British theatre director Tim Crouch is an Englishman in Avignon

Dressed casually in flipflops and a loose white shirt, British theatre director and actor Tim Crouch has a lot to smile about. He has two plays in the Avignon festival this year, the first time he's ever performed in France. And the French adaptation of one of his plays happens to be in the “off” fringe festival. Not a bad debut.

For some reason even he cannot fathom, Tim Crouch has never put on a show in France. His work has toured the rest of Europe for years, but here in France his work is only being discovered now.

He is one of several anglophones invited to this year's 77^th edition of the Avignon Festival which runs until 25 July, where English is the language of honour. Clearly, Crouch is chuffed by all the attention.

"This venue is extraordinary, this cloister in the south of France, with swifts in the sky and bats flying over our heads. And birds that sit in the two plane trees on either side of my play...and then a full house of 470 people who listened, who seemed to be responsive to the ideas. There was much love, and there was champagne afterwards…that's as good as it gets," he told RFI.

Sitting down to chat on the day after the premiere of "An Oak Tree", Crouch is full of praise for his partner Natacha Koutchoumov, who was "everything I could want in an actor for this play. She was open, vulnerable, emotionally available, responsive, technical".

The role of the audience

Seeing the pair of them together in the majestic heritage site known as the Cloître des Célestins, a former religious cloister, you could be fooled into thinking they'd worked together for years.

The fact is that they only met a few hours before the performance. Natacha had not seen the script, nor had she learnt any lines. Nor will any of the other actors invited to "play" the second role beside Crouch. They will discover the text at the same time as the audience.

• Avignon festival 'a pocket of utopian resistance', says new director

Thanks to a clever use of microphones, headphones and music, Crouch alternates speaking to the audience with speaking through a different channel to the second actor, who follows his lead.

"An Oak Tree" deals with grief and transformation. A father who has lost his child finds solace in believing that his daughter has taken the form of an oak tree. Crouch plays a hypnotist, whose story is intricately linked to the tragedy. As the play continues, the audience discovers how and why. 

Crouch's approach might seem very risky but he clearly thrives on this organised chaos. He describes his work as purposely "incomplete". It's not that he's lazy, he quips, but he's waiting for the audience to write the rest.

Bring back the live-ness

He is on a mission to bring back the "live-ness" that he feels is missing from contemporary theatre.

Theatre has become too polished and over rehearsed, he says. The audience is kept at arm's length and "it feels like watching something on a screen," Crouch says.

Crouch spent a good part of his early career working as an actor for other companies. About 20 years ago, frustrated with what he described as "a cult status" surrounding actors, he began writing to put the emphasis on the public, who he says need to be empowered.

• French playwright Molière's satire still resonates after 400 years

His first piece "My Arm", about a young man who insists on leaving his arm in the air as a form of empty protest, has been adapted into French ("Mon Bras") by Théophile Sclavis  and is part of the "Off" fringe festival this year.

It is perhaps fitting that Shakespeare, a key reference in English theatre, and theatre in general, has pride of place in Avignon as well as a special place in Crouch's heart.

Over the years, the Englishman has drawn inspiration from the Bard, by taking  minor characters and building a story around them, thus exploring the classic works in a completely new light. 

Questions

Crouch's second piece in the festival "Truth's a Dog Must to Kennel", is inspired by the character of the Fool in Shakespeare's "King Lear" . It p remiered at the Edinburgh fringe festival in 2022.

• Shakespeare comes out on top at France's Molières theatre awards

"Shakespeare holds an important sway over how we think about theatre how we think about ourselves as humans. He kind of invented the human, in that it was the first time that the idea of character or identity was separated from the idea of the deities or a religious structure," Crouch says.

Alone on the stage, wearing a virtual reality headset, Crouch questions the different ways words can resonate with the audience, and the power of representation. What has theatre become since the Covid pandemic and overdigitalisation? Is there room for live performance in our world?

Thanks to Avignon, Crouch can continue to ask these questions, and perhaps find some answers.