“200 Public Figures Protest Removal of Subsidy to Lyon’s TNG Theater”

“The Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region is dishonored by removing the subsidy allocated to the New Generation Theater (TNG) in Lyon”, headlines a collective of two hundred personalities from the public spectacle and former Ministers of Culture in a column published Thursday evening on the newspaper’s website The world.

This forum follows the decision of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region to withdraw its subsidy, of 149,000 euros, to the TNG, national drama center of Lyon. This withdrawal came after its director, Joris Mathieu, accused Laurent Wauquiez, president of the region, of engaging in “a deliberate enterprise to destabilize the functioning of public cultural institutions” in a recent forum published on the Syndeac union website.

Among the signatories, the former Ministers of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, Jean-Jacques Aillagon, Aurélie Filipetti and Philippe Douste-Blazy but also Ariane Mnouchkine, founder of the Théâtre du Soleil, Tiago Rodrigues, current director of the Festival d’Avignon, or even Wajdi Mouawad, director of the La Colline national theater in Paris.

A call for the mobilization of the other public partners of the TNG

The authors of the text published in The world see in the region’s decision “a punitive measure that attacks the freedom of expression of a union representative” and “a dangerous precedent”. “We refuse this desire to intimidate, which aims to weaken a creative house and to silence one of our representatives”, they continue, calling for “the mobilization of the other public partners of the TNG”.

“The attack on the TNG should not be the tree that hides the forest. Many places of culture and art have been victims, in 2022, of the region’s brutal measures, through drastic and arbitrary budget cuts. Others will be struck in 2023, which will further weaken the cultural and artistic environment of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, ”they write.

At the end of April, the region defended its so-called cultural policy of “rebalancing” in favor of “territories”, favoring festivals, with “more than 120 subsidy increases” in 2023 for a total envelope of around 3.3 million.