The 2022 edition, the last of Olivier Py at the head of the festival for nine years, brought together more than 130,000 spectators, the organizers announced this Sunday after their closing press conference.
The Avignon festival, the largest in the world dedicated to theatre, brought together more than 130,000 spectators for its 76th edition, the organizers announced this Sunday after their closing press conference.
Started on July 7, the meeting ends on Tuesday, with a “total attendance forecast” of “134,260 entries” (including 29,000 free). Or an “attendance rate of 92%” for paid entries (105,260; against 106,700 in 2019, before the health crisis, with an attendance rate then of 95.5%).
Paul Rondin, delegate director of the festival, mentioned between “50 and 100 million euros in economic benefits” during the press conference broadcast on the festival’s social networks.
The 2022 edition was the last of Olivier Py, at the head of the festival for nine years, and who will be succeeded by the Portuguese Tiago Rodrigues, playwright and director.
Sunday’s press conference resulted in a handover between the two men, seated side by side.
“Keep purity in your heart”
Olivier Py thus read a letter of advice to his successor: “Keep purity in your heart and unlike me, keep your calm”, he thus began in a humorous tone. “Keep purity in your heart when you will be criticized by people who have not read the program and have never come,” added the official.
“Oh, I said I wouldn’t cry”, also dropped Olivier Py, when, overwhelmed by emotion, he shed a few tears at the end of this speech.
In their final press release, the organizers welcomed this 76th Avignon festival, “written in the hope of post-crisis”, which resisted a reality “which always comes to shake up fiction”, between “virus still present and “heat as a threat”.
Paul Rondin thus spoke of “monstrous heat” during the assembly and dismantling of scenes, consequences of global warming to be taken into account by the festival in the future.