"The Avignon Festival is not only about shows and theater, but also about thinking, searching and seeking to understand the world and its politics — and offering an opportunity for three weeks' intellectual life experience every year," Olivier Py, the event's artistic director, declared with passion during a recent visit to Japan.
"There, in that beautiful and ancient city in the South of France, you can think, meet people, read books, see performances and talk about it all, then agree and disagree, and fight — it's fantastic," he continued with a laugh.
Though he was appointed in September 2013 to head up what is one of the world's foremost performing-arts celebrations, Py — who was previously director of the publicly funded Odeon theater in Paris — isn't your standard administrator. While being a Catholic who is quite open about his homosexuality, professionally he's also an artiste who performs worldwide as chanson singer Miss Knife.