2023-07-06 08:31:10
The 77th Festival d’Avignon, one of the biggest theatrical events in the world, opened on Wednesday evening with a show transforming the Cour d’honneur into a social center and with a minute’s silence in tribute to Nahel, the teenager killed by a police officer whose death sparked an outbreak of violence in France.
This minute of silence was observed at the request of the director Julie Deliquet, who is also the director of a theater located in Seine Saint-Denis, the poorest department in metropolitan France.
For its first edition, the new patron of the Festival, the Portuguese Tiago Rodrigues, has chosen to open the Festival with Welfare, a social show. This is an adaptation of Frederick Wiseman’s documentary on “15 anonymous heroes for a day at a New York welfare center“, he explained.
Filmed 50 years ago, this documentary “tells stories that are unfortunately still very current on the relationship between the most vulnerable and the State but at the same time with this ability to find wealth in human comedy“.
For the occasion, the Cour d’honneur has been transformed into a social assistance center, with a basketball court in the middle, benches, cupboards and mattresses around. At the start of the day, many tourists and festival-goers began to flock to the City of the Popes, in a good-natured atmosphere. Every July, Avignon turns into a city-theatre, divided between the “in”, the official festival, and the “off”, the largest live performance market in France.
“Building Bridges”
Other opening show: GROOVE by Bintou Dembélé, a hip-hop pioneer in France who organizes a dancing stroll. The new boss of the event has decided to invite a language to each edition and, this year, English is in the spotlight, “in response to Brexit“. “At a time when ramparts are being built to keep us away from our British friends, we must build bridges. It’s a kind of cultural diplomacy“, he says.
Even before the start of the festival, the Portuguese had to deal with two unpleasant surprises: the deprogramming of a highly anticipated show and the high cost of reopening a mythical place of the festival, the Carrière de Boulbon, regarding fifteen kilometers from Avignon. Co-produced by the festival, The Emigrants by Krystian Lupa, master of Polish theater, was canceled a month ago by the Comédie de Genève, where the premiere was to be held, due to a confrontation between the director, accused of abusive behavior, and the team technical.
It has been replaced by a piece by Tiago Rodrigues himself. “Not replacing it would have represented financial damage of more than 300,000 euros for the Festival d’Avignon.“, he explains. “I mightn’t ask artists, especially emerging ones, to replace a show at the last moment at the Opéra Grand Avignon (700 seats). It would have been a huge risk taking and very irresponsible“. He claims not to have enough hindsight on “this unfortunate episode“, while specifying that”no skill level justifies violence“.
Increased security
Second puzzle: the Boulbon Quarry, used for the first time in 1985 for the Mahabharata by Peter Brook and for the last time in 2016. Philippe Quesne will create there The Garden of Delights, inspired by the painting by Hieronymus Bosch. Due to the fire risk device, following last summer’s fires in the region, 250,000 euros were added to the expected cost of 350,000 euros. The place is today”fully secure“.
On the security side, this edition, which starts following several days of urban violence in France, has been reinforced in terms of mobile force units, pedestrian areas, random identity checks in public spaces and pedestrian and mountain bike patrols. .
The Festival d’Avignon lasts until July 25 and is spread over forty places (for 44 shows), in the city but also outside the city, while the “off” has 140 places and hosts nearly 1,200 companies.
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