Avignon 2026
An interview with Compagnia Baccalà
This letter is a translation of the Italian original
Happy Sunday, Baubo, you who make even grieving Demeter laugh!
Camilla Pessi, Simone Fassari and I have crossed paths more than once. They are two sweet souls wandering the world: with their shows Pss Pss and Oh Oh they are enchanting audiences all over Europe and overseas. Pss Pss has been performed more than a thousand times, in 53 countries, on five continents, gathering fifteen international awards.
I am trying to catch a few moments with Camilla and Simone in Ticino for the creation of a new project together. A project that as yet has neither name nor structure, and that exists, like all creative projects before the first words are written and the first actions carried out, only in the world of dreams.
Letters from the Studio
A letter, whenever there is something to tell. Theatre, travel, writing, walking, art.
SubscribeIn 1992 our company, the Markus Zohner Arts Company, was a guest of the Théâtre du Chien qui Fume. We presented PALPITATION, Grand Opera of the Passions, a show without words directed by Alessandro Marchetti.
A unique experience, fabulous, yes, but harrowing too: we performed every evening, for four weeks. Twenty-four in a row, only Mondays free. The audience enthusiastic, the applause on its feet but brief, because the theatre had to be emptied for the next company, and people wanted to see another show in another theatre.
I remember an infernal heat, endless mosquitoes in the little brown-walled room we rented to live in that month, and this tide of artists trying day and night to draw an audience, to persuade people, with varying success, to come and fill their theatre, their own show.
We had the good fortune to be playing at the Théâtre du Chien qui Fume1, which is a proper theatre with 196 seats: for the period of the Festival OFF, every garage, every conceivable space is called a theatre and rented out by the hour, to hungry artists. We had a quarter of an hour to set up, a quarter of an hour to strike.
So many idyllic dreams splintered during that intense period, but looking back I see that the splinters, under the scorching heat of the work, later came back together into something far more solid: in Avignon I learnt professionalism.
The dream of being a theatre-maker, smashed into a thousand pieces, formed in me the craft of the theatre-maker.
An interview with Simone Fassari of Compagnia Baccalà
1. Avignon, this time.
How many times have you already been to Avignon? When was the first time? You yourselves will certainly have changed, but do you feel something has changed out there too: in the atmosphere, in the shows, in their quality, in their content?
The first time was 2011. It feels like yesterday but at the same time a million lifetimes ago. Then again in 2013, 2015, 2018 with Oh Oh, 2025, and still today. Old but good.
"Old but good", a clown friend has just told me: You are like a good wine.
My perception is always the same. Concentration. Fear of not managing to give the best of ourselves: What if it doesn't work? What if nobody comes?
The change is there, and it is rather embarrassing. I see a rampant couldn't-care-less attitude, explosive selfishness and the urge to be seen without being truly heard. A high view count on Instagram earns more chatter at the bar than a full house does.
The city of Avignon, for ecological reasons, decides to cut the posters and flyers in the city by 70%. It imposes a quota per company, so every poster has to carry the authorisation sticker. But it does not reduce the sale of plastic bottles, does nothing to get people sorting their rubbish, etc. etc.
So to me, personally, it is sad that the poetry of posters everywhere has been lost. That had been the sincere and fair battle between the companies. To me they were millions of flowers blossoming, waiting to be smelt and picked...
2. The island and the world.
Yours is a clown show, a show outside time, one that does not depend on politics, on wars, on what happens outside: it is like an island in the world. How do you, as people, handle this? Do the world's troubles, in this period, touch you, take hold of you? Or do you feel rather inside a capsule, where you try to prepare the show, to be ready in the evening, to concentrate, to keep the storms outside so you can devote yourselves entirely to what you do?
It is a very important subject for me: I suffer over it a great deal and I am psychologically caught up in everything that happens in the world. The Palestinian question, for example, destroys me: I feel helpless, useless, and I would like to do more.
We try to give a human value with our show, and I believe that is our role in society. To give love, humanity, joy, and to move people with real things!
Many times I have thought (and am thinking still today!) of putting up the Palestinian flag after our show or of making a post on Instagram, but I do not have the courage, for two reasons: 1) it would burst the bubble we have created; 2) Camilla would not do it, and not because she does not care. She tries to stay above it all, not to let the ugly things eat into her, so as to be able to give only beautiful things.
The things I do, I do privately: demonstrations, social media in my own name, and financial support for associations.
3. Artists and the call of the square.
How do you manage the tension between being artists: creatures of imagination who, during the show, seek a form of transcendence, and the reality of the Festival OFF, where you have to do your own advertising, draw people in, create attention around what you do?
In the days of PALPITATION (world premiere 1987 in Lucerne, in Avignon in 1992) this was one of the biggest problems for me. The theatre we made in the evening was, for me, a sacred space. When our agency asked us to go through the streets in costume handing out leaflets, in the end I refused: I could not do it. We were not obliged to, and it was no drama, but for me it remained a problem.
How do you handle this? Do you have to go around creating attention for the evening's show, or do you manage to detach yourselves from it all: go to the theatre, check the technical set-up, make sure the elements for the acrobatics are secure, and then off you go?
Handing out flyers is the most embarrassing, exhausting and frustrating thing in my life as an artist!!!!
I remember the first time we were shocked by this roaring, towering carnival: we felt like snowflakes landing on the asphalt of Avignon in July!
Then the stroke of genius: You shout? ME, I keep quiet! You fling yourself about wildly? I do slow motion! You hand out (trampling!!!) a thousand flyers a second? I hand out one! You dance with music and a megaphone? I do a handstand in silence!
So we stayed true (suffering!) to our show, and that, in my view, was a victory!
Then, from 2015, we cut back drastically: partly from physical tiredness, partly because we had an excellent team for the affiches (Tazio, Camilla's brother), and lastly (guilty of presumption, sorry) because we realised it made little difference, since we were always full.
2025 & 2026: never handed out a single flyer! (But let's not tell anyone!)
4. The marathon and the nerves.
Performing the same show some twenty times in four weeks, six evenings out of seven, is a murderous marathon: on one side for the body, with your extreme acrobatics, on the other for holding your nerve evening after evening. How do you live it? What gives way first, and how do you hold your nerve every evening?
It is precision work that has to be tended slowly, the way a carpenter restores a fine table. Each of us has rhythms to follow: physical, but above all mental, and to do with food.
We shield ourselves from the noises outside, we try to wind up a thread without pulling it too hard, without running and without ever looking at the end, the finish line. You tend the day, the present.
The carpenter has steps he cannot skip on the way to the finished piece: so do we!
What gives way first is hard to say. Physical tiredness then bleeds into the psychological kind. And, I believe, vice versa.
5. The most precious thing.
What is the most precious thing about this Avignon project for you? Not necessarily the most beautiful: the most precious. In the sense: what is it that you have the feeling of creating, of giving, or of leaving behind?
I believe it is the energy and the exchange with the audience that we receive daily: something I still almost cannot believe today. We stir wandering souls and set them wobbling, and that, I believe, is our petrol; and then the most precious thing is carrying away the memory of those souls, satisfied at having smelt us. Gratitude!
6. Five adjectives for the book.
You have this beautiful project of creating a book. How do you imagine it? Give me five adjectives!
A book in five adjectives: it will be a rather short book! Hahaha!
Here they are:
- Engaging
- Surprising
- Funny
- The opposite of traditional
- Fleeting moment
- The sunset over the sea
Camilla and Simone's newsletter
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SubscribeGo and see them when the chance comes your way!
Have you ever seen good clowns, clowns that made you laugh, wonder, be touched? Who was it? Where? When? Let me know!
Warm greetings,
and a wonderful week!
Markus
Note
- Théâtre du Chien qui Fume, 75 rue des Teinturiers, Avignon: one of the city's six permanent theatres, open all year round, founded and directed by Gérard Vantaggioli since 1982.
Travel Mates
The complete dog-days guide
How to make it safely through to September without kicking the bucket in August
Here is an appendix to our complete dog-days guide, supplemented from personal experience:
- Travel north! While Ticino roasts in the frying pan of the southern Alps, we took to our heels and crossed a few degrees of latitude northward by train and ship. We have genuinely escaped Lugano's infernal heat (today: 36°) and are concentrating on the present in the south of England, at a cool 25°. But the climate is collapsing here too: in July, southern England received just 1% of its usual rainfall.4 It has not rained for eight weeks; the leaves hang limp on the trees, the grass is parched and the water reserves are running out. Heathland is burning. The government has declared an emergency. Diagnosis: drought.
4 · Environment Agency: Drought declared in half of England, press release, 29 July 2026: England received just 7% of its usual July rainfall, southern England 1%.
