The origins of the Festival of Avignon

"Avignon is 60 years old. We must celebrate", writes Brigitte Salino, in the lead up to the theatre festival, which opens Friday, July 6th. Referencing 'The History of the Festival of Avignon' by Antoine de Baecque and Emmanuelle Loyer, she recalls the origins of the festival. "There isn't a linear history with Avignon ... Antoine de Baecque and Emmanuelle Loyer show this by returning to the festival's birth. At first, it wasn't an event for the masses, but more the product of a director, Jean Vilar, who had decided to create, far from Paris at the end of the Second World War, a theatre that broke from the bourgeois and routine traditions. To turn the page after some dark years, to invent another way of being, as an actor or a spectator, in the presence of the imposing and dilapidated walls of the Pope's Palace: this is what Vilar introduced in 1947, saying that he wanted to 'unite the generous art of theatre with the relaxation and pleasure of the people.'"

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