Off Festival of Avignon. The City of the Popes returns for one month the biggest theatrical scene in the world

From July 5 to 28, this alternative festival of independent companies offers more than 1600 shows for theater and live performance, dance, visual arts, puppetry, music … in 139 different places, including thirty permanent theaters, the others being ephemeral.
It is a huge market for theatrical directors, festival programmers, school, departmental or regional institutions, for France as well as for French-speaking countries and French institutions abroad.
Until late in the night, everywhere in the streets of the city, actors, directors, directors of theaters of Avignon present in a fun and humorous way their show.
The Avignon Festival created by Jean Vilar exists since 1947.
The Festival Off was born in 1967 on the initiative of André Benedetto, who in 1966 had opened his theater, the Théâtre des Carmes, defying the theatrical institution of the time. The protest movement of 1968 will definitely establish the « Off » in the City of the Popes, facing the « In ».
Already two favorites for this vintage 2019 … letters …
« Letters to Anne » at Sham’s Theater.
« I was only 14, it left me an impression … indelible, » says Anne Pingeot, speaking of his first meeting with François Mitterrand, 41, married with two sons.
Their passion is born when Anne, 19, comes to Paris for her studies. Then begins an intense and fiery love match.
From 1962 to his death in 1996, François wrote to « his Anne », « his Animour », more than 1200 letters of great literary quality.

Nathalie Savalli, in a staging by Frédéric Fage, with talent and emotion, reads some of them in an illustrated staging of photos of the political career of the head of state.The last words expressed: « My happiness is to think of you and to love you, how not to love you more.  »

The French will discover the existence of Anne Pingeot, secret companion of President Mitterrand, that the death of the latter, when the two families, the official and the clandestine, gathered around his coffin.

Anne Pingeot and their daughter Mazarine accepted the publication in 1996 at Gallimard of these beautiful love letters, which now constitute a historical document.
« The Letter of a Stranger » at the Théâtre de la Carreterie.
« To you who never knew me, » begins this beautiful text by Stefan Zweig,

The Austrian writer, through the story of the life of a woman, evokes love to the madness of this one who, 13-year-old girl, falls in love with her apartment neighbor, a beautiful writer of 25 years, she will love in secret until his last breath.

When the family moves, it’s a drama for the child. At 18, she sees him again, seduces him.
He does not recognize it.

A child is born of their ephemeral relationship, a child he will never know existed and who will die at the age of 10 to the despair of his mother who worshiped him.

Much later, their paths will cross again. Again, he does not recognize it, even taking it for a girl of joy ..

Caroline Vidal, directed by Céline Patrizio, accompanied on the piano by the composer Guillaume Garrones, incarnates with justice, ardor and tenderness, this absolute love of a woman who, on the eve of her death, just feels the need of to tell the loved one, without judging him.

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Gerard CROSSAY

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