Abstract
The management of the coronavirus crisis of 2020 required immediate and top-down decisions, which contradicts the bottom-up philosophy of the non-curated Festival OFF d’Avignon. As a consequence, the loose organizational structure risked breaking apart and every theatre director acted autonomously by either cancelling the scheduled programme, creating online alternatives, or organising independent micro-festivals. The events of 2020 demonstrate that the non-curated festival is composed of multiple independent theatres following their own artistic orientation and business model. The OFF d’Avignon is, in fact, a festival of festivals.
Introduction
On 13 April 2020, two hours after French President Emmanuel Macron had announced the cancellation of all festivals and events with a large audience until mid-July, artistic director Olivier Py declared the 74th edition of the Festival d’Avignon (IN) cancelled. By comparison, how does a non-curated fringe festival without an artistic director react to this sudden turn of events? Around 1,600 productions by 1,000 acting companies were scheduled to be staged in a total of 140 theatres at the OFF d’Avignon that year. After a special assembly with representatives of acting companies and theatre directors on 15 April, Pierre Beffeyte, president of the organising committee Avignon Festival & Compagnies (AF&C) since 2016, announced that the OFF would not escape the same fate as the mainstage festival. For the first time in its history, the OFF d’Avignon was officially cancelled. This decision from ‘above’ caused strong reactions amongst the artistic community and exacerbated an already tense situation.
Artistic Freedom at its Origins
In opposition to the institutionalized Festival d’Avignon, the OFF came to life with the rebellious act of one local playwright and actor, André Benedetto, who staged his own play Statues in July 1966 without having been included in the official festival programme.Footnote1 This newly created space of liberty on the fringe of a renowned theatre festival soon attracted artists from all over France and has been known as OFF d’Avignon since 1971, in allusion to New York’s Off-Broadway. Throughout its almost 60 years of rapid growth, artistic freedom and independence have been defended as the core values of this non-curated performing arts festival.
The actress Pierrette Dupoyet, who has been staging her seul-en-scène in Avignon since 1984, greatly values this festival of free artistic creation: ‘I hope that there will never be a judge nor censor of our plays’.Footnote2 Likewise, the clown-musician Emmanuel Van Cappel emphasizes that the OFF is characterized by ‘free expression’ and ‘free creation’.Footnote3 For Nancy Maréchal, who runs three small theatres in the old town of Avignon, the OFF embodies absolute liberty, which she vigorously defends, ‘I would rather close my theatres than follow any instructions’, she says.Footnote4
The organising committee Avignon Public OFF (APO) was founded in 1982, and was succeeded by AF&C in 2006, to act as a neutral custodian that compiles the festival programme without intervening in artistic decisions, following a growing influx of acting companies and the subsequent construction of performance venues at this time. In 2020, however, external influences interrupted the ordinary flow of events and demanded a unified decision, which brought the conflicting interests of the almost 140 independent theatres and 1,000 acting companies into tension.
Festival Cancellation Due to COVID-19
In France, the coronavirus pandemic led to the closure of cultural institutions on 4 March 2020, followed by a general lockdown on 17 March. Despite the growing uncertainty over whether summer festivals could take place, Py stated in a radio interview on the morning of 8 April, ‘I am worried, but not completely pessimistic. […] In mid-April we can still hope’.Footnote5 Later that day, he announced the theme of ‘Eros et Thanatos’ for the 74th Festival d’Avignon, which was met with strong opposition.Footnote6 Simultaneously, freelance artists at the OFF, who self-finance their festival participation, were facing growing uncertainty and economic risk, which they highlighted in several online petitions.Footnote7
When Macron then announced the cancellation of large-scale events and festivals on 13 April, the management of the Festival d’Avignon were quick to publish their decision in a brief statement: ‘Despite persistent hopes to present a 74th edition, the Festival d’Avignon is cancelled’.Footnote8 This sudden turn of events forced AF&C to make a binding decision for all OFF artists. When Beffeyte announced OFF d’Avignon’s cancellation after a meeting with representatives of acting companies and theatre directors two days later on 15 April, the decision was not appreciated by everybody.Footnote9 Once the lockdown was progressively repealed from 11 May 2020, with cultural venues receiving permission to reopen in the Île-de-France region from 15 June (and earlier in the rest of the country from 2 June), various micro-festivals were founded.
Micro-Festivals on the Fringe
Following these developments, according to Serge Barbuscia, director of the Théâtre du Balcon, Avignon could not remain silent, ‘We have to keep up the murmur’.Footnote10 Together with the four other theatres forming Les Cinq Scènes d’Avignon (the five historical, semi-private, and subsidized OFF theatres), Barbuscia initiated the micro-festival Un Souffle d’Avignon from 16 to 23 July 2020. Julien Gelas, co-director of the Théâtre Chêne Noir,Footnote11 would not call it an alternative festival, but a ‘theatrical murmur’ to keep the ‘sacred fire’ of Avignon alight.Footnote12 Similarly, Alain Timár, director of the Théâtre des Halles, suggested that ‘the terrain should not be left empty’.Footnote13 In place of full productions, texts by contemporary playwrights were read aloud by artists that would have performed at the OFF 2020, for example Serge Valletti’s Les Marseillais read by Philippe Caubère, Ariane Ascaride, Bruno Raffaelli, and others.
The readings took place in the Cloître des Carmes, a former monastery that was converted into a performance venue by Jean Vilar in July 1967, which has hosted renowned productions of the Festival d’Avignon (IN) since then. This cooperation exemplifies a noteworthy development of the past years in that the Cinq Scènes have sought to distance themselves from the increasingly commercial OFF and to foster their connection to the IN. Barbuscia regrets the monopoly of the Palais des Papes, considered the leading venue of the Festival d’Avignon, that has not yet invited the Cinq Scènes to perform. ‘It is time to change history’, he concludes.Footnote14 Likewise, Julien Gelas criticizes the ‘intellectual snobbery’ of the IN and the ‘ultra-liberal supermarket’ that the OFF has become. ‘As a response’, he states, ‘the five historical OFF theatres might disaffiliate from the OFF’.Footnote15 By contrast, Timár prefers to speak of Avignon as ‘one festival’, refusing an IN-OFF distinction.Footnote16 In response to this debate, Sébastien Benedetto, artistic director of the Théâtre des Carmes who was elected president of the association AF&C in January 2021, has emphasised the difficulty and importance of uniting the diverging interests of all players at the Festival OFF.Footnote17
Small private venues also reopened their doors and conceptualized their own festivals in compliance with the official health regulations. Fabienne Govaerts organized the micro-festival Les Estivades and staged eight plays at her theatre Le Verbe Fou from 15 to 31 July. Limiting audience numbers allowed spectators to maintain social-distancing by leaving a spare seat between groups. Scheduling four, instead of the usual nine, performances per day prevented audiences mixing between events and left enough time to aerate and disinfect the theatre hall. The size of the venue permitted a maximum of only two performers on stage, who were accompanied by puppets in some cases. Govaerts explains, ‘We were supposed to have a performance with five or six actors, but given the circumstances, we didn’t dare. The festival programme had to be adapted’.Footnote18 Obviously, these strict measures also meant that fewer tickets could be sold to cover the expenses. ‘We did not escape unscathed, yet we had the pleasure of being together’, she notes.Footnote19
Other initiatives included a four-day open-air event called OUT-Festival organised by Alain Cofino Gomez, the artistic director of the Théâtre des Doms. OUT-Festival featured a staged reading, a concert, and a circus show. Similarly, the Festival Courts-Circuits, conceptualized by the multidisciplinary association LaScierie, presented open-air concerts, (dance) performances, screenings, workshops, games, and public discussions throughout the entire month of July.
Alternatively, the festival cancellation led many artists, who usually make the annual pilgrimage to Avignon in July, to start initiatives in their hometowns. The actress Pierrette Dupoyet decided to stage four of her seul-en-scène in her own garden in Neuvy-le-Roi in Touraine. Spectators were kindly asked to wear a face mask during the performance and to make a reservation in advance. Dupoyet points out that ‘as long as an actor can speak, as long as they can express themselves, as long as they can write what they think, they exist’.Footnote20 Based on the audience reactions, the actress concludes how much people enjoy, appreciate, and need theatre. Yet, Dupoyet misses the OFF d’Avignon which represents her laboratory to share and develop new creations with a curious audience and to generate bookings for upcoming seasons.Footnote21
Paris also saw the creation of small-scale theatre festivals by OFF companies. Mathieu Touzet and Édouard Chapot used the festival cancellation as an opportunity to found the ParisOFFestival that staged a total of 15 plays from 13 to 18 July 2020 in two performance venues: the Théâtre 14 and the school Gymnase Auguste Renoir. These plays had originally been programmed for the OFF 2020 at diverse theatres in Avignon, like the Théâtre de l’Oulle, the Théâtre Transversal, the Théâtre des Brunes, the Théâtre du Train Bleu, and Artéphile. The ParisOFFestival responds to the growing demand to decentralize and deconcentrate theatre productions from the overcrowded OFF d’Avignon towards other cities. ‘The theatre should live everywhere, not only in the Popes’ city’, explained Touzet.Footnote22 This alternative festival therefore also aimed at recreating a networking platform between acting companies and programmateurs. Theatre curators, so-called programmateurs, visit Avignon every summer to select and buy innovative productions that might please their local audiences in the upcoming season(s). Most acting companies today name the encounter with programmateurs as their primary motivation for participating in the OFF d’Avignon. As Touzet’s colleague Chapot emphasized, ‘We are a kind of laboratory in these uncertain times. Our theatre halls cannot host more than 120 people for safety reasons, but the theatre is alive again and the audience is responding’.Footnote23
Conclusion
The founding of independent micro-festivals in response to the OFF’s cancellation in 2020 demonstrates and reinforces three tendencies of the past decade. Firstly, the Cinq Scènes d’Avignon have always aspired to strengthen their connection to the IN, which they did in 2020 by presenting a series of staged readings at the Cloître des Carmes. Secondly, small private venues in Avignon organized their own micro-festivals and, thus, expressed their wish for independence and recognition, which manifested with the establishment of the Fédération des Théâtres Indépendants d’Avignon (FTIA) on 11 May 2020.Footnote24 Thirdly, areas outside Avignon saw the creation of small-scale theatre festivals by OFF companies, which may alleviate an overcrowded summer festival in Avignon in the long term.
Overall, the events of 2020 reveal a central problem for non-curated festivals in which the core values of artistic freedom and independence contradict the necessity of making joint decisions when facing a global crisis. Consequently, the loose organisational structure of the OFF d’Avignon risked breaking apart, with every theatre director following their own path, either by cancelling their scheduled programme, creating online alternatives, or organising independent micro-festivals. And yet, the exceptional circumstances of 2020 saw the foundation of new associations that may rethink and reinvent the festival in the long term. Similar to fringe festivals in Edinburgh and Adelaide, the OFF has experienced increasing commercialisation and functionalisation as a performing arts market since the 1980s, which is accompanied by other economic, social, and artistic consequences.Footnote25 The current health crisis also has a transformative potential to critically review organisational structures, work practices, and aesthetic forms at the OFF d’Avignon.
Hanna Huber has been employed at the University of Vienna (Austria) since 2019; she currently works on her PhD project ‘Performing on the Fringe: Narratives on the Festival OFF d’Avignon’. Conceptualized as a mixed-method research, the project draws on a combination of qualitative interviews, quantitative data evaluation, and performance analyses. Hanna Huber successfully completed Theatre, Film, and Media Studies, English and American Studies as well as Romance Studies at Universities in Vienna, Malta, and Avignon.
Notes
1. The Festival d’Avignon was founded by Jean Vilar in 1947 and has significantly shaped the cultural landscape of Avignon since then. For more information, see Emmanuelle Loyer and Antoine de Baecque, Histoire du Festival d’Avignon (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 2016); and Philippa Wehle, ‘Avignon, Everybody’s Dream’, Contemporary Theatre Review 13, no. 4 (2003): 27–41. For more information on the origins and development of the Festival OFF d’Avignon, see Alain Léonard and Gérard Vantaggioli, Festival Off Avignon (Paris: Éditions des Quatre-Vents, 1989); and Joël Rumello, Réinventer une Utopie: Le Off d’Avignon (Paris: Ateliers Henry Dougier, 2016).
2. Interview with author, September 7, 2020. [All interviews were conducted in French. The direct quotations in this article have been translated into English for reasons of better legibility.]
3. Interview with author, July 27, 2020.
4. Interview with author, August 14, 2020.
5. Olivier Py, quoted in Léa Salamé, ‘Olivier Py: “La situation est catastrophique pour le monde du spectacle”’, L’invité de 7h50, France Inter, April 8, 2020, https://www.franceinter.fr/emissions/l-invite-de-7h50/l-invite-de-7h50-08-avril-2020 (accessed January 19, 2022).
6. Anaïs Heluin, ‘Covid-19: Pour l’annulation des festivals d’été, des voix s’élèvent’, sceneweb.fr, April 8, 2020, https://sceneweb.fr/actu-covid-19-pour-lannulation-des-festivals-dete-des-voix-selevent/ (accessed January 19, 2022).
7. Renato Ribeiro, ‘Avignon OFF 2020: Année Blanche’, change.org, 2020, https://www.change.org/p/m-franck-riester-avignon-2020-ann%C3%A9e-blanche (accessed January 19, 2022).
8. Festival d’Avignon, ‘Annulation. 74e édition du Festival d’Avignon’, Festival d’Avignon, April 13, 2020, https://www.festival-avignon.com/fr/ (accessed January 19, 2022).
9. Grégory Plouviez, ‘Coronavirus: après le In du Festival d’Avignon, le Off s’apprête à annuler’, Le Parisien, April 14, 2020, http://www.leparisien.fr/culture-loisirs/coronavirus-apres-le-in-du-festival-d-avignon-le-off-s-apprete-a-annuler-14-04-2020-8299467.php (accessed January 19, 2022).
10. Serge Barbuscia, quoted in Marie-Valentine Chaudon, ‘Avignon orpheline de son festival’, La Croix, July 22, 2020, https://www.la-croix.com/Culture/Avignon-orpheline-festival-2020-07-22-1201105957 (accessed January 19, 2022).
11. Later that year, in September 2020, Gérard Gelas, who contributed to the foundation of the OFF d’Avignon with his amateur acting company in 1968, passed on the direction of Le Chêne Noir to his son Julien.
12. Julien Gelas, quoted in Luc Leroux, ‘Avignon, un festival débranché mais pas tout à fait off’, Le Monde, June 24, 2020, https://www.lemonde.fr/m-le-mag/article/2020/06/24/avignon-un-festival-debranche-mais-pas-tout-a-fait-off_6043983_4500055.html (accessed January 19, 2022).
13. Alain Timár, quoted in Fabien Bonnieux, ‘En juillet, des théâtres veulent conjurer le sort’, La Provence, May 30, 2020.
14. Serge Barbuscia, quoted in Youness Bousenna, ‘A Avignon, les “gardiens du feu” font souffler l’esprit du Festival’, Marianne, July 24, 2020, https://www.marianne.net/culture/avignon-les-gardiens-du-feu-font-souffler-l-esprit-du-festival (accessed January 19, 2022).
15. Ibid.
16. Interview with author, July 23, 2020.
17. Interview with author, July 28, 2020.
18. Fabienne Govaerts, interview by Jacky Bornet, ‘“Le Festival d’Avignon aurait dû être reporté, pas annulé”, selon la directrice de théâtre Fabienne Govaerts’, franceinfo:culture, July 13, 2020, https://www.francetvinfo.fr/culture/spectacles/theatre/le-festival-d-avignon-aurait-du-etre-reporte-pas-annule-selon-la-directrice-de-theatre-fabienne-govaerts_4030945.html (accessed January 19, 2022).
19. Leroux, ‘Avignon, un festival débranché’.
20. Interview with author, September 7, 2020.
21. Interview with author, September 7, 2020.
22. Maud Cazabet, ‘Le Théâtre 14 offre à Paris son propre festival Off d’Avignon’, Le Figaro, July 18, 2020, https://www.lefigaro.fr/culture/le-theatre-14-a-offre-a-paris-son-propre-festival-off-d-avignon-20200718 (accessed January 19, 2022).
23. Ibid.
24. For more information on the federation and their statutes, see ‘Manifeste du 8 juillet’, Fédération des Théâtres Indépendants d’Avignon, July 8, 2020, https://irp-cdn.multiscreensite.com/1e880139/files/uploaded/Manifeste%20du%208%20juillet.pdf (accessed January 19, 2022).
25. For discussion of the Edinburgh and Adelaide fringe festivals, see Jen Harvie, ‘International Theatre Festivals in the UK: The Edinburgh Festival Fringe as a Model Neo-liberal Market’, in The Cambridge Companion to International Theatre Festivals, ed. Ric Knowles (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 101–117, and Sarah Thomasson, ‘“Too Big for Its Boots”? Precarity on the Adelaide Fringe’, Contemporary Theatre Review, 29, no. 1 (2019): 39–55. For more of the Avignon experience, see Paul Rasse, Le théâtre dans l’espace public: Avignon Off (Aix-en-Provence: Edisud, 2003).