The actor, playwright and director Olivier Py, at the head of the Avignon Festival from 2014 to 2022, has been appointed artistic director of the Théâtre du Châtelet, the Paris City Hall said on Wednesday, confirming information from Figaro. The nomination of a "huge artist, hailed all over the world", is "a sure promise of audacity, joy, surprises and impertinence", reacted in a tweet the mayor PS Anne Hidalgo.
Born on July 24, 1965 in Grasse (Alpes-Maritimes), Olivier Py had previously been director of the National Dramatic Center in Orléans and then patron of the Odéon in Paris. Known for his taste for the baroque and the flamboyant, he continued during his mandates to write and direct, both in theater and opera. The outcome of the nomination process is not to the taste of environmentalists, demanding allies of Anne Hidalgo, and in particular of the elected representative of their group Alice Coffin.
We have been reviewing dozens of applications for months. That of Olivier Py did not particularly emerge. According to the agreed process, this committee was to, after a long selection, present two or three candidates, deemed the best, to the mayor. 2/4
"The choice to appoint Olivier Py at the head of the Châtelet theater is as much arbitrary as the very particular sexism of the cultural world and the political world", denounced on Twitter the one who is also a member of the board of directors of the theater. . The selection committee of which she was a member had selected "two women with excellent records", Valérie Chevalier and Sandrina Martins, "but it was Olivier Py who was fished out, to the detriment of records deemed better", says the feminist activist, denouncing scandal ".
