Marseilles (AFP)
"There is urgency" to reopen, pleaded Wednesday Macha Makeïeff, director of the Auction, the national theater of Marseille occupied since mid-March and forced to cancel its first performances, until Saturday at least.
Dozens of people still occupy the Auction 24 hours a day, intermittents but also students and undocumented migrants.
The situation is today tense with the management of the theater, as evidenced by the interruption Wednesday morning by some of these demonstrators, chanting their demands with a megaphone, from an interview with Macha Makeïeff on Franceinfo live from the Old Town. Harbor.
"After the sequence of the occupation, of the demands, we need the sequence of the reopening because inside the works things are also said of incredible power", then pleaded the director.
"There is an emergency" to reopen, insisted Ms. Makeïeff, asking for mediation from the local authorities: "We are a community, we have city councilors and it is together that we will be able to get out of this situation".
"The first performances from tomorrow (Thursday) are canceled," a spokesperson for the establishment also confirmed to AFP.
"Au Café Maupassant" was scheduled to play Thursday and Friday, marking the reopening after months of closure due to Covid-19.
The national amateur theater festival in Marseille, scheduled for Friday and Saturday, is also canceled.
The occupants of the theater demand the abandonment of the reform of unemployment insurance which is to come into force at the beginning of July but also register their movement in a convergence of struggles, anti-racist, anti-sexist or against police violence.
"We talk to her about newcomer artists, emerging artists, she tells us about guys who have already done six or seven shows. It is we who have done zero hours, who are leaving school and are in need. ", replied Gaspard Raymond, 24, an actor who left school last summer, to Macha Makeïeff.
The director "never came to see what we were doing, what the workshops looked like, or in GA," he said.
Since May 1 and an "interluttes" AGM which brought together 500 people, these demonstrators no longer only occupy the hall and the mezzanine but also the large performance hall.
“Taking this room, which is used by management to organize performances for pros (during the health crisis, editor's note), is symbolic. There was a wall that separated our occupation from what was happening here while it was is our means of production, "explained Zelie Gillet, 25, also just graduated from the Regional School of Actors in Cannes and Marseille (ERACM).
Other theaters are still busy in France, such as the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris which also announced on Tuesday that it was canceling its performances as long as it remained occupied.
© 2021 AFP