Results of the Festival d'Avignon 2021: "The fight for a better world is not over"
Olivier Py, director of the Festival d'Avignon, at the end of the 2021 edition © Siegfried Forster / RFI
Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow
8 mins
Despite the Covid, the sanitary pass, thunderstorms and power outages, the largest performing arts festival in Europe has held out, to the delight of spectators.
Sunday July 25, after 300 performances in 38 venues, the 75th Festival d'Avignon closed its doors.
Interview with the artistic director Olivier Py on a “
heroic
”
edition
, with a “
great presence of women
”, a “
fervent audience
” and where streaming and replay “
become almost obvious
”.
Publicity
Read more
With more than 120,000 admissions, the Festival d'Avignon has (almost) regained its 2019 momentum and was able to avoid the Festival Off crisis where a third of the 1,500 companies usually present did not make the trip.
RFI
: "
Who is there
" was the central phrase of your play on Hamlet. Who was there during this 75th Festival d'Avignon
? Has the audience changed
? Did the spectators change the way they greet shows or react
?
Olivier Py
:
In any case, the public was there and that's what matters, because the figures are stubborn.
Despite the immense difficulties in organizing this particular edition.
An almost heroic edition.
There is no major drop in the number of tickets issued.
We are around 100,000 tickets sold, not counting the 20,000 free tickets.
We are more or less in the numbers for the 2019 edition. So a big thank you to the public.
A fervent, militant public.
And it is from him that we derive our legitimacy.
In the last week of the festival, three initially scheduled shows had to be canceled due to the coronavirus. Have the Covid epidemic and health constraints distorted this 2021 edition
?
The sanitary constraints, which in addition have evolved in recent weeks, have brought immense difficulties to the Festival, including logistics, ticketing, programming, but also technology. Working with a mask is not very easy when the weather is hot like in Avignon. Two shows were canceled. They couldn't travel. A Greek show [
Ink
, by Dimitris Papaioannou] and another South African show [
The Sacrifice
, by Dada Masilo]. Another play [
Autophagies
, by Eva Doumbia] had to be interrupted for a suspicion of Covid which ultimately turned out to be null. It is minimal compared to what we have put in place. I hope that the artists who unfortunately had to cancel, we will find them in the next edition.
An often enthusiastic audience noticed that fervor, commitment, artistic madness were present in the shows. At the same time, certain plays gave the impression of a greater, even harsh, demand on the part of the directors in relation to the spectators. It was striking with the Belgian choreographer Jan Martens, but also with the French artist Phia Ménard and the Palestinian author and director Bashar Murkus. Faced with the emergencies that surround us, has the relationship between directors and audience become more radical
?
The theme
of the
2021 edition was “
Remembering the future
”. The artists had the right to present not only utopias, but also dystopias and to imagine a future which must warn us. The artists testify that the struggles for a better world are not over. Quite the contrary. The fatalities are not impossible to untie either. It was an edition with a very large presence of women, practically equal. The question of the place of women was also often discussed, including in shows made by men.
The artists have given a mirror of society as it is.
A fairer representation of our Republic, but also of our world.
And then, they testified to the fact that, in spite of everything that might discourage us, there is still a real strength, a spiritual strength very present in many men and women who just have to look after themselves. come together, as they gather, for example, during these three weeks in the beautiful city of Avignon.
With the epidemic, containment, climate change, have you changed your vision on the theater, on the role of the public
?
Obviously, it was a very special edition, because we were deprived of last year's edition. By dint of living with zooms and streams, we had somewhat forgotten the joy of the real presence, of the meeting, of the mystery of an embodied word and not simply of a diffracted word. The screens are a questioning. They are neither good nor bad. And strangely enough, the theater has often asked itself this question of a life diffracted by screens. Once again, it is questions of society, questions that shake the world and questions of the future that are at the center of all shows. What makes the Festival a kind of conscience of the world. For three weeks, we live much more in touch with our worries, but in a joyful way.And that's what makes the difference with what the mainstream media can do. One can come out of an extremely dark spectacle and be, despite everything, in a state of great joy.
During the lockdown, it was the triumph of streaming and platforms. The Comédie-Française, La Colline and many other theaters have made digital proposals online, remotely. In the Off festival in Avignon, we were able to see shows designed to be watched both face-to-face and from afar. At the Festival d'Avignon 2021, what were the new artistic forms to discover
?
Last year, we had already made an extraordinary program, unique in the history of the Festival, so that there was on the screens not only the possibility of finding everything that was referenced in the recordings, but also of creating performances - closed to the public, but that we were able to open to cameras. It was the same this year. We continued this adventure. Some shows were presented directly in streaming, others can be seen in replay. This is particularly what I did myself with my
Hamlet imperative show!
, we can watch all the episodes in replay and they were broadcast in streaming. This is not at all opposed to the Festival. On the contrary. At the Festival, we have put in place structures, in particular administrative structures, to allow the capture, streaming and broadcasting of shows to be bigger and bigger and become almost obvious. Strangely, the Covid has helped us walk down this path. If that's the bright side of this extremely violent pandemic, well, maybe that's what we'll remember.
Following an edition postponed from May to July, the Festival de Cannes took place for the first time at the same time as the Festival d'Avignon. Some feared a rivalry and a fight for public and media attention. You, on the contrary, have forged a sort of partnership with the biggest film festival in the world. Has this exchange between cinema and the performing arts proved to be fruitful
?
This rivalry had absolutely never existed except in the desire for polemics of certain journalists.
At the Cannes Film Festival, there is no public to speak of.
So the question does not arise.
With regard to the media, it is a journalists' problem.
All that can be said is that there is more room for culture in newspapers in general.
For us, there is no rivalry or major problem on the audience.
On the contrary, it was a kind of party.
I was able to create an extremely beautiful dialogue with Thierry Frémaux, the general delegate of the Cannes Film Festival.
A dialogue appreciated by the public and the most cordial and fruitful relations can be invented between the Festival d'Avignon and the Festival de Cannes.
►
[Video]: Festival d'Avignon: the audacity of Phia Ménard in a word, a gesture and a silence
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
Avignon 2021
Theater
France
Culture
our selection