The Avignon Festival, which is one of the largest theatrical events in the world, opens this Saturday, June 29. The 35 plays of the “in” and the 1,600 shows offered “off” are scheduled until July 21.
The 78th Avignon Festival begins this Saturday, June 29. This major theater event organized in the southeast of France is taking place this year in the tense context of the legislative elections.
This edition, which lasts until July 21, was brought forward because of the Paris Olympic Games, which will require a massive mobilization of law enforcement, which raises fears of lower attendance during the first days of the “off” festival — which is not subsidized and takes place in parallel with the “in”, the official festival. For its Portuguese director Tiago Rodrigues, the festival, also impacted by the schedule of the two rounds of legislative elections (Sundays June 30 and July 7), “is more necessary than ever”, “in the troubled context of French politics” after the dissolution of the National Assembly. He stressed that it was a “democratic, popular, republican, ecological, feminist, anti-racist” event and called upon to block the extreme right at the ballot box.
More than 1,600 “off” shows
Saturday afternoon, festival-goers and tourists began to slowly take over the streets of the inner city, where a few off-stage companies, in costumes, distributed invitations for their show, while numerous plots, garden gates, gutters and street lamps were covered with posters, noted an AFP journalist. On the stage side, the most famous theater festival in the world – along with that of Edinburgh -, founded in 1947 by Jean Vilar, is putting the Spanish language in the spotlight this summer.
It is also a Spanish artist, Angélica Liddell, known for disturbing shows, who will open the festivities in the Court of Honor of the Palais des Papes with the piece “Dämon. El funeral de Bergman”. Second part of a trilogy devoted to death, it is a dive into the world of Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, who imagined and carefully wrote his own funeral after seeing the funeral of Pope John Paul II in television, not recommended for under 16s (scenes may be “offensive”).
This year, some 35 pieces, a third of which showcase Spanish or Latin American artists, are programmed on the “in” side. More than 1,600 shows are also offered on the “off” side, the largest live performance market in France which officially opens on July 3 (until the 21st), even if nearly 25% of them are presented in preview from the 29th.
The cinema festival is 5 euros per screening for everyone
With AFP
