Cinemas, theaters and museums will not reopen on December 15 as initially announced by the government and will remain closed for three more weeks, to reduce the risk of the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic, the Prime Minister announced on Thursday Jean Castex.
“We discover today, five days from the announced date, that the theaters are not going to reopen. Thousands of employees all over France are told that all the work they have put in place in recent days has fallen apart ”, deplores Nicolas Dubourg, president of the National Union of artistic and cultural enterprises (Syndeac) which runs the Théâtre de la Vignette in Montpellier.
“We are told that we must” avoid brewing “or precisely the health protection measures that we have put in place in theaters and performance halls respect this instruction “ while “Moreover, people accumulate every day in public transport, in stores …”, denounces the president of the union which brings together 400 national scenes and subsidized drama centers.
“The accounts we are now asking as a professional organization from government is to understand the decisions that are made”, continued the president of the powerful union.
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“At some point, we’re going to witness some real tragedies”
“The history of activities essential to the nation will not be able to last forever because our life as an artist, as a theater is essential to our life and we are part of the nation”, he hammers.
“For teams, you have to imagine what it means to open or close. We called all the spectators back, sold tickets, made transactions, prepared the sets, launched the rehearsals with a view to playing, we placed orders… and then we were told at five days, you remain closed ”.
“So tomorrow all the teams will have to call back the spectators, reimburse the tickets, call the artists… And that has not been prepared. These are traumas and for some it is the third time that this has happened, it means psychological distress. At some point, we will witness real tragedies with this way of managing the crisis in spurts ”, he warns.
“We are now being told January 7th, but was it specified ‘be careful not to get carried away, it will probably not be the right date'”, he concludes.
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