Act French Festival kicks off with Théâtre Du Soleil’s Le Dernier Caravansérail (Odyssées)

Théâtre Du Soleil’s Le Dernier Caravansérail (Odyssées), which is part of this year’s Lincoln Center Festival, is also the kick off event for Act French: A Season of New Theater from France, which runs from July 15-December 15. Conceived by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York and AFAA (Association Française d’Action Artistique), the festival aims to offer an illuminating, bridge-building vision of contemporary French culture and to spark lively dialogues between and among leading theater artists, patrons, and professionals from both France and the U.S.

The North American premiere of Le Dernier Caravansérail, directed by Ariane Mnouchkine and created by Théâtre Du Soleil, is an epic of fate-driven existence, in which no actor’s foot touches the ground. Everyone and everything rolls on and off stage in wheeled carts, pushed/pulled across stormy seas, scorching deserts, and bitter snowfields in dozens of tales of myriad aspects of exile and flight. The work is based on letters written by Iranian and Kurdish refugees held in France, Australia, Indonesia, and New Zealand, which were then organized into an episodic, non-linear, structure that honors and recalls Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.

In addition to Le Dernier Caravansérail, the work of many of France’s leading theater artists will be featured during the five-month long Act French festival, such as playwrights Olivier Cadiot, Valère Novarina, José Pliya, and Koffi Kwahulé; directors Claude Régy, Ludovic Lagarde, Arthur Nauzyciel, and Guy Alloucherie; and actors Isabelle Huppert, Marie-France Pisier, Laurent Poitrenaux, and Robin Renucci. Participating theaters — hosting nearly 30 contemporary French and francophone works — include Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, St. Ann’s Warehouse, 59E59 Theaters, and The Kitchen.

Mark Russell, acting artistic advisor for the Act French festival and former director of P.S. 122, will present a series of French works exploring new theatrical forms in November and December, and participating artists will engage the New York community with a variety of symposia, staged readings, public interviews, presentations from radio and television archives, films, lectures, and workshops.Throughout the festival, concerns about media manipulation, cultural identity and existential questions will be prominent themes. Works will be presented in English, or accompanied by super-titles.

For more information, see www.ActFrench.org.