At the Avignon festival, if the “in”, official festival, offers a handpicked program and supports its forty shows, the “off” is the big machine of the festival which this year carries 1,570 shows. You just need to have the means to rent a room to be programmed there. How to make a choice in the face of this profusion, whether you are a simple public or a professional? In reality, the “off” has multiple identities that allow the festival-goer to find their bearings.
With our special correspondent in Avignon,
There are several “off” in Avignon. That of comedians who are legion in the festival and who have their audience. There are also identified places where festival-goers in search of contemporary creations go with their eyes closed, such as the 11, the Manufacture or the latest, which is carving out a good place today, the Blue Train. ” We said to ourselves that if we had to manage a place, we shouldn’t do it like everyone else, we had to have a real identity and above all a real desire to support companies in the search for meaning. What does it mean and what does it imply to take part in an Avignon Festival? How do we come here? “, explains Aurélien Rondeau, its co-director.
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Justine Heynemann, director, whose company is scheduled at 10 p.m. every evening, believes that “ what you have to study well, that’s why we go to Avignon. We, it’s true that we are a small company. It’s been around for a long time, we’ve done a lot of projects. I haven’t done Avignon many times. The times it worked, that’s really where I knew why I was doing it “.
Aurélien Rondeau, co-director of Le Train bleu, assures us that “ the first service we provide to companies is to integrate them into a coherent program, centered on recent projects. The idea is to be a place of discovery for the places in which these shows are made to turn and that the program directors of these structures come to the Théâtre du Train bleu, to discover things that they do not haven’t had the opportunity to see during the year. »
Bring something other than the theater
Another place of the “off”, another identity: at La belle scène Saint-Denis, it is a dance program. It is actually the Louis Aragon Theater in Tremblay, in the Paris region, which is relocating to Avignon in search of visibility. ” The observation that we had made was that we had a lot of trouble getting journalists and professionals to come and see artists for creations in Tremblay, Blanc-Mesnil, Saint-Denis and others.explains Emmanuelle Jouan, its director. Now things are moving and it hasn’t always been the case, and that was the idea of the beautiful scene. It was how we show an artistic know-how of our territory of Seine-Saint-Denis, and that we can also tell various stories about what we produce in Seine-Saint-Denis. »
Emmanuelle Jouan also observes that “ there was very little dancing when we started Avignon “. ” So, the first year, there was a professional scouting and also the public, and it only got bigger “.
Another place dedicated more to music: the Scala Provence opened this year in Avignon. Frédéric Biessy, director of the Piccola Scala in Paris, is moving to the Capitole, a historic cinema in the city. A 600-seat hall, the largest in the city after the Opera, and three other smaller halls for a program that favors music. ” We make sure that the festival “off” also revives with something other than the theater. That’s why we have Renaud Capucon… We are very attached to this particularity because it becomes a complementary place. But with a little difference or something or a goal also that is not just Avignon “off“. I really want Alexis Michalik and Tiago Rodriguez to be able to repeat here. For me, that’s the meaning! »
Let us recall here thatAlexis Michalik is a great success of the private theater and that Tiago Rodrigues will be the next director of the Avignon festival. La Scala could become a place that combines “in” and “off”. At the Avignon festival, it would be a first.