In partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy, Festival Experiences and Festival d'Avignon present the first Live Talk of the program Classes d'Art du Festival d'Avignon
WHEN: Wednesday, September 23, at 1PM (EST)
WITH: Olivier Py, Director of the Festival d'Avignon, and Joseph V. Melillo, Executive Producer Emeritus of the BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music),
Location: Online
Duration: 60 minutes including Q&A
45 minutes on the theme From "The Maid" to "Requiem for Srebrenica", and to the direction of the Festival d'Avignon; 15 minutes for the Q&A. Questions will be collected prior to the talk, and in the live chat.
Access via Zoom Webinar link https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85409431933
About The Speakers
Olivier Py
Author, director and actor, Olivier Py, born in 1965, has been one of the most important authors and directors of European theater and opera for the past thirty years. After studying at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre (Ensatt) in Lyon, he attended the Conservatoire National des Arts Dramatiques, in Paris in 1987, while also studying theology. In 1998, Olivier Py was appointed director of the Centre Dramatique National (CDN) d’Orléans. He then took over the leadership of the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe in Paris from 2007 to 2011. During these years, his work has been featured many times at the Festival d'Avignon and it also toured internationally included in the United States. Olivier Py became director of the Festival d’Avignon starting with the 2014 edition.
Joseph V. Melillo
Joseph V. Melillo was BAM’s executive producer from 1999 to 2018. Mr. Melillo was responsible for BAM's artistic direction, overseeing programming in all its performance spaces: the Howard Gilman Opera House, Harvey Theater, BAM Fisher and Rose Cinemas. He previously served as BAM's producing director and founding director of the Next Wave Festival, which debuted in 1983. Spanning a 35 year-tenure at BAM, Melillo has fostered the work of emerging and established artists, and forged numerous international partnerships. Awards include the Commandeur, Officier, and Chevalier de L'ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France), OBE (Great Britain), Knight of the Royal Order of the Polar Star (Sweden), and Knight of the National Order of Québec (Canada). He has served as both a 2017 Gish Award panelist and a 2017 Heinz Award juror. Melillo is currently the International Artistic Advisor for Columbia Artists and the 2019 Director’s Fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University. He is a lecturer at colleges and universities nationally and internationally.
About Festival Experiences
Starting September 2020, Festival Experiences, a subsidiary company of the Festival d'Avignon, offers an online series of historical content from the archives of the past 20 years of the Festival d'Avignon through a program of master classes entitled “Classes d’Art du Festival d’Avignon". In each “Classe d’Art”, an artist speaks of their creative approach alongside the re-transmissions of their shows from the Festival d’Avignon. In addition to the Classe d’Art online, Live Talks (via zoom) moderated by an American expert will be organized during the fall.
More here
The program of Classes d'Art du Festival d'Avignon in the United States is co-organized by Festival Experiences with Festival d'Avignon, in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the U.S.
