Olivier Py

Olivier Py Director

Season 24/25 Artist

Biography

Author, director, actor and theatre manager Olivier Py was born in 1965. He studied at the Dramatic Art Conservatoire and obtained a degree in theology at the University. He founded his own company and staged his works. In 1995, he made an impact at the Avignon Festival with La Servante, histoire sans fin (The Maid, an endless story), a 24-hour theatre plays cycle. In 1997, he was appointed director of the Orléans Dramatic Centre. Ten years later, he was appointed director of the Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe. There, he created L’Orestie, L’Eau de la vie, La Vraie Fiancée, Les Enfants de Saturne, Roméo et Juliette.

First stage director since Jean Vilar to be director of the Avignon Festival, in 2013, where he created, among other works, Orlando ou l’Impatience, King Lear, Ma jeunesse exaltée. Olivier Py staged many opera productions, including: The Tales of Hoffman, Tristan und Isolde, Tannhäuser, The Devil’s Trilogy, and Lulu at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, Il Trovatore at the Munich Bayerische Staatsoper, Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet and The Flying Dutchman at the Theater an der Wien, Le Prophète and Les Vêpres siciliennes at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Les Huguenots and Henry VIII (Saint-Saëns) at La Monnaie in Brussels, as well as Dialogues with the Carmelites at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Olivier Py has been director of the Théâtre du Châtelet since 2023.

Mainly published by Actes Sud, Olivier Py also translates and adapts other literary works. An artist committed to the democratisation of culture, he has directed over a hundred productions, both for the theatre and the opera.