The Avignon Festival once again paid attention to Lithuania - two years ago, the performance Heroes' Square (director Krystian Lupa) staged at the Lithuanian National Drama Theatre was included in the main festival programme, whereas on July 17-21, 2018 the LNDT performance Tartuffe based on the comedy by Molière (director Oskaras Koršunovas) is going to be presented at the Opera Confluence Hall.
This will be the seventh time already that Oskaras Koršunovas will be presenting his work to the audience of Avignon. Here he showed his first performances such as There to Be Here (Lith. Ten būti čia) and The Old Woman 2 (Lith. Senė 2). Later on, the Avignon Festival coproduced Master and Margarita (Lith. Meistras ir Margarita) as well as The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (Lith. Įstabioji ir graudžioji Romeo ir Džuljetos istorija). In 2001, the festival showed Fireface (Lith. Ugnies veidas) and staged the play by Gintaras Grajauskas with French actors.
Koršunovas believes that the French selected Tartuffe because of the new interpretation of the performance, “The basic criteria of the Avignon Festival have always been innovation, relevance and quality. Molière's Tartuffe has consistently been revealed from a religious perspective. At all times, Tartuffe has been the impostor and Orgon - the good man. We have demonstrated a different interpretation, where they both are modern politicians and morality is merely a matter of public relations. Social media becomes their duel arena.”
