Are the performing arts an essential good?

Audio 19:30

On the deserted Champs-Élysées, the cinemas and the Lido have lowered their iron curtains.

RFI / Pierre René-Worms

By: Léa-Lisa Westerhoff Follow

22 min

How to live without theater, cinema, concerts?

In France, culture represents 2.3% of the economy and 2.7% of the working population, live performance with music comes third behind audiovisual and publishing.

At the time of this second confinement, where most European countries have chosen to close cultural places to slow down the health crisis, one wonders: what place should be given to the performing arts in this period of pandemic?

Publicity

An Accents d'Europe program in the company of

Robin Renucci

, actor, director, but also director of the traveling national drama center (CDN)

Les Tréteaux de France

and, since 2017,

president of the Association of national drama centers

, which brings together the thirty-eight CDNs that cover the territory.

While Emmanuel Macron's announcements on a possible reduction in confinement, which could concern culture, are expected,

Robin Renucci

, also member of the High Council for Artistic and Cultural Education, publishes

a letter

with 350 directors of cultural places

open

requesting the French president to immediately reopen the theaters.

Austria

: Theaters file complaint for closure

Austria returned to full containment a week ago.

Curfew, closure of schools and all places open to the public except food stores.

Since the arrival of this pandemic at the beginning of the year, what is prohibited or authorized, for whom and when, has continued to change, but the world of culture is almost systematically affected by these bans.

The directors of cultural establishments have therefore decided to voice their discontent to say: citizens need a cultural life, even in times of pandemic - and even, especially in times of pandemic.

This is a report by

Céline Béal.

Mobilization of museums in Lithuania

In this small Baltic country, neighboring Poland and Belarus, among others, the pattern is similar to that of France.

At the beginning of November, with the resurgence of Covid cases, Lithuania imposed the closure of cultural places but not of shops.

The frustration is intense, the museum directors have therefore published a column to request their reopening.

The explanations of

Marielle Vitureau

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  • Austria

  • Lithuania

  • Coronavirus

  • Culture

  • France

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