Young professionals

Outside of July, the doors of the FabricA are open to young actors-in-training for residences. The immersive conditions, from housing to the access to technical equipment, allow them to understand the scope of the stage and to start their careers in the best possible conditions.

The AREC, atelier de recherche des écritures contemporaines (workshop for research on contemporary writing) is one of the flagship programmes developed by the ERACM and the Aix-Marseille regional education authority. Its goal is to share the love of texts and to awaken the students’ curiosity to the most innovative forms of writing. To start with, a large number of unpublished texts are collected with this programme’s partners: the Centre national du Théâtre, the Mousson d’Été, the Théâtre national de la Colline.

A reading committee, made up of members from the ERACM and the Aix-Marseille regional education authority, then gets together with actors-in-training, students, playwrights, and directors associated with the project. The texts they choose are then performed for the public.

In parallel, the students lead reading workshops in schools partnered with the Festival d’Avignon. Learning to teach their own skills is an important part of their training.

To know more: Roxane Jovani, in charge of public relations

The action of the Ceméa in Avignon, in partnership with the Festival and Jean Vilar, began with welcoming young adults from all over the world for our International Meetings. Today, the Ceméa are still committed, along with the Festival, to allowing as many people as possible to discuss their experience as festivalgoers, their questions, and the themes that speak to them when it comes to discovering contemporary creation.

Until 2016, as part of the Culturelab programme created by the Institut français in Paris, the Ceméa organised stays to discover the Festival d’Avignon for young adults from all over the world. Starting in 2017, this programme was strengthened through the establishment of structuring ties between our organisation and the embassies and French institutes wishing to encourage immersive experiences during the Festival: moments of travel, openness, and encounter.

Begun in 2013 at the initiative of the Swiss Foundation for culture Pro Helvetia, the Seminar in Avignon welcomes young professional of the performing arts from all over the world. Directors, choreographers, performers, and scenographers meet and spend a week immersed in the Festival d’Avignon. They discover over a dozen shows, meet artists and professionals, and take part in deep theoretical discussions.

In 2019, participants from Canada, South America, Africa, Middle East and Europe will be accompanied for this intense programme by playwright Eva-Maria Bertschy, who works with Milo Rau.

UCLA

The Festival d’Avignon, the Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries Programme, and the British Council have partnered to provide professional opportunities to youths from economically-disadvantaged backgrounds looking to work in the artistic sector.

Forty recipients of grants from the Weston Jerwood Creative Bursaries Programme, all talented graduates from all over the UK, will attend a seminar created by the Festival d’Avignon and the British Council in order to discover an internationally-renowned festival, experience contemporary creations, and exchange with artists within a European context.

Stage directors in Latin America

The Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Culture, working with the Institut Français, have created a “specialised branch” for the performing arts in Spanish-speaking South American countries.

In collaboration with the Institut Français in Argentina, a delegation of 11 directors, playwrights, or choreographers, female, male, and transgender, chosen for the quality and prospective dimension of their research and productions attended the Festival from 8 to 12 July 2019. They came from Argentina—for 8 of them—, Uruguay, Peru, and Ecuador; their coming, organised by this South American branch, prefigures the collaboration between France and Argentina for the 2022-2023 season.

This programme had two goals: raise awareness among Spanish-speaking South American artists—and in particular the new generation—about French creation and encourage professional exchanges with the French cultural network.

Ier Acte

This project was born of a shared reflection about the lack, if not the absence, of diversity on French stages. Over four years, acting workshops were established to question and fight discrimination in French theatre.

The Ier Acte workshops are aimed at young actors who, over the course of their artistic, professional, or personal life, have experienced discrimination, and offer them a real springboard in terms of training and professional opportunities.

At the end of four years of successful experimentation, the Théâtre National de Strasbourg decided to continue this project on a national scale, and partnered with the Festival d’Avignon, the CCN2 – Centre chorégraphique national de Grenoble, and the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe, to develop an ambitious programme, with key moments in various prestigious cultural institutions.

In the spring of 2019, Ier Acte once again appeared on the national stage with auditions in Avignon, Rennes, Paris, Strasbourg and Grenoble. The young artists selected met to experience the Festival d’Avignon as spectators, then for several intensive work sessions in Strasbourg with Stanislas Nordey, in Grenoble, in Avignon with Olivier Py and in Paris with Stéphane Braunschweig.

Those immersive moments guarantee the young artists will commit to produce sustained, high-quality work. Ier Acte is a programme developed by the Théâtre national de Strasbourg, the Fondations Edmond de Rothschild and the Fondation SNCF, in collaboration with the Festival d’Avignon and the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe.