Festival de Tragédies

We live surrounded by conflict, excess, violence, fear and intolerance. All these profoundly human impulses speak of an insecurity that all too often stems from tragic situations. Our Festival does not celebrate monsters: it chooses to look them in the face, to try to understand them from the heart. For it is in this lucid confrontation that we may find a way out of the impasse of our excesses. Looking at the inescapable, experiencing it together, also means learning to better inhabit the present, to grasp its fragile intensity. Tragic texts speak to us of this dark side of humanity. It runs through us, it constitutes us. Bringing it to the stage, offering it the setting of centuries under a shared sky, is already putting it at a distance, giving it a form that allows us not to be overwhelmed by it. We need the great texts, the great figures, the heroes who face up to the inevitable, to light up our own nights. But more than that, we need to be together, united in emotion, in listening, in breathing together, to get through life's great tragedies. And perhaps at the very heart of the shadows, where everything flickers, a light persists, fragile, stubborn, essential. A light made of shared glances, inhabited silences, words that connect us. For if tragedy reminds us of what we are capable of losing, theater reminds us of what we can still save: the presence of others, and that part of humanity which, despite everything, refuses to be extinguished. Muriel Mayette-Holtz