A hundred days and dust from the Festival d’Avignon, a “Reasoned optimism”, according to Olivier Py’s expression, is appropriate in the City of the Popes. On Wednesday March 24, the director of the “in” festival announced the program for this 75e edition, which will be held from July 5 to 25 – if it is held, as the uncertainties related to Covid-19 weigh heavily.
In the meantime, the “in” and “off” teams (whose dates have been set from July 7 to 31) are working hard, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, the town hall and the Vaucluse prefecture. , on the different possible scenarios.
For the “in” and for the “off”, the issues are not the same, but both face a constraint which seems hardly compatible with physical distancing: in normal times, Avignon attracts around 700 000 visitors in July, mainly within the city walls, in the walls of the medieval city, maze of small streets. In other words, an open-air culture broth.
“There is no mystery: for the population to drop in the streets, the supply of shows must drop”, summarizes Paul Rondin, deputy director of “in”. The actors of the “off” will object that it is very easy to talk about it, since this reduction in the offer, a priori, will not concern the “in” and the fifty or so shows that it intends to offer for 2021.
In the meantime, Paul Rondin is working on three main scenarios, the hypothesis of a “normal” festival seeming to move away from day to day and that of a cancellation for the second consecutive year being of the order of a nightmare for a whole. profession and a whole region.
The question of public reception
“For the“ in ”, we can consider holding the festival with audience gauges in rooms at 50% or 35%, or even, at the end of the day, by opening only open-air venues, he explains. The open air represents two thirds of the festival’s overall capacity, mainly thanks to the main courtyard of the Palais des Papes, which can accommodate 2,000 spectators per evening at full capacity. We are a public service festival, all the authorities, State, town hall, department and region, have maintained their subsidies, the private partners are also responding, we can hold out economically. Even if we will have to think about how to manage the ticketing deficit induced by a degraded festival. “
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