Festival Magdalena Albi

Festival Magdalena Albi: Women at the Heart of Contemporary Performance

The Festival Magdalena Albi is one of the most unique cultural events in the Tarn region. Rooted in the international network The Magdalena Project, it champions the values of female artistic creation, inclusion, and intercultural dialogue in a city—Albi—whose cultural influence extends far beyond the Occitanie borders.

The Magdalena Project: A Global Network of Women Artists

To understand the Festival Magdalena Albi, one must look back to its origins: The Magdalena Project is an international network of women working in contemporary theater, founded in 1986 in Cardiff (Wales) by Jill Greenhalgh. For nearly four decades, this global network has united artists, directors, researchers, and educators who share a common vision: to give women a central and autonomous place in the performing arts.

The Magdalena Project organizes festivals, creation labs, residencies, and publications in dozens of countries. In France, Albi has become one of the host cities for this network, welcoming its festival with a regularity that testifies to the lasting commitment of the local artistic community.

A Multidisciplinary and Feminist Festival

The Festival Magdalena Albi is distinguished by its resolutely multidisciplinary nature: theater, dance, performance, visual arts, and installations are presented in a program that rejects boundaries between artistic disciplines. The shows often bridge traditional theatrical forms with avant-garde proposals, moving bodies with unexpected scenic languages.

The festival's feminist dimension is claimed but never dogmatic. It is less about exclusion than affirmation: affirming the richness and necessity of female voices in contemporary creation, showcasing works too often absent from major programming, and fostering artistic solidarity among women worldwide.

The 2025 Edition: “Inside – Outside”

The 2025 edition of the Festival Magdalena Albi, titled “Inside – Outside”, will be held from September 26 to 28, 2025, at the Maison de Quartier Cantepau, in the Cantepau district of Albi. This choice of venue—a local community center, embedded in the daily life of the neighborhood—aligns with the festival's values: vibrant, accessible culture rooted in the social fabric.

The theme “Inside – Outside” explores boundaries: those between the inside and outside of bodies, homes, countries, and communities. How does art traverse these thresholds? How do women artists inhabit and transform these transitional spaces? This inquiry permeates the entire program, from site-specific performances to dance-theater shows, including discussions and workshops.

The festival will host artists from several countries, reflecting the vitality of the Magdalena network internationally. Dance, physical theater, and performance pieces will be presented over three days in an atmosphere that is both festive and intellectually stimulating.

Strong Local Roots

Despite its international scope, the Festival Magdalena Albi is deeply rooted in the cultural and associative fabric of Albi. The local organization mobilizes volunteers, artists from the Tarn region, and cultural structures of the city to bring the event to life. The Maison de Quartier Cantepau, a usual place for residents' daily life and encounters, will be transformed during the festival into a creative space open to the world.

Albi, a episcopal city listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, offers this festival a prestigious setting that contrasts with the deliberate modesty of the venue chosen for the performances. This tension between the grand and the small, the universal and the local, is at the heart of the Festival Magdalena's identity.

A Militant and Artistic Event

The Festival Magdalena Albi is one of the few cultural events in Occitanie to explicitly place the issue of gender in artistic creation at the center of its project. In doing so, it contributes to evolving perceptions and opening up visibility spaces for artists and works that still struggle to find their place in major cultural institutions. It is a festival that thinks, creates, and acts.