Known for his documentary theatre, director Milo Rau presents La Lettre, a play that never performs twice in the same place during this year’s Festival d’Avignon. The uniqueness of this “itinerant” production lies in its staging across villages surrounding Avignon, aiming to bring the festival to new and often underserved audiences. We encountered it in an unexpected theatrical setting: the archaeological site of Glanum, just outside Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
La Lettre is part of a minimalist project shaped by the limitations of touring theatre. Each evening, the set is assembled and dismantled anew—a process evocative of traditional trestle-stage and travelling theatre. Rau (also director of the Vienna Festival) embraces these constraints creatively: a desk, a few chairs, four lights, and a portable speaker form the entire mise-en-scène.
This stripped-down approach speaks directly to Rau’s ambition to return to the founding spirit of the Festival d’Avignon—a theatre that is both popular and intellectually rigorous. His work recalls the guiding vision of Jean Vilar, blending avant-garde aesthetics with broad accessibility.
Remaining firmly within the realm of documentary theatre, La Lettre explores the personal stories of its two performers, Arne de Tremerie and Olga Mouak. Why couldn’t Olga play Nina in The Seagull? Why did Arne’s grandmother want to play her too? What connects these two performers and their creative trajectories?
The performance grows from their shared intimacy, built through a close rapport with the audience—first through direct address, then through active participation. At moments, audience members are invited to read script excerpts aloud or hold placards with intertitles and quotations (“Critique of bourgeois theatre,” “Epilogue”). This playful complicity—with echoes of stand-up or live performance art—adds lightness to the work’s deeper existential questions.
Indeed, Rau constantly shifts tone, blending humour with pathos in both content and staging (including, at one point, a mock assassination with a toy pistol). Within the evocative ruins of Glanum, this participatory performance weaves together personal narrative and theatrical commentary. References to The Seagull and Joan of Arc serve as mirrors for the performers’ lived experiences and their evolving relationship with theatre itself.
The strength of La Lettre lies in its seamless integration of fiction and real life, engaging a broad and diverse audience through both its emotional honesty and its stripped-back aesthetic. Its reflexivity—grounded in humour and intimacy—creates a space that feels both personal and collective.
Ultimately, La Lettre becomes universal in its vibrant, multifaceted encounter: between performer and audience, between bare stage and open landscape, between memory and imagination. For one fleeting hour, amid ancient ruins and under a glowing Provençal sunset, lives are shared—and theatre becomes both mirror and bridge.
Résumé en français
Avec La Lettre, Milo Rau poursuit son exploration du théâtre documentaire dans un format itinérant et minimaliste, présenté chaque soir dans un lieu différent autour d’Avignon. Sur un plateau réduit à l’essentiel—un bureau, quelques chaises, une enceinte portative—le metteur en scène transforme les contraintes logistiques en moteur de création, renouant avec l’idéal d’un théâtre à la fois populaire et exigeant.
Aux côtés d’Arne de Tremerie et d’Olga Mouak, La Lettre tisse un récit intime, drôle et profondément réflexif, mêlant autobiographie, fiction et participation du public. À travers des figures réelles et fictives (Nina dans La Mouette, Jeanne d’Arc), la pièce ouvre un espace poreux entre mémoire et représentation, jeu et réalité.
Dans le cadre naturel du site archéologique de Glanum, ce théâtre vivant, dépouillé mais chargé de sens, touche à l’universel par la sensibilité de la rencontre qu’il propose—entre spectateurs, ruines, et récits partagés, sous le soleil couchant de Provence.
Directed by Milo Rau
Running time : 1h15
Cast includes: Arne De Tremerie, Olga MouakDramaturgy Giacomo Bisordi
Scenography Milo Rau et Giacomo Bisordi
Production Festival d’Avignon
Photo credits : © Christophe Raynaud de Lage