuba” had wrapped up at the Boulbon Quarry, an open-air space 10 miles from the city. The mood there was calmer: Before the show, as festival-goers debated the merits of various artists over drinks, it felt like a normal night out in Avignon.
And the complex structure of “Hecuba, Not Hecuba” invites a different kind of audience attention. Written by Rodrigues himself for the Paris-based Comédie-Française troupe, it combines two stories. The first is Euripides’ Ekuva, a rare ancient Greek tragedy, whose central character seeks revenge after the death of her son. The second centers on a fictional actress, Nadia Roger, whose autistic son has been abused in a state-run home for disabled children (a story inspired by real events that took place in Switzerland, according to Rodriguez).
Nadia turns to the legal system for justice as she prepares to play Hecuba on stage — and slowly but surely, Rodrigues blurs the lines between the two characters. In the role, Elsa Lepoivre, a Comédie-Française stalwart, is stunning as she shifts between the two women’s subtly different ways of grieving, her facial expressions flickering back and forth.
Rodrigues is adept at setting up multifaceted characters in a few quick strokes, and the rest of the Comédie-Française cast is playfully introduced in the opening scene, a table that reads “Hecuba.” Loïc Corbery pokes fun at the proceedings as the intense actor who immediately pulls it off. Denis Podalydès, one of the best-known members of the troupe, leans effectively into his increasingly maddened stage persona, complaining that “Euripides deserved better.”
The rest of the seven-member cast often acts as a Greek chorus, transitioning from their role in “Hecuba” to commenting on Nadia’s increasingly precarious state of mind. Podalydès doubles as an initially taciturn prosecutor who takes on Nadia’s case against the institution where her son, Otis, was kicked and threatened by staff members, along with other children with special needs.
Like Hecuba, who finally takes matters into her own hands by attacking her son’s killer, Nadia struggles with what justice means. If the institution was chronically underfunded and understaffed, does the blame lie with the employees who abused children or the state?
Some parts of “Hecuba, Not Hecuba” are confusing by Rodrigues standards. It spins a story from Otis’ beloved cartoon series, starring a dog, to set Nadia’s ‘barking’ – as she puts it – against the system. In some mythological stories, Hecuba also turns into a dog, and a large statue of a dog is the only real decorative element in the Boulbon quarry, which seemed too huge for the production. (In a funny aside, Corbéry, as one of the “Hecuba” actors, correctly quips about the set: “We don’t know what it’s for, but it’s impressive.”)
Yet, as often in his theatrical work, Rodrigues deftly steers the audience toward empathy: for Nadia and Otis, but also for more complex characters. At one point, underpaid, marginalized caregivers are pleading with the prosecutor to understand the working conditions that led to abuse.
The tone may be very different from Rodrigues’ impromptu night of anti-right-wing demonstrations, but his core beliefs are evident either way. What will “resistance” mean if the far-right party wins a big victory in France on Sunday? Time will tell, but both Rodrigues the leader and Rodrigues the narrator clearly have plenty of fight left in them.
