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66th Festival d'Avignon

66th Festival d&#039Avignon

The 66th Festival d'Avignon will end on 28 July 2012. 

By the end of the Festival, 12 shows are still being performed, including the performance of Psychopharmaka by Rodolphe Burger and Olivier Cadiot on 27 July, as well as that of The Seagull, staged by Arthur Nauzyciel and Tragedy by Olivier Dubois, which are played until 28 July. The exhibitions and the École d'Art are still opened until the end of the Festival.


Like the work of the associate artist, the British director Simon McBurney, this Festival crossed theatre and literature, body and words, visual arts and music, going beyond artistic as well as geographic borders.


The energy of creation fertilized the Festival d'Avignon. Out of 42 shows (apart from the eight creations of the Sujets à Vif), 28 were premieres, six of them were performed in France for the first time, 16 were performed in foreign languages with French supertitles. These shows, conceived by artists of different generations and countries, all took up the stage with commitment and real freedom, questioning what theatre is today.


It is precisely through this question, put into perspective by the philosopher Alain Badiou, that the Theatre of Ideas opened. Based on the dialogues between intellectuals, this cycle of encounters contributed to enlightened on certain notions raised by the programme: otherness, time, the economic and ecological crises.


The Festival d'Avignon once again asserted itself as a place of artistic risk-taking, dialogue and openness to a broad audience, in line with the approach of Jean Vilar when he founded the Festival in 1947 and then transformed it in 1966 and 1967 by opening it to multiple artistic forms. We celebrated the centennial of his birth with a free show created by KompleXKapharnaüM. Offered on 14 July in front of the Popes' Palace, Place Public welcomed over 8,000 spectators who, through this show, were able to better understand and query the heritage of the Festival's founder.


The Festival d'Avignon is also a forum where cultural policy questions are notably discussed. This 66th Festival received the visit of the president of the French Republic, François Hollande, a visit of great symbolic importance as it was the first since 1981. He notably took the time to meet with the Festival's management and artists during a dinner, accompanied by the minister of Work, Employment, Professional Training and Social Dialogue, Michel Sapin, and the minister of Culture and Communication, Aurélie Filippetti, who moreover came to the Festival on several occasions. The Festival also welcomed the European commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth, Androulla Vassiliou as well as many elected officials and regional and local administration representatives.


For the seventh consecutive year, global attendance passed 90%. By this day, 135,800 tickets have been delivered, corresponding to an attendance rate of 93%. Once again, the audience massively showed its desire to take part to the Festival by investing all the debate and meeting places proposed (11,000 admissions were notably recorded at the École d'Art).


The Festival team continued its actions of opening to new audiences, in particular by organizing, with the Ceméa, the stay of 780 secondary school students from all over France, and by continuing its collaboration with the penitentiary centre of Avignon-Le Pontet where Juliette Binoche, Simon McBurney and John Berger read Berger's novel, De A à X, presented two days earlier in the Cour d'honneur. Moreover, the Festival d'Avignon strengthened its links with local associations by imagining with them the itineraries of young people and adults who are not used to going the Festival and who are notably living in the Monclar and Champfleury districts.