As surprise guests of this year's summer festivals, the parliamentary elections on Sunday, June 30, and July 7 have thrown a wrench in the performance schedule for these dates. Already weakened by subsidy cuts and disrupted by the Olympic Games, festival organizers could have done without the new elections. Beyond the political shock, President Emmanuel Macron's June 9 announcement that he would dissolve the Assemblée Nationale in the wake of the European elections and the victory of the far-right Rassemblement National (31.4% of votes cast) put pressure on the performing arts community: Programmers had to organize at once to prevent spectators from deserting their shows, while encouraging them to go to the polls.
On the eve of the Avignon Festival's 78th edition, directed by Tiago Rodrigues, the mobilization began with an all-out search for ways to vote by proxy. Between artists and the public (1.9 million spectators attended the Festival Off in 2023), Avignon represents a significant pool of voters. A fact that its managing director, Pierre Gendronneau, did not overlook: "For now, our main message is to call on people to come to our venues having taken the necessary steps to vote." A ballot paper in one hand and a ticket to the show in the other, as it were.
Yet once this issue is settled, another question remains: What will the mood be like in the run-up to the elections, on the evening of the first round and then the second? In Avignon, one of the beating hearts of the performing arts world, will spectators be in the right mindset to go to theatres on June 30 and July 7? Harold David, the Festival Off's co-director with Laurent Domingos, is making preparations for any outcome: "Nobody is foolish enough to think that the results will be easy to swallow if the RN [Rassemblement National] comes out on top. Because of its concentration of artists, intellectuals and entertainment workers, Avignon will likely become a pocket of resistance. We're ready to rearrange our programs if this hypothesis comes true," he said.
On July 4, a large evening event organized by the Festival Off teams and those of Rodrigues could be held in the Court of Honor, but it is just an "option," noted Gendronneau. "Once the results of the June 30 vote are known, we will, if need be, call for a very broad public demonstration. The festival's position is clear and its values intangible: progressive, feminist, pro-environment and anti-racist."
"If the Rassemblement National comes out on top, what will do besides shouting "resist!" in Place de l'Horloge in Avignon?" The director of L'Abolition des Privilèges ("The Abolition of Privileges") at the Théâtre du Train-Bleu as part of Festival Off, Hugues Duchêne, 33, raised this question without offering any answer. As for Hugo Roux, 29, he will not (for once) preside over a polling station in his native Haute-Savoie department. He will be directing an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel The Grapes of Wrath at the Théâtre 11-Avignon. He, too, is battle-ready while confessing to being beset by dizzying doubts: "How should we react in the event of a landslide in the first round? I wonder if giving people lessons on who they should vote for would be wise when we haven't been able to stem the RN's rise."
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