A week at the theatre in Avignon

[Deleted]

Since we do not have a theatre branch, this seems like the most appropriate place to post this sort of thing. (edited)

It is my report on the spectacles I saw last week in Avignon.

Day 1

Le mot progrès dans la bouche de ma mère sonnait terriblement faux.
The word progress in my mother’s mouth sounded terribly wrong.

This is by a Romanian author and deals with the grotesque comedy of the endless Balkan wars, but they could be wars anywhere. The young soldier is quickly killed after a surreal night time conversation with another young soldier on the other side of the no man’s land.

“Are you still alive, you bastard?”
“Yes, but you’re not going to be much longer, you son of a bitch.”
“Worry more about yourself, because your brains are going to be splattered all over in a few minutes.”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Go ahead. You’re about to die anyway.”
“How is my sister?”
“She’s fine; she had the baby last night. We named our son after you, you pathetic motherfucker!”

Well, the new uncle is killed immediately thereafter. The baby is killed also, as is his father. The young widow goes to the United States to become a prostitute, after some despicable recruiting.

“Which country are you from? The worse the situation, the better blow jobs the women give.”

Meanwhile the soldier’s parents are trying to find his remains. The father digs in the forest, because the war has moved elsewhere. He finds bones from 1944 and bones from 1915 and bones back to Roman times, but no trace of his son. He goes to a bone store run by a new entrepreneur.

“I have skulls in this box, rib cages here, arms and legs in this box, and this bag is full of clothing fragments. For a cheap price, you can put together a nice set of remains for burial.”

But the father wants to find the real remains and keeps digging. In the end, he finds his son’s harmonica, and he and his wife dance with joy. At the same moment, the daughter returns after having been deported from the United States, but nobody cares.

The endless wars can continue.

(That is a very simplified summary, because during the whole play, the son is on stage, too – commenting the events, his mother’s concept of progress, trying to give his father information on where to look, and trying to come to terms with his useless death. He also worries about his dog, who was thrown down a well and who howls and howls for 3 years even though he is the only person who can hear it.)

I found it funny and heartbreaking and superbly well acted. In just 90 minutes, we went from a battlefield to a peasant house to a bordello full of transvestites to a forest… and did I mention the brass band on stage? All this using just 7 actors, 2 wooden crates, a table and some camouflage netting.

A few hours later I went to see:

Ti-An, a Vietnamese version of Antigone.

It was presented by a Franco-Vietnamese troupe in superb traditional embroidered costumes and masks. The French actors played their roles in French and the Vietnamese actors played their roles in Vietnamese, which was very interesting, because with only half of the text comprehensible it was possible to understand everything. The troupe apparently does the same thing on tours in Vietnam with equal success.

The critics claimed that it was fabulous, but I must confess that to me it was just Antigone, once again, nothing really new or inventive except the unusual Vietnamese context. When the masks were removed at the end, I was nevertheless quite surprised to discover that one of the (French) actresses was REALLY old – that’s an interesting thing that masks can trick you with, although it is more often the opposite. I have seen several masked plays where the cranky old invalid turns about to be about 23 years old.

Anyway, I could have done without this play but I am probably richer culturally for having seen it.

Luckily, I was yet to discover:

Le frichti de Fatou
Fatou's quick meal

This was a splendid Belgian one woman show, or rather “one woman plus one cellist” who made faces and gestures from time to time but never spoke.

Fatou is the name of an Algerian peasant woman, and frichti is a French slang word for a quickly prepared dish (from Alsatian fristick, from the original German Frühstück), which the actress actually prepared on a hot plate during the performance.

I did not take this photograph.

Anyway, Fatou tells her story, first of all about how women are seen in traditional peasant society:

“A woman with a daughter is like having just one eye, but a woman with a son is the same as having two eyes and clear vision.”

Nevertheless, Fatou’s mother is consoled by the other women when she is born:

“If a baby girl dies, there’s always room in the cemetery. If a baby girl lives, there’s always room in the kitchen.”

The events of her childhood unfold, such as her love for prickly pears, which she picks by the armful without realizing that they will give her a terrible rash.

“Look at you, stupid girl!”
“But Mama, if you knew I would get a rash, why didn’t you tell me?”

Her mother slaps her.

“Nobody told me either. That’s how you learn!”

When she has her first period, her mother tells her, “No more school for you. We have to make sure your precious egg does not break.”

Every time Fatou asks her mother a question, her mother slaps her.

She is raped by her uncle who lives with them, but she doesn’t quite understand exactly what happened. It is time to marry her off, so a couple of parents show up with their 40 year old son, “an Algerian from France.” Fatou wants to know what happens if the son doesn’t like her.

“It’s not up to him. His mother decides who his bride should be. Nobody knows exactly what her son needs more than his mother!”

The marriage takes place, and the wedding night occurs with Fatou as ignorant as ever. As there is no blood on the sheet to display to the crowd downstairs, Fatou’s mother says that her egg has a tougher shell than most and the husband will just have to keep trying.

Fatou is taken to France by her husband, and her suspicious mother-in-law comes too, because Fatou must be watched while her husband works. But the money is not good, so the mother-in-law gets a job in the building as a cleaning lady. As time goes by, though, the mother-in-law can’t keep up with the work, so Fatou takes over her job. And one of the places that has to be cleaned is the local Family Planning office.

The posters and diagrams absolutely rock Fatou’s world, especially the depictions of the male and female genitalia. She sees that women have two bedrooms attached to the kitchen, which is attached to the living room, where the visitors come and go vigorously after unlocking the front door. The eggs are kept in the bedrooms, but they are brought to the kitchen to be cooked.

Fatou finally meets one of the ladies who is in charge of the office, and she takes it upon herself to complete Fatou’s sexual education, including the completely incomprehensible (to Fatou) concept of the orgasm.

Well, to make a long story short, Fatou leaves her husband and becomes a liberated woman. The incredible actress Faïza Kaddour gradually shifts from primitive peasant speech patterns and pronunciation to a sophisticated Parisian accent as the story unfolds. And yet, as uplifting and cathartic as the story is, it still ends in tears with a trip back to Algeria where her mother has died.

Accompanied by her new French boyfriend, she learns that in spite of appearances, her mother was always in charge of the family and made all of the decisions, and her father is now completely lost…

After the thunderous applause finally ended, Mme. Kaddour invited us all out into the street to taste her frichti, which she ladled into cups for the enthusiastic crowd.

The actress talks to the spectators after the show.


The pot of frichti is served.


Some of the assistants partake as well before starting the evening advertising parade through the streets of Avignon.

This fully completed my theatrical requirements for the first day. I was happy to be in Avignon again and had been extremely moved by two plays discovered at random.

[Deleted]

Day 2

L’histoire de Ronald, le clown de McDonald’s & J’ai acheté une pelle chez Ikéa pour creuser ma tombe
The Story of Ronald, the McDonald’s clown & I Bought a Shovel at Ikea to Dig My Grave

These short plays are by a Spanish author, and in fact there is a second production of L’histoire de Ronald in another theatre.

From what I can tell from the other poster, I think that in the other production the actor is disguised as a clown, but the production I saw had three ‘normal’ people in the ruins of a Ronald McDonaldland plastic playground.

As you can tell from the title, this is going to be nasty political stuff about the consumer world. The first character starts off by saying that the happiest day in his life in Madrid was the day his grandfather died, because everybody was too busy to prepare food, so he was taken to McDonald’s for the first time in his life.

This is a short excerpt from some of the stuff later:

“If you’re 9 years old in Lisbon, you go to McDonald’s on Sunday.
If you’re 9 years old in Cuba, you suck the cock of an Italian tourist.
If you’re 9 years old in Brussels, you go to McDonald’s on Sunday.
If you’re 9 years old in Bolivia, you work in a mine for the Americans.
If you’re 9 years old in Florence, you go to McDonald’s on Sunday.
If you’re 9 years old in Africa, you sew soccer balls for Nike.
If you’re 9 years old in New York City, you go to McDonald’s on Sunday.
If you’re 9 years old in Thailand, you let an Australian sodomize you.
And when two airplanes take down two skyscrapers, people feign surprise.”

Yes, rough stuff but very well done with impressive energy by a theatre company from Luxembourg.

It was not all completely “nasty” because in this troubled world, we need as much humor as we can get, but it was definitely an anti-consumerist alternative society play.

A wake-up call if anything. I was pleased to see it.

Les Amers (an amer is a landmark that helps sailors determine their position)

This was about three young people – two guys and a girl – living unhappy lives on the coast of Brittany. A predictable love triangle occurs, and the village is in an uproar when the three start living together, as they have no trouble all sleeping in the same bed and don’t care whom they are caressing in the dark.

Well done, but nothing new. A little too classic for the 'OFF' experience, and I confess that I was somewhat disappointed.

[bixaorellana]

This is truly fascinating! The combination of your summaries and the views of Avignon during the theater festival have given me a deep desire to experience this for myself *conveniently forgets inability to speak or understand French*

The "Le mot progrès ..." play sounds stellar as does "Le frichti de Fatou", and in such radically different ways. The Ronald McDonald one surely deserves kudos for this line: "And when two airplanes take down two skyscrapers, people feign surprise.”

The last one has such a great title, too bad it was somewhat of a let-down. I guess during the festival one feels disappointment in a play fairly keenly, realizing that it was time that could have been spent at a worthier production.

This is heady stuff -- thank you!

[Deleted]

Day 3

Personne ne voit la video

No One Sees the Video[/center]

This is by the British playwright Martin Crimp. The French are in awe of British playwrights due to dialogue written with a razor blade and not a single unnecessary word anywhere in the play. French plays tend to meander a lot more (“marivaudage”) and the actors putter around quite a bit. It’s one of those “grass is always greener” phenomena since many cultures admire French plays for their relaxed pace and development.

This play was performed with machine-gun rapidity, leaving me wondering if it was an artistic decision or whether it had to do with fitting into the schedule of the festival. It concerns a woman who does not want to take part in a consumer survey – but does anyway, of course – and accepts to be filmed as long as “no one sees the video.” She becomes a surveyor in turn, in a series of clever interactions with the other characters, and….. well, nothing as far as I was concerned.

It was an impressive well-oiled, machine, but I didn’t much see the point of the play (written, it must be admitted, in the early 1990’s). Perhaps its pertinence has expired? In any case, now I have an opinion of the works of Martin Crimp, perhaps unjustified.

The next play I went to see was

Les Derniers Devoirs

The Final Duties[/center]

...quite the opposite of what I had just seen, because this was a French farce. This well-known genre has seen better days as well. It is a three character play – the mother, whose father has just died, the father and the teenage daughter. The mother is a hysterical control freak, the father is spineless and the daughter is a typical clueless teenager. It is the morning of the funeral, and numerous details have not yet been settled. Lots of phone calls and flowers being delivered, provoking all manner of commentary and misunderstandings.

This play was an absolute waste of time.

However, the performance I saw in the evening redeemed the whole day.

Le Concert Interdit

The Forbidden Concert[/center]

The premise of this is that in this incredibly polluted world, breathing is at a premium and all wind instruments have been banned. But the members of a clandestine brass band continue to gather and give free rein to their passion. It isn’t a play at all. It is a wonderful concert using all sorts of brass instruments and styles, from cool jazz of the 1950’s to works by Stravinsky and numerous other composers. The musicians are completely scruffy and are dressed in post-apocalyptic rags, which makes their bright shiny instruments all the more beautiful.

There was also some very sophisticated choreography and lighting effects, with a few interruptions by the Air Control Committee giving news flashes about oxygen rationing and the importance of submitting to authority. The musicians have absolutely no dialogue, but their music is more than enough.

It was a great musical evening, with trumpets, bugles, trombones, tubas, a French horn and a bit of percussion just for the hell of it.

[bixaorellana]

Most interesting!

I have to say, French or not, I cringe at the idea of a farce. How appropriate that the mother was hysterical, because that's how farce always seems -- whether "Three's Company" on tv, or a handsomely mounted stage production. All the running around, all the shrieking, all the misunderstandings ~ ug. And at the heart of the farce there is always something that makes you say to yourself, "well, why don't they just go on and tell the truth/get to the bottom of it/etc., at any rate, some very simple thing that would have stopped the whole frantic, hands in the air mess in its tracks.

The Forbidden Concert takes the breath away ( ) with the premise and the way of conveying it. How lucky you were to see that.

[Deleted]

Day 4

Carte d’Identité

Diogène Ntarindwa is a Rwandan born in Burundi, because his family had already taken refuge there in the 1960’s. He had a happy childhood, even though he noticed in school that children of different origins were treated differently.

In any case, he has reached an age at which he wants to relate his life until now, and it is truly amazing that he can still be so charming, humorous and able to put what happened in his past behind him. His presentation starts like stand-up comedy, because he explains how he wanted to talk about his life, but when he told his father, it was nyet! “I am the head of the family, and if anybody should tell the story, it is I!” But he cajoles his father and asks him “what if I tell my story and then you can sing one of your songs? The people in Europe will love it!”

His father thought that this was a fine idea, so Diogène received permission. In his spectacle, he is his father, his primary school teacher, various officers and soldiers, his African History teacher and a number of other people.

One of the things that was mentioned was that sometimes people would question their European names – Jean-Charles, Alexandre, Henri-Pierre, Léopold and other such names. “Why are you using the names of the imperialists?” Very simple: “We spit upon the names of the imperialists but we honor our Catholic faith which is a pillar of our society.”

Meanwhile, I finally understood this Tutsi and Hutu business. This is thanks to the African history teacher. Basically, the Belgians decided to put the Tutsis in charge – they were “tall, good looking, dynamic, intelligent” while the Hutus were “small, limited, rural, unbecoming.” As outrageous as this is, it worked fine for decades, until the winds of independence began to blow across Africa. The Tutsis decided that since they were tall, good looking, dynamic and intelligent, they should be granted independence or at least full autonomy by the Belgians. This did not sit well with the colonizers at all, so they decided that since the Tutsis were ungrateful renegades, they would put the hardworking, loyal, steadfast Hutus in charge instead.

And the genocide began.

Diogène’s story, which had been amusing up until now, took a dramatic turn. He was in high school when the rebellion began, and he and 75% of his class joined the army to go and liberate the homeland once and for all. He became one of the infamous machete-wielding child soldiers of Africa. The new army marched to Rwanda, and it crossed the border at night time. Diogène said that he could immediately smell a scent of decomposition in the air.

The next morning, the boy soldiers passed through a village of body parts covered with flies and maggots. Reality had set in.

In spite of the horror, there were still some amusing moments. After all, these soldiers were just young boys. Some of them had come from Belgium and France and the United States and knew nothing about life in Africa. A lot of them spoke only French or English and had to beg the others to explain the commands. Many of them did not know how to eat with their bare hands and would go hungry waiting for forks and spoons that never appeared, while the others scooped up their meals directly from the pot. As for the menu, Diogène explained that it was boiled corn, “but there were so many pebbles in it that sometimes we thought that they had just boiled some pebbles and that some corn had fallen in by accident.”

One of Diogène’s close friends from school was Innocent. He went with a convoy to get munitions, which were happily provided in unlimited quantities by the white countries of the world, in exchange for payment, of course. Two days later the convoy returned, a dozen trucks overloaded with ordnance of all sorts. Innocent jumped down from the truck, but the pin of a grenade at his waist caught on a piece of metal and pulled out. Innocent exploded, and the entire convoy continued to explode all through the night, while the other soldiers hid as best they could in jungle holes. The explosions stopped around dawn, and Diogène saw a ripped off foot wearing one of Innocent’s treasured Nikes lying in the mud.

Believe me, the spectators who had been laughing regularly during most of the tale, had stopped laughing during the gritty tale of genocide. But after two years, “we won the war,” said Diogène, and he left the army. Life went on. He moved to Belgium and completed his studies and became interested in the theatre, and so here he was.

He never told us how many people he killed or how. I’m glad of that.

How to end such a spectacle after raking the public over the coals? I felt like a limp dishrag by then. Well, he simply kept his promise to his father. He pulled a video screen out of a corner, and his father sang his song with the other village elders, so proud of himself and of his son.

I don’t think that there were many dry eyes when we left the theatre, a former factory.

......

It took me a few hours to recover from that performance, so I looked for a classic to calm my nerves, Shakespeare or Molière or someone like that. But they were sold out or at the wrong time, so I found a different classic to see.

Fool for Love

This Sam Shepard play is performed in Avignon every year. I think there was only one production this year, but I have often encountered 2 or 3 productions during the “Off”.

This was a good production in the tiny Théâtre des Amants, a former chapel. The motel room set did not seem particularly authentic because it was far worse than any motel room I have ever seen, but maybe I am not enough of a sleaze to have discovered motels like this.

Anyway, the play was well done and helped me to forget the Rwandan genocide. All of the essential characters were there – the Old Man, sitting on the edge of the stage drinking whiskey in his chair and strumming a guitar from time to time, Eddie and May, the incestuous half brother and sister and of course Martin, the new boyfriend who arrives at the wrong time.

It was comforting to watch such a banal love triangle slapping each other around and doing absolutely nothing harmful, far from Rwanda.

Photos 14 to 21

[bixaorellana]

My god. Illuminating and well-written though it was, it was still difficult and painful to read your summary of Carte d’Identité. And Ntarindwa played all the parts?! Amazing. I imagine the video of the father at the end must have gone straight to every heart in the house.

Looking at the photos 14-21 made wonder how long the performing troupes had to set up, rehearse, etc. before they put on their plays. Any idea?

[bixaorellana]

Forgot to ask earlier (or maybe you said & I didn't see it) ~~ for how many years have you been attending the theater festival in Avignon?

[Deleted]

I've been going to Avignon for more than 10 years now. I missed 2005 because that was the year that my father died and I had my mother in my apartment -- no way to take her there and do anything, but I really suffered and it made such a big hole in my summer. Selfish, I know.

[cigalechanta]

Does your mom still live with you?

[Deleted]

No, I managed to get her into a nursing home after 54 weeks (proving that she had worked in France -- in 1943 as a student! -- writing a half dozen letters to the Paris authorities who kept refusing her, because you have to have lived in Paris for 3 years to be allowed into a nursing home -- and finally sending my request directly to the mayor of Paris, who approved it). She has been there for 3 years, and it only took her about 20 months to adjust to it. That means she has stopped saying "I would prefer to live in the street. Somebody would take me in, even if you won't!"

It is 430 meters from my apartment.

[cigalechanta]

I'm happy it all worked out. My mom died in a nursing home.

[Deleted]

And mine will as well. We now return to our regular programming. (if I ever manage to finish writing it!)

[tod2]

Thanks for giving us a little taste of your theatre experience in Avignon!
Your revelation about the 'Identity' play brought back many memories of that terrible time in Africa.
My young neice decided to go and help those in the refugee camps in Goma. She flew with the pilots & navigators in the cockpit of the enormous Russian cargo plane called "The Illusion".
Her first line of duty as she lept from the plane was to take the spade she was handed and start burying the babies.
After that she held them in her arms day after day, week after week, while their starving little bodies softly gave up the will to live.
At her request we set up a collection centre at our place of business and sent over 30 large cartons of clothes, food, toys and fabric for cleaning the pitiful sick & dying. A pinprick of what was really needed but we did our best.
Cartage companies where begged to take the goods to the airport free of charge where it waited for the the Illusion.
Upon her return the nightmares had to be phycologically delt with for years to come.
Thats just one little South African girl with a heart bigger than you can imagine. I think of all the other thousands of volunteers from other countries around the world who must have seen those terrible times.
I'm glad it touched the audience ............................
Small world eh?

[bixaorellana]

Oh, Tod, that is a devastating story. It has conjured up all the dusty despairing acres of hopeless refugees stretching on and on with no end in sight.
Your beautiful niece will never be the same as the girl who got off that plane.
It's a terrible irony of human nature that the ones with hearts big enough to reach out and help are also the ones whose hearts will be most lacerated by the pain they seek to alleviate.
You must be so incredibly proud of her.

[Deleted]

I've never known anyone who has worked somewhere as bad as Rwanda, but I did know some people who have worked in Gaza and in Sarajevo during the siege, and they have some pretty intense stories, keeping things in proportion.

One story that I have never forgotten was working in the hospital in Sarajevo in the dead of winter, without running water, electricity or heat anywhere in the building. The sheets could not be washed, so they would have try to scrape fecal matter and other substances off the sheets with a piece of cardboard and then try to air them out some in the inner courtyard before reusing them. If there was urine or anything on the sheets, they would freeze stiff, and since the temperature in the hospital rooms was below freezing, they would have to put the dying people on dirty frozen sheets, which they would defrost with their bodies.

Anyway.... final day of my theatre report coming soon!

[Deleted]

I have thoroughly enjoyed this thread through and through. Thank you for taking the time to share a wonderful week with us.

[Deleted]

Day 5

Fight Me Now!

This was a modern dance/theatrical spectacle by a Taiwanese troupe. It depicted the dog-eat-dog relations of the modern business world with a lot of rushing around and confrontations. Men tried to dominate women, but the women resisted, with trickery rather than physical force. Everyone had big containers of vitamins and amphetamines to keep up with the pace of life.

Quickly, clothes and ping pong balls went flying. People talked to each other on mobile phones or face to face but did not listen to each other. The French translation of the Mandarin dialogue was projected on the back wall and purposely garbled, just like in real life. Sweat was pouring down their bodies, because this was a very physical performance, quite impressive and yet mysterious.

Certain interactions were lost on Occidental spectators, but that added interest and concentration, rather than taking away from the force of the show. It only lasted an hour, but that was the proper length for this intense slice of life in a sea of orange ping pong balls.

The theatre was a former silk conditioning workshop. We were in the “square” room which is pretty normal, but in the past I have seen other performances in the more visually impressive “round” room where the cocoons used to soak in a big stone vat.

Sans ailes et sans racines
Without wings or roots

This was a really extreme theatrical moment, at the Théâtre des Doms, the headquarters of the francophone Belgian community. It was written and performed by real life father and son Hamadi and Soufian El Boubai, playing a father and son in total conflict.

The father is a completely secular Belgian of Moroccan origin, who has completely embraced secular Belgian values and culture. His son is a hard core Islamic fundamentalist, who has completely turned his back on the Western world. The son is dressed in white Islamic garb and sits on a white stool on the empty stage. The father is dressed in black Western attire and sits on a black stool.

For a very intense 55 minutes, they debate their choice of lifestyle. They have not seen each other for many months.

The father, who arrived in Belgium from Morocco as a child: “This country showed me new values, the concept of freedom and democracy, the possibility of having a family without religious interference, unlimited culture and education for my children, equality for my wife, the stability and prosperity of Europe.”

The son: “Europe didn’t want me. I have no job, I am constantly stopped in the street for my complexion, my hair and my clothing. You have crawled in front of our oppressors who have never accepted you and who have no respect for you. You have doors slammed in your face because of your origin. You are begging for the acceptance of people who despise you.”

The love of the father for his son and the son for his father is transformed into hate because of their total incomprehension. Everything that they say is completely true.

The father refuses to accept that his Belgian utopia is just an inaccessible dream. The son rejects the racism and xenophobia to which he has been subjected. He prefers the comfort and purity of his “Muslim brothers” who share his values and shun the moral corruption of the Western world.

Their conversation becomes increasingly intense, with the father quoting the Koran to show that the extremist Muslims have completely misinterpreted it. The son points out the extreme intolerance of the father and the values he defends, when one of our principal so-called values is tolerance itself. The father asks his son if his mother and sister should be stoned for not wearing the veil, as his Muslim “brothers” recommend.

Even though they rip each other to shreds with their words, there is also an underlying current of the love that was lost between father and son. As they shout with tears in their eyes, a shot rings out, and a red stain starts spreading slowly over the immaculate white garment of the son, a giant flower of death blooming over his heart.

Traces

This was my final play of the festival. After the short ones of the day, this was two and half hours under the stars of Villeneuve-lez-Avignon.

It was simply about a construction project, the destruction and replacement of low income housing and the consequences on the people involved.

The length of the play allowed several different stories to unfold – the alcoholic anarchist who tries to sabotage the project, the rich entrepreneurial family that is financing the project while the elderly patriarch is slowly dying and his son tries to take control, the woman mayor of the city who has to pretend that everything is going right when everything is going wrong, a young couple formed by a supermarket cashier and one of the construction workers, an evicted woman who wants to return “home” to the Balkans in spite of the opposition of her adult French children, and a whole gallery of other characters, all played by the same 8 actors.

There are hospital scenes, bourgeois dinner scenes, supermarket checkout scenes, poor apartment scenes, scatterings of ashes and appearance by the huge robot Goldorak, who haunts the construction worker.

It is funny and sad and sometimes grotesque. The cashier becomes pregnant but the foetus has no heartbeat and must be expelled. Her boyfriend steals the foetus because he can’t bear the thought of it being thrown away with the hospital waste and he hides it in a matchbox. But then at home the matchbox is missing, and the cat hadn’t been fed, so…. what might have happened?

The play was not a masterwork, but it was well written anyway, inventively staged and very well acted. I was fully satisfied by the theatrical experience when it ended after midnight on a hilltop amphitheatre surrounded by pine trees. I was sad for the people putting on the play, because they begged us to talk about the play to other people, because there were only about 35 spectators and they clearly needed at least double that many. The Avignon festival is a cruel world and quite a few people lose all of their investment every year, often all of their savings plus a loan from the bank.

I was listening to some theatre people talking to each other earlier in the day about their financial difficulties, and it was not too hard to calculate that for most of them, it is impossible to make any money. All they can hope is that they will be noticed by programmers from cities all over Europe who will book them when the season starts in September.

The festival lasts long enough to have 21-23 performances. The time slots in the theatres are rented for between 6000 and 12000€ for the period of the festival, depending on the size of the venue and the time of day (11am is not the same price as 8pm). Add to that living expenses and housing of the actors and technicians, props, transportation… People like me with the “Off” card pay between 9€ and 12€ for a ticket (most common price is 10€); a few rare spectators will pay the full rate of 13€-16€ but about half of the spectators will pay nothing at all, because programmers, critics, people from other theatre companies, actors, etc., all receive complimentary tickets. And yet people come from all over the world to participate – there were, for example, 6 companies from Australia, 6 from Taiwan, 10 from Romania, 24 from Belgium, 11 from Italy… and two each from Canada and the United States.

I will return again next year.

[bixaorellana]

Kerouac, to be perfectly honest, I did not think that I would do more than scan the various summaries you have posted here.

To my great surprise and pleasure, I was completely absorbed in each one, and caught up in the excitement and tension that you convey so well.

It's amazing and heartening that this theatrical art form is still so thriving that the Avignon festival continues to grow each year, especially with all the hardships for the troupes that you mention.

Thank you so much for your beautiful, in-depth look at this amazing cultural phenomenon.

[Deleted]

As Bixa mentioned earlier, this is pretty heady stuff. I don't know how your mind was able to take it all in and process in such a way as you have. I could not take in all that much in such a short period of time. I suppose once you've gone and experienced the whole thing,the synergy alone can and does seem to grip you.
My last year of undergraduate school I was part of a theatre clique (rare for one "outside" to be included in) and I was amazed at the seemingly constant charged focus that these people lived in day to day,hour to hour. I often wonder if any of them continued down that same path as I have lost touch with most of them over the years. I doubt that I would have picked up Shaw or Moliere and many others were it not for them "taking me in" as they did.
Thanks again for this.

[Deleted]

I confess that I try to go after some of the more experimental stuff, even though there is a risk of it being complete crap. Nevertheless, this year I regretted not being well organized enough to fit in one of the 'real' classics. Those theatre companies do really interesting things with them.

[bixaorellana]

I meant to ask you this before --

How much time beforehand do you have access to a schedule, if any? Can you look over the offerings at your leisure, or must you wait until you arrive in Avignon?

[Deleted]

It used to be possible to get a program ahead of time, but the program is just too big now, so just about everybody has to pick up a program upon arrival.

This year I didn't even go to see anything the evening I arrived, but there have been times when I arrived in the city and was seeing a play within 30 minutes. Most of the major planning takes place the first evening at the hotel of course.

[bixaorellana]

Yes, you mentioned in your Avignon thread that you decided to be more leisurely than you'd been during past visits to the festival.

Have you realized that you can now legitimately remove the first sentence of your OP? Yaaay ~~ Any Port now has a board about the theater and other live performances.

[lola]

I LOVE the idea of the minimal sets and props and the quick change. Naked guy in front of candle might or might not be interesting, I suppose.

I would love to do this sometime, after maybe a few months' brushing up the old French. I really appreciate your bringing us the highlights like this and expanding our horizons once again.

[Jazz]

My feeling was to wait and read this thread when it was complete and I could focus on it as a whole. I think it is a 'tour de force' in itself. The intensity of your five days must have been almost overwhelming with all of its beauty, humour, rage, anguish and love. And, you tell your story of the stories so simply and perfectly. Your 'play within a play'.

Your evening under the stars at Villeneuve-les-Avignon was a perfect ending. I have never forgotten my night under the stars in Verona. Theatre people all over the world share this ongoing financial problem. It is sad, but they are passionate about their art.

I will reread this thread because it has stimulated so many thoughts within me. You chose well and I have so much to say about most of them that I'll say nothing. This was a powerful experience and I would love to go one day. Now I understand why you make this yearly pilgrimage! The totality of the ancient town, the unexpected alternative theatre venues and, the people and the plays. I don't know if I could handle so much intensity in so little time. Merci, Kerouac.

[Deleted]

I'm glad that this small group appears to have enjoyed reading about my experience. I used to write a report every year for some French friends, but I let it fall by the wayside.

Every year I regret having missed a few things that I wanted to see, and certain years I have regretted the "one play too many" -- trying to see one last thing just before I left and having it be dreadful. Even though it never ruined my time spent in Avignon, it always left a bad taste in my mouth when I returned to Paris.

I was more satisfied this year than a number of other years, yet a lot of it was by accident, because I did not study the program nearly as studiously as I have certain times before.

One good thing to know, for return visitors, is that the big successes of the previous festival are nearly always back for a second or third festival. Until the actors get tired of it, it is such a pleasure to sell out every day and to actually make money for a month.

[spindrift]

The theme of Sans Ailes et Sans Racines moved me a lot. I can imagine that this is a fairly frequent occurrance in immigrant muslim families. Perhaps we would expect the father to be a traditionalist and the son pursuing western ideas. It makes for more tragic viewing when it's the son who's intent on living by the koran.

I have enjoyed this thread so much. Thank you Kerouac.