The Festival d’Avignon presents itself this year under the sign of resilience. The biggest theater event in Europe, with more than 1,600 shows scheduled, opens this Thursday evening, July 7, in the Cour d’honneur of the Palais des Papes with a little-known short story by Chekhov, “The Black Monk”. . A staging by exiled artist Kirill Serebrennikov, emblem of Russian anti-Putin and anti-war artists.
Yes, there is war in Ukraine, the rise of the far right in France, the return of the Covid pandemic and concerns over purchasing power, but nothing in the world can shake the faith of Oliver Py in the audience of the Festival d’Avignon. ” The public is always present, faithful and fervent. It is the public that makes us strong », affirms the director of the Festival d’Avignon who will leave the keys after this 76th edition to his successor, the Portuguese director Tiago Rodrigues.
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Beyond the emblematic presence of director Kirill Serebrennikov (“ one of the greatest living artists today “), long under house arrest by the Putin regime, Olivier Py has also dedicated a large part of his programming of around forty creations to the idea of resilience. Among other things, it gave a large place to the South and the Middle East, with four Palestinian shows, not to mention a strong presence of women, from directors and visual artists like Maëlle Poésy and Noémie Goudal to choreographers Maud Le Pladec and Dada Masilo.
What is the biggest challenge of this 2022 edition?
But the Festival d’Avignon is also the 1,570 shows programmed in the Off which attract hundreds of thousands of spectators. The Great Parade of Festival Off artists took place yesterday Wednesday, with its thousands of actors, singers, acrobats, clowns and dancers strolling through the streets of the City of the Popes to try to chase away the black clouds that are gathering above above the theater world.
The biggest challenge of this 2022 edition? ” It’s to make sure that the public is at the rendezvous “, explainsLaurent Domingos, actor, director and co-president of “AF&C” which oversees the Festival Off d’Avignon and supports 130 theaters and 1,500 companies. ” All the actors have prepared creations. This year is exceptional. On 1,570 shows, there will be more than a thousand creations! We feel that the artists really want to show their work, which has been slowed down since the health crisis. The challenge is to become alive again! »
How to find the audience?
For Nicolas Dubourg, the most important current question is also “how to find the entire public? ”.The director of the Théâtre la Vignette in Montpellier and president of the Syndeacthe National Syndicate of Artistic and Cultural Enterprises in France, points out that “For the past two years, we have lived with very great difficulties. First the health crisis, today we are expecting whether inflation will have an impact on the movement of spectators. For us, the Festival d’Avignon will be a marker for the coming season. After a season with a decline of 20 to 25% in attendance, after this summer, are we going to start again with pre-Covid attendance? »
Alain Timar, founder of Theater des Halles which he has directed for almost forty years in Avignon, seems to be convinced that the theater will overcome the current obstacles. He himself stages two plays during the festival which appeal to the intelligence of the public: Me, Gaddafia work on the imagination, embodied by Serge Abatucci, and The Installation of Fear in family intimacy, a text by Rui Zink. “ We find ourselves, myself and the public, and all the artists coming to Avignon, in a paradoxical, almost schizophrenic situation, says Alain Timar. The fact of having lived through this pandemic, the fact of going through the current crisis, both economic and in the form of war in Ukraine, all of this creates a very anxiety-provoking climate. But, at the same time, in Avignon, in this city of theater located in the south of France, there is also – and I see it in terms of reservations – a mad desire to meet again, to be in contact with creation, artists and the public. Hence the record attendance that I currently feel at the level of the public and a crazy attendance at the level of the number of shows in Avignon. »
The gap between creation and distribution
Is the impressive number of shows really a sign of vitality and renewal or rather a sign of a difficult survival for many companies after two very difficult years? ” It is both a sign of renewal, because the vitality of artistic creation is still there in France, emphasizes Laurent Domingos of “AF&C”. But the fact that there are 1,570 shows in Avignon is also a sign of a gap between the immense richness of artistic creation and the ability to broadcast shows in France and abroad. Moreover, the Court of Auditors had pointed out the difficulties of dissemination in its last report on culture. We can’t really say that there are too many creations. You have to ask yourself how do you work on distribution so that these creations live. »
Indeed, until now, in many theaters, especially in Paris, consternation reigned, with a drop of 20% to 40% in attendance. It remains to be seen whether this will be a change due to the closure of rooms, social distancing, the wearing of masks, health and vaccination passes or a lasting change caused by a kind of digital break that has been observed in the field of cinema with the push of platforms and streaming. Laurent Domingos is rather reassuring. For him, what has changed the most over the past two years is above all ” the audience’s relationship to the show. The live performance is a live exchange of emotions between humans on a stage and humans in the room. This cannot be replaced by a digital offer, unlike cinema which can really be put in competition by all platforms and streaming. Live performance is in danger, because the habit of people going to theaters has not quite returned. On the other hand, the live show brings a radically different offer from the digital one. »
“Working with audiences”
For him, the solution does not consist in offering humor or comedies or in changing the repertoire of plays, but in the method of support: ” Yes, there is always this thing of saying to oneself, when there is a crisis, people want to take refuge, to escape. Personally, I don’t sense any change in the demands of the public. The public must simply reclaim the rooms, rediscover this notion of meeting. What to do now is work on audiences. Work on communication to comfort people and lead them to discover things they don’t necessarily know. This work on the public, it must be done via the territories, in connection with national education, because it is also necessary to renew the public. »
An opinion widely shared by Denis Gravouil, secretary general of the CGT-Spectacle Federation, the first representative organization in the performing arts in France: “ Cultural mediation must find new life. We need a real employment plan, because the situation is tense. We see all the problems that we already had reappear: young people have difficulty getting started and those over 50 have difficulty staying in these professions. Yet there are so many fabulous shows that need help finding their audience. Some spectators are afraid to go to public places and no longer dare to enter the rooms, although we have taken all the necessary precautions. You have to be able to reassure and offer both artistic proposals and attractive price offers. »
A stalled cultural New Deal
During the confinement, the Syndeac had launched “ 13 proposals for a cultural New Deal “. During this initiative, the union had notably demanded 500 million euros over five years for the “Creation” and “Transmission” programs. Results : ” Today, we are at a standstill. We are facing an unprecedented financial situation. State or local government funding has grown at 0% for twenty years. With inflation becoming galloping lately, this means that we have structures that are going into the red, in financial incapacity. Some will have to make choices in terms of redundancies, others will have to reduce the wing of the activity. It is a cultural service built over decades and which is today largely threatened. There, we are ringing the alarm bell. »
In the meantime, the biggest theater festival begins this Thursday, July 7 in the streets, squares, courtyards and halls of Avignon. Among the 1,600 shows, each spectator will find what they are looking for, because, as Alain Timar said, the theater will accompany the profound change in our current societies: “ I feel a strong expectation from the public. A strong expectation of the artists. All this with a view to exchange, to dialogue, to consider the future. »
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