Avignon Theatre Festival, the first day of my third season.

Today (and tomorrow) I won’t be as organized as usual. I’m at the theatre festival, for the third time now. Last night I organized myself; I got a discounted – regular customer – card.

Avignon, July 04, 2024.
The alarm rang at seven, I just caught the nine-hour bus. I flew into the main square of Avignon at one o’clock. Yes, I flew, I love this city – always have. In July, there’s a theatre festival.
I have zero plans for shows, I’m planning where to go minute by minute and thoroughly enjoying it.
There’s so much information, it’s hard to take it all in. That’s why I’ll try to write the diary continuously, because I won’t remember all of this later.
14:30 – The Four Musketeers
Or at least some distorted interpretation of it. A musical play. I found this online last night.
The actors danced really well in the performance – four actors, two men, two women; but since I don’t understand the language much, I didn’t catch many references to the original work. Original? Originally, it’s Three Musketeers, this is an adaptation called The Four Musketeers comedy. I saw the modern interpretation of it in the afternoon. Great music, great dancing, but not what I expected.
16:00 concert or something.
While waiting for the Musketeers performance, I got two flyers from two teenage girls. They were cool, I read jazz music on the paper. It was actually a father-daughter production, where the father talked a lot. Overall, they were cute.
It’s about six in the evening now. I’m having a beer, my phone is charging, then I’ll figure out where to go next.
20:25 The Queen of the Musketeers.
I chose this because it started right after dinner, from the fifty titles I wrote down last night. This is also based on the Three Musketeers, adapted into The Four Musketeers comedy, a one and a half hour show easily accessible for today’s young audience. Understand: filled with TikTok-length snippets, occasionally with unnecessary dance interludes. But I liked it! Many references to the present day, lots of quotes and music from the modern era. They interacted with the audience; the text is light, casual, accessible, yet at times very thought-provoking. The theme of French conquests and colonization doesn’t fit the original work in my opinion, but it deserves credit for bringing it in. This is an important, very important topic – would be – in today’s France.
22:25 Vernon Subutex
I’ve read this in a book. A three-volume, a total of nine hundred and twenty pages of French social criticism, filled with numerous musical references. The original novel – series might be ten years old, but still relevant. Obviously, they can’t summarize such a large work in a hundred minutes; they only took on the first two volumes. Within that, they mostly presented excerpts, highlighted scenes. The essence came across; they showcased the plot. There’s a lot of narrative parts in the book, they simply skipped those.
It’s past midnight and I’m watching a protest.
The Papal Palace (event courtyard) organized a concert for tonight, with the motto that they hope the radicals won’t win the elections after all; the previous two elections – this year – were overwhelmingly won by the radicals. I also wanted to go to the concert – disco, but there’s such a crowd around the building that I’d rather avoid the place.
A postscript a week later: The radicals didn’t win the elections.