Festival highlights recent graduates in Strasbourg

Premières, a festival in Strasbourg, features artists who have recently graduated from schools, often with fewer resources and whose artistic styles are still developing. The festival is directed by Barbara Engelhardt, director of the Maillon, who has been involved in programming since its first edition in 2005. Engelhardt favors countries that are not often in the spotlight of festivals, emphasizing that the younger generation does not have the same working conditions everywhere. Each performance reflects a different socioeconomic and artistic reality, which is of interest for a European-scale festival. There is no imposed theme, but constraints that resonate with each other: precarious resources, political polarization, ecological urgency.

First weekend showcases diverse performances

The first highlight of the festival is the weekend of November 6 and 7. On Friday at 7 p.m., two performances take place simultaneously. At the Maillon, Sie wachen über dich (They watch you), by the intercultural collective What about: fuego, features three performers who weave together their digital daily lives with those of their grandmothers, facing the intrusion of the state, from East Germany to Pinochet's Chile. At the Haute école des arts du Rhin (HEAR), the Italians Alice and Davide Sinigaglia perform Concerto fetido su quattro zampe (Fetid Concert on Four Legs), where they are alternately human and canine, between slam poetry, drumming, and synthesizers, observing society from the perspective of a dog's nose with humor.

More performances and a shared banquet

At 8:45 p.m., the Maillon hosts The Killing of The First Person, a performance by the Chilean Nicolás Lange, who invokes the burnings of 15th-century Florence to erase the "I" from the stage. At 10 p.m., the festival banquet transforms the theater into a large table where audience members and artists share dishes that each person brings.

Saturday offers a full schedule and thematic focus

On Saturday, one can chain the three performances between 4:30 p.m. and 9:45 p.m., then finish on the dancefloor with the DJ set by Ananda Jade at 10 p.m. The second week of the festival, from November 10 to 11, has as its thread the inheritance. The Franco-Haitian artist Mackenzy Bergile connects colonial history and family history through the body, costumes, and music in Autothérapie. On November 11 at 8 p.m., Bergile will exchange with Léa Sery on their paths and creative processes.

Diverse performances and cultural exploration

Sery, trained at the École du Théâtre national de Strasbourg (TNS), performs with Afropéennes her first stage direction, co-produced by the Maillon and presented at the Pokop from November 12 to 14. Born to a French mother and an Ivorian father, Sery dialogues with her sister Koïsso, a dancer, to the sound of the marimba, in French and in Bété. The performance brings to light an inheritance buried by immersion in Western culture, facing the experience of racism.

Finnish artist explores art's borrowing history

At the same dates, at the Maillon, the Finnish Pauli Patinen, awarded in 2025 at the German festival Fast Forward, performs Steal This Performance, which departs from an observation that the history of art is a history of borrowings, and the stage a cabinet of curiosities where to re-examine the notion of authenticity. On Saturday, November 14, the schedule includes Afropéennes at 5 p.m., then the round table "Stories of Inheritance" at 7 p.m., followed by Steal This Performance at 8:30 p.m., and an open mic to end the evening.

Festival supports emerging artists

Premières is also a springboard for emerging artists. For example, the Hungarian director and stage designer Kornél Mundruczó went through the festival. Engelhardt notes that many artists invited to the Maillon have subsequently had successful careers, and true talent can benefit from the visibility offered by a European festival. A dozen students and students recruited by the Théâtre de la Cité internationale in Paris will form a jury and select a winner, programmed in the capital the following season. In the meantime, the adventure begins in Strasbourg starting November 6, with four French premieres. Engelhardt advises that a festival is always intense but also festive, and spectators should let themselves be carried away and surprised.