• The spectators were there for the resumption of TnBA, in Bordeaux, this Wednesday.

  • Place of creation, the theater did not however cease its activities during the period of recovery.

  • Exceptionally, this year it will offer a program running until the end of July.

More than six months after the curtain rolled down on cultural life, the TnBA (National Theater of Bordeaux in Aquitaine) is this Wednesday the first Bordeaux theater to reopen its doors.

Two shows are on the program,

Executor 14

and

An Enemy of the People

, the latter having been scheduled at 5.30 p.m., curfew at 9 p.m. obliges ...

It is the reopening for cultural establishments too.

The TnBA is the first Bordeaux theater to offer a show today with An Enemy of the People scheduled for 5:30 p.m. #reopening #Bordeaux pic.twitter.com/BpxxGJNWvu

- mibosredon (@mibosredon) May 19, 2021

20 Minutes

spent the whole afternoon behind the scenes of the famous Bordeaux theater, to take the temperature and follow the adrenaline rush within the teams before this resumption.

The regular theatergoers were just as impatient.

Marie-Jo Martinez and Hilary Ordoqui, two Bordeaux women subscribers for many years to TnBA, arrived at 4:15 p.m. in front of the theater.

“We started our day with a screening at the cinema, at the Utopia, to see a very beautiful Spanish film called

Une vie secrète

,” says Marie-Jo Martinez.

And it's going to be cinema almost every day, she warns.

We need it.

"

A piece that resonates with current events

In the meantime, this Wednesday is theater, with

An Enemy of the People

, therefore. “A play by Ipsen, directed by Sivadier, with the great Nicolas Bouchaud… It promises a hell of a night, the two friends enthusiastically. The story also resonates with the news! "

The frame takes place in a spa.

While a bacterium discovered in the water poisons everything, should the baths be closed to preserve the health of its users?

Or close their eyes to preserve that of their wallet?

"This piece is reminiscent of current affairs to a point that we had never imagined before creating the show, because it speaks of an ecological and health disaster, which can call into question the economy of a small town. even a country, confirms the director, Jean-François Sivadier.

It is about the value of human beings in the face of financial markets.

"

"There was an absurd side, the impression of working for nothing"

The director was particularly impatient for his play to finally be performed. “It's a special day,” he tells us. There is an energy, a particular excitement, I can feel it a lot. There are actors who haven't played for two years, they are so hungry for the stage. So there, suddenly recovering in front of an audience that is also very excited… It's very moving. "

Director of the theater, the director Catherine Marnas also underlines "the real pleasure" of reopening.

“This period has been very long.

Realize that in general, we do between 170 and 180 performances per year.

There, in more than a year, we could only do 19. The most painful was the uncertainty, especially for the teams.

I called them the Penelope - who unraveled at night what she wove by day.

We kept pushing back… There was an absurd side, the impression of working for nothing.

Hopefully this is a bygone time.

"

"We never stopped"

A national stage with a creation label, the TnBA however had the chance to have the right to continue rehearsing during the closing period. “We never stopped, and we welcomed a whole bunch of companies,” underlines Catherine Marnas. The teams also had time to refine the sanitary protocols and prepare for the end of the season.

“Exceptionally, we have decided to offer summer programming until the end of July,” explains Ariane Braun, general administrator of TnBA.

Our greatest difficulty will relate to welcoming the public.

Our schedules must respect the curfew, we will lose part of the public, because there are people working at that time.

The gauge at 35% limits the number of places to 244, instead of 701 in normal times.

As for the sanitary protocol, “we will apply it strictly, of course, with in particular an opening of the rooms half an hour before the show.

"

"We realized that cultural places were downright vital"

It remains to prepare for the future. The return to school in September, even after the Covid ... "I hope that we will not come to the health pass for entry into theaters, warns Ariane Braun. Even if a year ago, I was hoping that we would not have to welcome spectators with masks ... But clearly, this crisis makes us think about the future, in particular the dematerialization of our programs, our subscription policy , our prices. We do not yet measure the impact of the economic crisis that will occur, but this question will arise. We had already seen a drop in our attendance in 2010, after the subprime crisis in the United States. "

Today, it is still time for relief.

Especially for Marie-Jo Martinez and Hilary Ordoqui, who dragged their sentence for more than six months.

“We experienced this period very hard.

It was very painful to be deprived of cultural places, which are essential places.

And all the people who love the theater, the cultural places, had a feeling of injustice, because there was no reason to open the supermarkets and not the cinemas or the museums.

Jean-François Sivadier drives home the point.

For the director, “we realized that cultural places were downright vital”.

So, on the track!

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  • Covid 19

  • Theater

  • Deconfinement

  • Coronavirus

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  • Bordeaux