Avignon Theatre Festival 2012

Founded in 1947 by John Vilar, the Avignon festival draws theatre lovers and professionals alike, with up to 150,000 tickets being sold during the three-week festival. Around twenty venues in Avignon are commandeered for the shows, the prime location being the Cour d’Honneur du Palais des Papes. This breath-taking gothic structure, which was home to the Avignon papacy during most of the 14th Century, is transformed in to an open-air theatre space seating 2000 people, and where, during the festival, magic really does seem to take place. It is here that Simon McBurney’s own offering for the festival, an adaptation of Bulgakov’s "The Master and Margarita, " will be staged.

Unlike other cultural festivals where curators work within committees, each year’s Artistic Associate at Avignon is free to draw up his or her programme entirely independently. Simon McBurney is this year’s picker of the best cherries in world theatre, and has come up with a programme that is both fascinating and varied. McBurney forged strong theatrical links with France at a young age. After graduating from Cambridge in 1980 he moved to Paris to study under Jacques LeCoq, who told him, “Vous avez fait du theatre dont moi je pouvais seulement rever”.
McBurney soon after founded the theatre company Complicité which won the Perrier Award in 1985, and which has since clocked up over fifty major theatre awards. As one of Britain’s foremost theatre directors, his past productions include "More Bigger Snacks Now," "Street of Crocodiles" and "A Disappearing Number." The influence of McBurney’s early work as a comic mime artist can still be seen in his shows 30 years on. The Times’ Benedict Nightingale has said, “There’s nobody more likely to make theatrical magic out of the obscure and improbable than Simon McBurney.”