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Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2012 17:29:17 GMT
This year I arrived in Avignon on a Sunday around noon, jumped in the rental car and was at the tourist office within 30 minutes. I have learned many shortcuts over the years, one of them being to become a ‘preferred customer’ at the car rental place, where they just hand me the prevalidated contract and the car keys when I say my name, and the second one to just bite the bullet for underground parking next to the tourist office and not even try to look for a free spot on the street. The tourist office has become super efficient in issuing the Off cards in recent years with their mini camera and computer console. The Off cards give you a 30% discount on every show. They also ask your postal code and your e-mail address, both of which are optional of course. If you give them your e-mail address, you receive information from a few local theatres (depending on your postal code) throughout the year, and I prefer that to the usual spam. There is a different counter for asking for the catalogue. It’s marked “one per person” because I’m sure that a lot of first timers go “I can’t believe the size of this catalogue! I have to bring one back to everybody I know!” And that remains super easy, because every single theatre participating in the Off has big bins of catalogues and you can take as many as you want – just not at the tourist office. There are about 3 or 4 other places to get the Off cards, so if the tourist office is closed, it is not the end of the world. The Off cards are valid all year, which may surprise you since the festival only lasts 22 days. But they give you a discount at every theatre in France that participates in the Off (not necessarily 30%), and in Avignon, the cards gets you a 40% for visiting the Palais des Papes or the Pont d’Avignon and a 35% discount to visit the Chartreuse of Villeneuve-lez-Avignon. You also get a 50% discount on train tickets to Avignon during the duration of the festival. I am definitely going to use this some day, because there have been so many times that I have gone to the festival and ached to return a few more days about a week or so later – but there is no way that I would pay full fare on the train for that. Additional discounts are available on all of the regional trains and the regional buses. It’s an excellent deal because the card has paid for itself after seeing just 3 spectacles. I was out of the parking lot in just 30 minutes so I only had to pay 2.10€ and then I went to my accommodations. I have often considered staying in Avignon itself during the festival because it must be really nice to just step out the door and already be there. Financially, it would probably work out the same for me, because even though the hotel would be more expensive, I wouldn’t need to rent a car, so I would save on that. But over the years, I have set up my headquarters in Le Pontet, which has a big motel zone next to a restaurant zone next to a big shopping mall. It is less than 10 minutes from the city and actually it is kind of a relief to get out of the hyper activity from time to time. Frankly, even without a car, it would not be all that inconvenient to stay there, because there is a municipal bus service that is used by a lot of the people at the motels. I’ve tried just about all of them over the years and have not found one that stands out from the others, so I change just about every year. This year I stayed at the B&B Hôtel which attracts me for its scrambled eggs and limp bacon. This is something that I never eat at home for breakfast and which totally disgusts the French. (I heard some of them talking about me one morning, thinking I was English.) Even when I stay in France, one of the things I want to do is eat things that I don’t eat at home, so this is perfect. I didn’t bother with a croissant or a pain au chocolat a single day there, but I got the brioche and the nut bread and the fabulous sliced baguette, yogurt and fruit salad… the buffet is 6.10€ and I definitely get my money’s worth since I skip lunch every day. So, here is what the place looks like. The next post will have the reviews of what I saw.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2012 19:16:34 GMT
I was going to go into detail about the ones that got away – since I never want to reserve, I often show up at one of the theatres to be told that it is sold out and that the waiting list is closed. But I think it should be sufficient just to talk about what I actually saw. I did reserve one play (which turned out not to be sold out), I got into one by being on the waiting list, and I walked into the others with no information, although some of them were clearly sold out by the time the performance began. Théâtre La Luna. Sunday 15 July, 16h40. Rappelle-toi (“Remember”) by Fabio Marra.I do not consider myself to be a masochist, but this was an Italian play about a family dealing with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a tragicomedy with a lot of laughs and plenty of tears. Nadia never knew her mother, who ran off, because her father refused to ever talk about her. But she knows that her father is beginning to lose his memory, so she goes to see her estranged brother for the first time in six years and bring the family back together. The father is a classical actor who is starting to forget his lines and sometimes mixing Shakespeare with Molière or Goldoni with great comic effect, as is the running gag of the brother who can’t go to the toilet by himself, because as a child that is where he was when he would hear his parents’ terrible arguments, so it is a place of horror for him. A toilet is in fact in the middle of the stage during most of the play. It was extremely well acted, particularly by the actor who plays the brother – his extremely thick Italian accent added a welcome comic touch to even the most difficult scenes. It created a soothing buffer between the unhappy sister trying to find out about her family and the father who was in hostile denial about what was happening to him. This little clip from the theatrical company only shows a few images from the play I saw (most of the ones around the kitchen table), but it very well conveys the energy of this troupe. I liked this play very much. Isle 80. Sunday 15 July, 19h00. Encore plus de gens d’ici (Even more people from here) by Serge VallettiThis was one of the tiny theatres of Avignon with only 30 seats, but I already felt that I had made a terrible mistake when the ticket seller asked me how I had chosen that spectacle, and I also noticed that I was the only spectator who actually paid to see it – I saw that the other 3 people had different coloured complimentary tickets from being in the acting profession. The four of us endured perhaps the most boring 70 minutes of our lives. Abdel Bouchama was a pleasant enough actor, but he told stories of absolutely no interest while moving stuffed mannequins around the theatre. There were about 40 of these mannequins, and while they were interesting visually, they bore absolutely no relation to anything that he was saying as he rearranged them, wrapped ribbons around their arms or legs and talked to them. Perhaps they made him feel less lonely with an audience of only 4 people. We applauded politely at the end but with no conviction, and he could tell – so he started interrogating us! I was able to get away with a very diplomatic “I am discovering this author for the first time.” Finally escaping the place, another victim came up beside me and asked “What did you think?” “It was awful,” I said. She agreed. Neither of us understood the point of it. I am happy to say that this was the only bad spectacle that I saw in Avignon.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 23, 2012 20:02:09 GMT
Théâtre Girasole. Monday 16 July, 10h45. A portée de crachat (Spitting distance) by Taher Najib.This was a Palestianian play originally written in Hebrew and performed in French with a little Arabic and Hebrew for comic effect. Alone on the stage, the actor Mounir Margoum tells what it is like to be an actor in Ramallah. It starts out comically when he tells about the Arab propensity for spitting. The youth of Ramallah don’t go to restaurants or bars in the evening. They congregate on both sides of the road entering Israel, 1000 on each side, just watching the passing traffic, and all they do is spit, because that is what young Arabs do. The actor demonstrates all of the different types of spitting in a way that would put Jack Dawson in Titanic to shame. Later, things become more serious, because Ramallah lives under constant military threat, with the Israeli army often entering to show who is in control. The restaurants are empty, the bars are empty, the spitters are gone – but to his extreme surprise, 400 spectators hungry for culture still brave the dangers of the night to come to the theatre where he is performing. He comes to Paris to perform, but when he tries to fly home, nobody wants to let him on a flight. “If you are Palestinian, why do you have an Israeli passport?” Trying to fly on September 10th does not make things simpler, so he is bumped to September 11th, when he is actually allowed to fly. Arriving at Ben Gurion Airport he is faced with the Israeli security. “If you are Palestinian, why do you speak Hebrew?” Such is the life of an actor from a country that doesn’t exist, but who is not accepted to be from any other country either. It is a quite remarkable play that teaches us things that most of us do not know. Living in a country full of conflict is one thing, but trying to be an artist in such a place is so much more of a challenge. I am always impressed when an actor can perform on a totally empty stage for 75 minutes and make his story come completely alive. Théâtre l’Adresse. Monday 16 July, 13h30. L’ultime cri de Frida Kahlo (The Last Cry of Frida Kahlo) by Anne-Marie CellierI had to get on the waiting list for this one, and I was quite happy to manage to squeeze in. Frida Kahlo is on her deathbed, but there are all sorts of images from her life in ghostly projection on the drapes around her bed and on two other panels. She recounts her exuberant life and her violent sentiments while writhing around and sometimes leaving the bed. The actress was sensational, running the total gamut of emotions. It was all extremely poetic, which is the unfortunate sticking point with me. She would go into these long tirades about love and revolution, art, life and death, and I would find myself wondering if I should cut my toenails back at the hotel or if the peaches at the market were preferable to the nectarines. Don’t get me wrong – I loved it, but I loved it abstractly, as though it were being performed in a language I did not understand. The set decoration was great, the lighting was wonderful as were all of the visual effects, and the actress was totally top notch. There was also a superb cellist for the music, who also moved props around. I applauded just as energetically as everybody else when it ended. Too bad about the poetry, though.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2012 14:54:54 GMT
Théâtre des Beliers, Monday 16 July, 15h50. Le Bain (The Bathroom) by Marc Andreini, Jean-Yves Girin, Joël MichielsAfter Frida Kahlo, I felt a need for something a bit lighter, and there’s nothing like a Belgian farce for that. The French speaking Belgians are very much like the French except that they don’t take themselves as seriously, which is obviously a plus. This play sold out just like the previous one did, but I had no trouble getting a ticket since I got there quite early. When they finally let us in, I had a wealth of past experience to give me the instinct to seat myself a healthy distance from the bathtub in the middle of the stage. This turned out to be a wise decision. The greatness in the Belgian character is that it accepts no self-imposed taboos. Where the French would find a situation preposterous, the Belgians just pick up the ball and run with it. And so it quickly becomes clear that the subject is the final round of a reality TV show where all of the contestants have been locked in the same bathroom. We are now down to the two finalists who don’t much like each other and who are always playing practical jokes on each other to send the opponent over the edge. On top of this, whenever there is an unexpected burst of dance music, they are obliged to perform a choreographed dance routine whether clothed or unclothed. It was absurd, it was very wet, and it was surprisingly moving as it progressed and their hopes and fears and problems came to light. It was a delight moment of comic theatre. After the applause, the actors did point out that the programme had clearly specified “suitable for children above the age of 12” and that all of the parents who had decided to bring their small fry with them would probably have a number of questions to answer in the evening. Théâtre Golovine, Tuesday 17 July, 11h40. Aquatique by Singling PuThis was a mostly non verbal performance by the company of the Beijing Fringe Festival, which was also at the Off last year. There was a bit of decoding information projected on the back wall before the performance began so that we ignorant people would understand the meaning of the various masks – red mask for demons, white mask for the dead, bearded mask for the old fisherman, etc. The goal of the demons is to drown as many people as possible in the river. One of the recent victims is obliged to drown the next person in order to have a chance at reincarnation, and he chooses the old fisherman as his victim. The fisherman is a jolly old man with perhaps a bit of a drinking problem. Rather than being drowned, he befriends the demon by sharing his beverage with him and they both sit by the river having a good time. When the other demons find out, they are not happy at all, but they must also contend with the mourning parents of the previous victim and the fish of the river. It was all visually stunning with the masks, lanterns, floating fish puppets, gauzy fabrics – the troupe gave the performance total energy. It was a delight to see them take off their masks at the end and discover the beaming and sweaty faces of these very young men and women. I fear that I was interviewed by Chinese television as I left the theatre, but what I said about the performance should not put Franco-Chinese relations in jeopardy.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 24, 2012 17:11:05 GMT
Théâtre des Doms, Monday 16 July, 14h15, Îlo by Sandrine Heyraud and Sicaire DurieuxThe Théâtre des Doms was bought by the cultural services of Wallonia years ago, so it is totally devoted to the theatrical programmes of French-speaking Belgium. After just seeing Aquatique, it was interesting to see a different dance-mime spectacle from a totally different culture. After hearing all of those acting school anecdotes about the outrageous professors who tell their students things like “pretend you are a tomato,” it was absolutely fascinating to see an entire show based on the premise “pretend you are a plant competing with another plant to survive in the desert.” The result is pretty amazing as the two performers go from rivalry to solidarity to tenderness while never forgetting the humour of the situation. It is kind of hard to imagine, so luckily there is a little video with a few excerpts. Théâtre de l’Albatros, Monday 16 July, 18h30. Orèste (Orestes) by EuripidesI usually see a classical play from France, Italy or England when I am in Avignon, but this time I was digging much farther back into the classics to see Orestes, written in 408 B.C. One thing that made me want to go was that it was being performed by a Greek theatre company and I figured I would sort of be helping the Greek economy at the same time. As a concession to our modern ignorance, it was performed in modern Greek rather than ancient Greek and as a further concession, it had translation titles projected in French on the back wall. As we all recall, Orestes killed his mother Clytemnestra because she was cheating on his father Agamemnon. He wouldn’t have done it, but Apollo told him to. His sister Electra is the only person who can calm him, and he needs a bit of calming because he has been sentenced to death by the authorities or Argos. His only hope is the return of influential Uncle Menelaus who has come back to town with his slutty wife Helen of Troy. Okay – I’ll skip to the end. Apollo shows up and sorts everything out and they all go back to their usual torments. In other words, the plot of such a play is of absolutely no importance, and what counts are the performances, which were sensational. Before the play started, the director came on stage to explain that he had chosen to make everything as physical as possible – grief, anger, desire, nightmares – so the cast are wrestling, rolling around, jumping, slapping their heads constantly and they must have each lost at least 5 kilos by the end of the play since the stage was an absolute pool of sweat at the end. I have to admit, though, that when Orestes is fondling his sister’s breasts (“because why should I suppress my desire to do so?”), the fact that they are all slick and sweaty adds an erotic charge to the scene that certainly augments the experience. I was quite happy to have seen this play.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2012 14:14:25 GMT
Théâtre des Halles, Thursday 18 July, 14h00. Occident by Rémi De VosThis was perhaps the most “traditional” play that I saw, the kind that can be put on in any theatre in any country, just about. And the actors were one step up for the majority of the “Off” participants, as they appear regularly in supporting roles in films and television. Razor sharp dialogue of two people sniping at each other. It is acid, trivial, sad, funny, brutal, from the same family as plays such as “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” This middle aged couple say the most abominable things to each other, each giving as good as he/she gets. While the acting was superb, it is not really the sort of subject that interests me. However, two things led me to go and see it anyway – 1) the Théâtre des Halles is a real theatre, and it is kind of relief to sit in one after several days on wooden benches, plastic chairs or ratty pillows and 2) the actor is almost certainly related to me in one way or another, because his last name (Hottier) is exceedingly rare in France and it also happens to be the last name of my maternal grandfather. There are actually two famous Hottiers in France of which I am aware. Besides this actor, there is also a former race car driver. He had a terrible accident and is now in a wheelchair. Îlot Chapiteaux, Thursday 18 July, 18h30. L’odyssée rêvée ou Ulysse en personne (The Dreamed Odyssey or Ulysses in Person) by Alain BlanchardI had to choose a final show, so I decided it was time to get out of the city and see something in the tents across the Rhône. This looked like it would be a lot of fun and it was. It was purely coincidental that I saw two different plays based on Greek mythology in two days. The premise of this play was “what might Ulysses dream about if he collapsed exhausted on the beach of Ithaca and went to sleep when he returned from his odyssey?” The allows the imagination of the author to run wild with skeletons, masks, puppets and marionettes with lots of farcical scenes, but also a running theme of the fact that he abandoned his family for 20 years, leaving his wife Penelope to deal with numerous unpleasant suitors and causing his son Telemachus to grow up without a father. So his dreams are not all fun because there is a lot of guilt and especially the fear that Telemachus will reject him. As for Penelope, in one dream she asks “Were you faithful?” to which Ulysses replies “I couldn’t be.” She continues “Were they beautiful?” and he gives the nice diplomatic reply “Some of them were – they reminded me of you.” So Ulysses has a lot of issues bouncing around in his head, which gives rise to a little puppet sequence in which all of the puppets have outrageously oversized genitalia (this was another show that was recommended for spectators over the age of 12). And of course the witch Circe works her mischief regularly. I really enjoyed the performance, and it had the additional appeal of seeing that the actors were having just as much fun on stage as the audience had watching them. These itinerant theatrical troupes always remind me of the stories about Molière and his contemporaries, because they went around France the same way, setting up a tent and performing in a field. The whole concept of the “Avignon Off” really revitalizes performance art and allows every imaginable experiment. I will once again return next year with enthusiasm.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 2, 2012 22:42:51 GMT
Well, you certainly deserve a standing ovation for your succinct yet complete and very even-handed treatment of the whole Avignon Off experience.
Not only was the introduction valuable in setting the scene, as it were, but will certainly be useful for any readers planning to attend next year.
It's been ages since I've been to the theater, and your lively coverage of the plays, venues, and casts are a perfect reminder of why live theater is so vital.
I definitely felt on your wavelength when you quite honestly described that helpless loss of attention during the perhaps somewhat self-indulgent poetic parts of a play. I so much admire how you chose an array that wound up giving satisfaction on all counts, winding up with only one that turned out to be more fartsy than artsy. And wow ~~ contemporary family drama leavened with comedy; avant-garde gobbledygook; a tour de force treating geopolitics and the arts followed by a dramatic treatment of the death of a well-known artist; madcap farce; what sounds like a brilliant updating of classic Chinese theater (& would have been my pick of the litter); Greek tragedy showing that "if it feels good, do it", is not a new concept; a traditional, script-driven play; and finally an exuberant celebration of the theater as theater within the framework of a timeless story. Yeah, just wow!
Thanks so much for this, a beautifully successful rendition of your experience that gave this reader, at least, a great deal of vicarious pleasure.
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