" What are we going to do?" And how? The theater companies for whom the Avignon “ off ” is a must every summer experience the cancellation of the festival as “ a trauma ” and are struggling to bring out alternatives. " Not participating in Avignon, that changes everything, " said Xavier Lemaire, director of the company Les Larrons, to AFP.
Read also: The Off of the Avignon Festival and its 1,500 canceled shows
With nearly 1,500 shows, more than 1,000 companies and thousands of professionals, the festival is the largest live performance market in France: nearly 20% of parts purchases in France are made there. A sort of " hub " like the Edinburgh festival " fringe ", also canceled.
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“ Avignon allows an exhibition and ensures the sale of shows, which then ensures the production of other shows. When we stop it, everything stops, ”says the director who had three shows scheduled for the 2020 edition which should have started on Friday. From March to the end of July, it lost 90 dates and 260,000 euros in turnover. And broadcast its shows online? This " withdraws emotion, while the theater is built around a stage and an audience ".
No recovery before 2021
The difficulties are not the same, between small independent companies and subsidized companies, those which already have a certain reputation and the most recent.
Guy-Pierre Couleau, director of the subsidized company Des Lumières et Des Ombres, was to present a show at the Théâtre des Halles, which is part of the Scènes d'Avignon network.
The company did not have to advance any money for the rental of the room, a chance in Avignon where the places have multiplied, sometimes renting at exorbitant prices. And despite “performance obligations ” and “ artistic and cultural education ”, it continues to receive its subsidy (around 80,000 euros).
Today, Mr. Couleau thinks of definitively giving up his show. “ To set up such a project, it is two or three years of work. If I ever had to leave, it wouldn't be before 2022 or 2023 and the theaters tell us that there will be a traffic jam . ”
This fear is shared by Julie Timmerman, author, director and director of the Idio'mécanic company. She was playing there this year but had planned meetings with theaters and institutions to prepare the 2021 edition of the festival, a step " essential " according to her to attract theater directors and programmers.
" As everything is postponed, I fear that there is no room for those who want to create in 2021, " she explains. Before adding, worry: “ Knowing that the tour that came from Avignon, it's always n + 1. If we go there in 2022, we only shoot in 2023-2024 ”.
An “ online ” Avignon
In the city of the Popes itself, many theaters have offered companies to resume their show next year. An emergency fund for the halls of Avignon is also being set up, " provided that they reimburse the companies which had incurred costs, " warns Pierre Beffeyte, president of the Off festival in Avignon. .
Theater professionals have benefited from partial unemployment and the white year granted to intermittent workers by President Macron, but some, like the authors, are largely excluded from the aid systems.
" We made 15 proposals with the National Directors Union to create an aid fund because we have to find a way to compensate the authors for the canceled dates ", underlines Cyril Le Grix, vice-president of this union.
Then he goes on to say: “ It is very difficult for companies to see clearly. There are almost only special cases and there is a fear of seeing the second wave come back (from Covid-19, editor's note) when the live performance has not yet started to restart, it would be catastrophic. "
To offer artists visibility, a solidarity project," Avignon Online ", was created to try to revive virtually the festival, offer promotional videos shows and discover the programming of theaters.
And as meager consolation, from July 16 to 23, a cycle of readings of fifteen unpublished contemporary texts is organized in the cloister of the Palais des Papes, high place of Avignon.