Since taking over as director of the Festival d’Avignon, Tiago Rodrigues has staged one new play per year as part of his own programming. After presenting documentary theater with Dans la mesure de l’impossible (2023) and working with the Comédie-Française in Hécube, pas Hécube (2024), the Portuguese director now turns to science fiction with La Distance.
From the genre’s codes, he retains a striking minimalism, evident in both the scenography and casting: a circular platform center-stage, and just two performers. Alison Dechamps and Adama Diop play a daughter and father—she has left to live on Mars, while he has remained on Earth. Their costumes hint at the futuristic: she in what resembles a white civilian astronaut outfit, he in a kind of cowboy ensemble, as if beamed in from Star Wars.
The play’s emotional stakes lie in the growing chasm of their filial relationship, revealed through a series of audio messages exchanged across interplanetary distance. He questions why the family left; she defends her departure as both a personal and civilizational mission—to abandon an uninhabitable Earth and help colonize Mars. Can he convince her to return and halt the irreversible memory-erasure process she has chosen?
The first major shift comes when the play moves beyond the intimate exchange and begins to reveal the political context of this future world: multinational corporations have seized power, governing as oligarchic “corporations,” while Republics teeter on the edge of collapse. It becomes clear that the stakes are not only familial, but also political in the noblest sense: What can be done for humanity’s future? What should we believe in? Is there still reason to hope?
Hope, in fact, runs deep through the piece. There is the father’s hope of seeing his daughter again—and the daughter’s hope in joining something greater than herself: becoming an Oubliette, one of a group who choose to erase their memories to help found a new civilization on Mars. The memories they erase include anything deemed “useless” to future life: family ties, friendships, even general knowledge not tied to survival. It’s meant, she says, to reduce anxiety. But it also means forgetting the taste of tomatoes.
The beauty of the piece lies in how it gradually uncovers the humanity of both characters, shifting perspectives so we come to understand first one, then the other. It speaks to the secret of good science fiction: its ability to transpose contemporary, universal questions into a speculative future. As a humanist director, Rodrigues animates the moral dilemmas that make this a piece of fiction both precise and deeply fair. To summarize the narrative twists or the structure of this imagined 2077 would be difficult—and would risk spoiling much of the audience’s pleasure. Let us simply say the play overflows with themes, love among them, explored with remarkable depth: What happens when one person is afraid because of love, and the other afraid of love?
Minimalism is expressed with ingenuity through the circular, clockwise-rotating stage, which shifts speed according to the scene’s tempo. Split by a sculptural centerpiece—a double tree trunk laid flat beside a large boulder—it allows for striking visual and spatial interplay between the characters. Rodrigues avoids the monotony that could have arisen from voice message-based dialogue, without letting the set dominate the story. On the contrary, as the rhythm intensifies and long monologues become a true back-and-forth exchange, the platform’s movement subtly echoes the emotional and dramatic beats.
Beneath its apparent simplicity, La Distance emerges as a deeply touching and emotionally resonant work. In Vedène, outside the ramparts of Avignon, Tiago Rodrigues brought much of the audience to tears. This precise, deeply human fiction showcases a form of theater that knows how to adapt the tools of dramatic storytelling to offer a vision of the world that is both terrifying and hopeful—a journey through time and space we won’t soon forget.
FRENCH RÉSUMÉ
Avec La Distance, Tiago Rodrigues explore pour la première fois les territoires de la science-fiction en signant une œuvre épurée, sensible et humaniste. Sur un plateau circulaire en rotation, deux personnages – une fille exilée sur Mars et son père resté sur Terre – échangent par messages vocaux, révélant peu à peu les fractures intimes et politiques d’un monde en 2077, dominé par des « corponations ». Derrière cette mise en scène minimaliste et poétique se joue un drame filial aux résonances universelles : mémoire, deuil, espoir, amour. En transposant les angoisses contemporaines dans une arène futuriste, Rodrigues livre une pièce bouleversante, où chaque silence, chaque accélération de la scénographie, creuse un peu plus l’émotion. Sans jamais sacrifier la complexité à l’effet, il réussit une œuvre à la fois rigoureuse et accessible, qui interroge le sens du progrès et le prix de l’oubli, jusqu’à faire pleurer tout un théâtre, réuni loin des remparts pour un moment de grâce.
DETAILS
Tiago RodriguesL’Autre Scène du Grand Avignon
Cast: Alison Dechamps, Adama Diop
Text and direction Tiago Rodrigues
Translation Thomas Resendes (French), Daniel Hahn (English)
Scenography Fernando Ribeiro
Production Festival d’Avignon
Photo credits : © Christophe Raynaud de Lage