The Off Avignon Festival opens its doors on Saturday: more shows than ever, but a struggling industry

Companies and shows are plentiful this year at the Off Avignon Festival , but this record edition masks a sector that is suffering from budget cuts and the crisis in the distribution of shows, say organizers and industry players.

The largest live performance market in France, this festival, which runs alongside the " In" from Saturday 5th to 26th July, is breaking all records: 1,724 shows, presented by 1,347 companies, for a total of 27,400 curtain raisers (2.6 million tickets) in the city's 139 theatres, according to figures from Avignon Festival & Compagnies (AF&C), which organises the Off.

"There have never been so many," says Harold David, one of the co-presidents of AF&C, who recalls that there were some 600 shows in 1999. This shows how Avignon represents, for artists, a showcase and a "place of professionalization and meeting with the public" (300,000 festival-goers), he says.

Paradoxically, this high turnout is "not a sign of the industry's good health," he says. Because live performance has been "hit hard by the distribution crisis" : "The resources available to programmers" of venues and local authorities (town halls, etc.) "to purchase shows have declined considerably and continue to decline."

The cause is the financial disengagement in culture at several levels (local authorities, State, etc.) , notes Ghislain Gauthier, head of the CGT Spectacle, who is worried about a profession that is "struggling", already tested by the health crisis and inflation. The AF&C conducted a survey of the 1,300 companies registered in 2024. Of the 400 that had performed the same show the previous year, only 20% indicated that they had managed to sell it for more than five dates in the following season. This, while to "recoup the cost of an Avignon Festival, you need to sell at least 15," according to Harold David.

Antoine Séguin, an artist associated with the L'accompagnie troupe and a regular at the festival, last year offered a Feydeau production (On purge bébé), with an eight-person cast. It was performed 17 times, with a 50% occupancy rate – the average rate for the entire event. "We didn't make it profitable on site" and only "four subsequent dates were then agreed," he says. Fortunately, other purchases will follow, but via other networks.

For companies, the investment is significant. Renting a theater costs "around 100 euros per seat," says Harold David. As for housing in and around Avignon, it has seen a surge in prices, with no regulation. This is forcing some to share slots, performing only "on even or odd days alternately," or at the beginning or end of the festival, observes Antoine Séguin.

In this context, shows with few artists on stage are in the majority: in 2024, still according to the AF&C survey, 35% were one-man shows, 60% had one or two artists on stage, only 8% had four people.

There is support available, which can be provided by the state (Fonpeps support fund), by professional organizations (SACD, authors' society), or by the AF&C's Emergence and Creation Fund, but not all companies are eligible. For this last fund, endowed with €250,000, 80 companies, identified as emerging, will benefit this year. In 2024, 52% of the companies surveyed indicated they had no subsidies, according to the AF&C study.

Despite the competition, Avignon remains a must-see. "It's the only place where we can hope to give our show visibility, across the entire French-speaking world," say Marie Moriette and Emmanuel Hérault, who are present for the third year with their play Emma Picard , based on the novel by Mathieu Belezi.

Other solutions are being explored by the organizers: seeking a larger and more diverse audience, which involves mediation activities in the neighborhoods located beyond the city walls, a stronger welcome for families or even more significant rotations of the surrounding rail transport, explains Harold David.