I find myself at the center of a city given over to spectacle in the biggest theater festival in Europe. Every summer for 66 years now Avignon opens its ancient churches and castles and its streets to every kind of performance one could imagine. Actors stream over the cobblestones playing instruments and singing, handing out fliers and carrying signs. It’s something they must do: though I perform in 1 of 15 mainstage shows over 1200 other events fringe us. What a brilliant audience building strategy: with over 1200 casts, that’s a lot of friends and family, enough to more than triple the population of this town.
my walk to work
The town itself, designed by Romans, feels like it was designed by a theatrical architect. Every day I find a new alleyway to snake my way to rehearsal, every day I arrive at some church some arch some bridge, hell even some falling down wall that for centuries and now takes its own stage under the sky. They invite us in to perform. Imagine acting in some modern work at La Palais des Papes, where the French popes held court - same courtyard, same stage. The thousands of performances - and I mean the performances that landed people in history too - under your feet, your voice echoing off the same walls your feet touching theirs your voice landing where theirs once played.
Palais du Papes, Avignon
I perform in the courtyard of a junior college, however, un nouveau lieu people keep saying, not the traditional ancient places. Because my director is an outsider, because the entire cast we are all outsiders, because the text we play concerns itself with outsiders, we play outside of all this tradition. But still inside this walled city, ancient sandstone carved in a ring like the casement of a giant theater in itself.
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| La Faculte in La Cour Lycee Mistral photo by Alain Fonteray |
The shows that take place outdoors begin at 10pm, once the sun has fully set so the lights can shine and so the air feels cool enough to sit and take in a show. They take pleasure in their settings, the actors, the high walls of the Cour du Catedral St. Joseph’s arched windows become the architecture of L’Academie Français for a play about the Nouveau Roman movement (only the French would sell out a 4 hour play about an obscure moment in the history of their literature). The stage lays and the audience soars in a steep rake above the players and in moments when you take a breath you look up and see that even the stars play a part.
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| Can you see the star? Not the ones on the stage. Nouveau Roman by Christophe Honore, Cour du Catedral St. Joseph |
