France Culture live and in public at the 2026 Avignon Festival

France Culture partner of the Avignon Festival from July 4 to 25, 2026
Discover the program and book now!Opening in a new tab

FRANCE CULTURE CREATIONS
AT THE CALVET MUSEUM – 65 rue Joseph Vernet, Avignon
FREE ENTRY WITHIN THE LIMIT OF PLACES AVAILABLE
From July 6 to 12 at 8 p.m. and July 7 and 10 at 11:30 a.m. (release on July 9)

In the spotlight this year, the big questions addressed to us by literature with emblematic texts carried by actresses and actors, accompanied by authors, musicians and artists invited for the occasion.

Monday July 6 – 8 p.m.
Can you repeat the question?
D’après Questionnaires of Max Frisch
With Tiago Rodrigues and the artistic participation of the Young National Theater.
Music: Arthur B. Gillette
Réalisation : Sophie-Aude Picon
With extracts from Journal by Max Frisch translated from German by Michèle and Jean Tailleur and published by Gallimard.

To open this week with questions, what better way than to ask them and try to answer them?
The actors of the Young National Theater will interview Tiago Rodrigues based on multiple questions taken from the Journal by Max Frisch.

Tuesday July 7 – 11:30 a.m. –
News from Korea?
D’après Cursed Rabbit of Bora Chung
With the artistic participation of the Young National Theater.
Music: Olivier Longre
Réalisation : Baptiste Guiton
Translation from Korean by Han Yumi and Hervé Péjaudier published by Éditions Rivages

An evil lamp in the shape of a rabbit causes the ruin of a family. A woman is terrorized by a creature born from her own droppings. Blurring genres – magical realism, fantasy, cruel tale or body horror -, astonishing Korean short stories, with limitless imagination, which offer an analysis of the ills of our neurotic societies.

Tuesday July 7 – 8 p.m.
What is the beauty of fear, darkness and Evil?
D’après The Songs of Maldoror de Lautréamont, echoing Julien Gosselin’s show in the Cour d’Honneur.
With in particular Micha Lescot
Réalisation : Cédric Aussir

An impenetrable mystery shrouds the life and work of Isidore Ducasse, who died at the age of 24, who wrote under the pseudonym Lautreamont and was considered by the surrealists as a spiritual father. Unclassifiable work, epic of fear, darkness and Evil, with sublime images and fierce darkness, The Songs of Maldoror never cease to exercise a power of fascination over us.

Wednesday July 8 – 8 p.m. Do you know the dangers of genius?
D’après The Castaway the Thomas Bernhard
With Jacques Gamblin
Music: Anthony Capelli
Réalisation : Baptiste Guiton
Adaptation : Pauline Thimonnier
Translation from German by Bernard Kreiss and published by Gallimard

Three virtuoso pianists – Glenn Gould, the narrator and Wertheimer – met in their youth. From the outset, Gould established himself as a genius, definitively diverting the other two from their careers. While the narrator devoted himself to writing an interminable essay on Gould, Wertheimer embarked on the fatal path of the “darkness” to the point of suicide. A merciless river soliloquy of which Thomas Bernhard has the secret.

Friday July 10 – 11:30 a.m.
Are you talking about pleasure?
D’après The pure and the impure by Colette
With Laetitia Dosch et Isaline Prévost Radeff
Music: Adrien Soleiman et Ozard
Réalisation : Mélanie Péclat

In this work published in 1932, Colette offers, through a gallery of portraits, a reflection on “those pleasures that we call, lightly, physical.” Through her poetic and sensual language, we will discover Charlotte and the lie reserved for her young lover, the lesbian poet Renée Vivien, or two young English girls who in 1778 ran away to live together until the end of their days…

Friday July 10 – 8 p.m.
Retour à Gabily ?
Evening around the life and work of Didier-Georges Gabily based on his diary everything goesand its Working notes published by Actes Sud.
With Emmanuelle Béart, Océane Caïraty, Vincent Dedienne and Stanislas Nordey.
Music: Olivier Mellano
Réalisation : Sophie-Aude Picon

On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the death of Didier-Georges Gabily, playwright, novelist and director of the T’chan’GÂ! group, an evening based on the diary and work notes of this pioneering writer. A way to discover or rediscover a powerful, demanding and often visionary work. An evening imagined with the help of Stanislas Nordey.

Saturday July 11 – 8 p.m. –
Que nous dit Elfriede Jelinek ?
Based on the text by Elfriede Jelinek
With Anne-Lise Heimburger
Music: current programming
Réalisation : Cédric Aussir
Elfriede Jelinek is published and represented by L’Arche publisher & theater agency

Anne-Lise Heimburger chose to say Elfriede Jelinek… to tell the story of our times.
Author of numerous novels and plays, the Austrian writer is a fierce observer of society. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2004 for… “the musical flow of voices and counter-voices in her novels and dramas which reveal with exceptional linguistic passion the absurdity and authoritarian power of social clichés.”

Sunday July 12 – 8 p.m.
Will you come for dinner?
Author’s Voice evening with SACDOpening in a new tab
An original, previously unpublished creation by and with Alex Lutz: “Words and dishes”
Réalisation : Mélanie Péclat
Music: Ricky Hollywood

The actor, comedian, director, playwright, novelist and director Alex Lutz, will close this week of creations at the Calvet Museum with a new text which invites us to a social dinner where snippets of remarks exchanged by the guests. He will of course play all the roles!

COUR DU CLOýTRE SAINT-LOUIS – 20 Rue du Portail Boquier, Avignon
FREE ENTRANCE
From Monday July 6 to Friday July 10 from 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.
Middays of Culture by Chloë Cambreling
France Culture reaffirms its prescribing role, by offering listeners the opportunity to discover ever more artists and works.

AND ALSO ON THE ANTENNA
From July 6 to 24 at 12:50 p.m. In Middays of Culture
The Sound of Avignon by Marie Sorbier

ON FRANCECULTURE.FR
DOSSIER
All our broadcasts, reviews and reports to understand the Avignon Festival, its news and its history – A special newsletter so you don’t miss anything.

VIDEO
During the Festival, find on our social networks our videos dedicated to the highlights of Avignon, our fictions and their behind the scenes.

FRANCE CULTURE PARTNER OF THE EVENT
ARTCENA’s Belles Heures des AuthorsOpening in a new tab
Friday July 10 and Saturday July 11 from 12 p.m. to midnight at Maison Jean Vilar in Avignon
FREE ENTRANCE
For its 6th edition, Les Belles Heures invites you to the heart of the Avignon Festival to discover and celebrate the theater that is being written today. Designed with the Avignon Festival, the Maison Jean Vilar and numerous partners, this event offers a free and original route which brings together around fifty authors Readings, meetings, performed forms, writing workshop, new proposals, banquet and exhilarating cabaret: for two days, words circulate, reinvent themselves and share, to the rhythm of the festival.

Saturday July 11 at 3:00 p.m. – Studio – Maison Jean Vilar
“How to write for radio? Meeting around audio fiction”
Audio fiction is one of the specificities of France Culture. Praised by listeners, it occupies a central place in its public service mission, supporting creation and new writing. Through its fictions, radio becomes a territory of experimentation where authors, directors, actors, sound creators and musicians meet. This round table explores this living space, a theater of imagination and emotions for the sharing of stories and stories capable of bringing people together. How is audio fiction made? What does sound enable in terms of audacity, invention and play? How does this dramaturgy influence the writing?
With Cédric Aussir and Mélanie Péclat, directors of the week Fictions recorded in public at the Calvet museum as part of the Avignon Festival, and Lola Molina, author notably “We haven’t seen night fall” and “Seasonal affective disorder” available on franceculture.fr and the Radio France app
Anime and pair Marie Sorbierproducer of Point Culture on France Culture

FRANCE CULTURE PARTNER OF THE EVENT
13th Research and Creation Meetings organized by the ANR and the Avignon FestivalOpening in a new tab
July 9 and 10, 2026 at the Cloître Saint-Louis in Avignon
Artists and scientists are invited by the National Research Agency (ANR) and the Avignon Festival to resonate the works and shows of the festival with research work, around the theme “What haunts us, what binds us: how can we express the unspeakable?”.