It breathes like an Avignon air in the heart of the 14th arrondissement. At 9:30 am, this Friday, July 17, childish laughter burst into the hall, almost full of Theater 14. Dozens of little heads rise from the red armchairs to challenge the two young actresses of Bif Tek . "It is pure joy to see the children react with so much enthusiasm to our creation after weeks spent without playing and worrying about the future, " smiles Évangélia Pruvot, co-director of the play for young public.
In the front row, Lola, 9, came with her grandmother to discover this clown show using the codes of the traditional circus. "Usually we go to the Festival d'Avignon in summer, but this year it is in Paris" , begins the little girl before her grandmother explains to her that the two festivals are very different.
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The colorful posters of the scheduled shows, swaying in the wind, are however a nod to the City of the Popes. They are enthroned in the heart of the Paradol village, a meeting space installed between the two places of performance, the Théâtre 14 and the Auguste Renoir Gymnasium, "our Cour d'honneur, ceded by the town hall" , joke Mathieu Touzet and Édouard Chapot, new directors places. Tried and tested by the short-time organization of the festival, these young enthusiasts can congratulate themselves on having revived the theatrical machine and made the three blasts sound in the south of the capital .
A "laboratory" festival in times of crisis
The Paris Off Festival was born in the heads of the two directors at the announcement of the cancellation of Avignon, which constitutes for many theater companies the event of the year. It often determines the future of a play and a troop. “It was urgent to respond to the distress of the companies which had invested themselves for months to play in Avignon. And we are proud of the result, ” says Édouard Chapot.
Some works are in the process of hatching. This is the case of A drop of water in a cloud , a poetic and geographical journey by Éloïse Mercier, already presented in Avignon, but which seems to find a second life in Paris.
With 15 shows at free price against more than 1,500 planned in Avignon, the Paris Off Festival is above all symbolic. “We are a kind of laboratory in this period of uncertainty. Our halls cannot accommodate more than 120 people for health reasons, but the theater lives again and the public responds. The objective has been reached, ” says Édouard Chapot again.
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For professionals in the performing arts, the festival is unexpected. The room owners also represent 25% of the spectators. Like Vincent Dumas, director of the Maison du Théâtre et de la Danse in Épinay-sur-Seine, many of them perform the pieces in order to program their 2021-2022 season, the next one already being planned. Because it takes an average of 150 shows for a season of 30 plays. “The Paris Off is a beautiful and courageous initiative, the sector needed it. They wipe the plaster and we have fun while learning from the event " , specifies this theater director, particularly interested in the work of Nathalie Bensard, director of Specimens, a play dealing with accuracy and energy of the conflict period of adolescence.
Bring a new audience to the theater
While directors and programmers discuss creations while enjoying a cotton candy in the red deckchairs of the Paradol village, local children share a game of improvised volleyball with festival-goers. Multicolored pennants serving as a net.
“We bring a piece of Avignon to the inhabitants of this priority Parisian district. The idea is to breathe new life into theater professionals while making it accessible to as many people as possible ”
Mathieu Touzet, co-director of Théâtre 14“Some kids had never set foot in a theater and yet we found them every day in theaters this week. Unlike Avignon, where the festival is part of a sort of bubble cut off from the rest of the city, we really wanted to open the theater to the neighborhood, ” underlines Mathieu Touzet, greeting one of the young people running to the Specimens show .
The experience was conclusive and the directors of the Théâtre 14 intend to carry out new projects with associations in the neighborhood. And why not repeat the Paris Off Festival, at a time other than the Avignon festival. “So that the theater lives everywhere. And not only in the City of the Popes. ”
