The actor, playwright and director Olivier Py, at the head of the Avignon Festival from 2014 to 2022, has been appointed artistic director of the Théâtre du Châtelet, indicated the town hall of Paris this Wednesday, February 1, confirming information from the ” Figaro “.
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The appointment of a “huge artist, acclaimed all over the world” is “a guaranteed promise of audacity, joy, surprises and impertinence”reacted in a tweet the mayor PS Anne Hidalgo.
The institution, known for having been a temple of musical comedy and opera, has been without artistic direction since the dismissal in 2020 of Ruth Mackenzie and the departure in July 2022 of Thomas Lauriot dit Prévost.
In addition to restoring a strong artistic identity to this jewel of the town hall of Paris, Olivier Py will have to take up the challenge of cleaning up the finances, the deficit amounting to 4 to 6 million euros, according to the sources. The Châtelet receives 15 million euros from the City and generates 10 million in own revenue.
Good attendance figures for Avignon
Under the leadership of Olivier Py, the Festival d’Avignon reached a record attendance rate (95.5% in 2019), a figure slightly down in 2022 after two years of health crisis (92%).
First artist to have directed the head of the festival since its founder Jean Vilar, he claimed in the city of the popes a “verb theater”, ” popular “ and “concerned about the world”.
Born on July 24, 1965 in Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes), Olivier Py had previously been director of the National Dramatic Center in Orléans and then patron of the Odéon in Paris. Known for his taste for the baroque and the flamboyant, he continued during his terms of office to write and direct, both in theater and opera.
Coffin denounces a “scandal”
The outcome of the nomination process is not to the taste of environmentalists, demanding allies of Anne Hidalgo, and in particular of the elected representative of their group Alice Coffin. “The choice to appoint Olivier Py at the head of the Théâtre du Châtelet is as much arbitrary as the very particular sexism of the cultural world and the political world”denounced on Twitter the one who is also a member of the board of directors of the theater.
The selection committee of which she was a member selected “two women with excellent records [Valérie Chevalier et Sandrina Martins, ndlr]but it was Olivier Py who was fished out, to the detriment of files deemed to be better”says the feminist activist, denouncing a “scandal”.
