Boris Gresillon

 

The Avignon Festival was created in 1947 by Jean Vilar (1912-1971). Vilar had been invited to present his first major success, T.S. Eliot's "Murder in the Cathedral", during an exhibition of contemporary painting and sculpture in the large chapel of the Pope's Palace, organised mainly by the poet René Char. Used to working in small spaces, Vilar refused, saying the Palace's cour d'honneur was too big – and in any case he no longer had the rights to the play. Instead he suggested putting on three new productions: Shakespeare's Richard II, almost unknown at that time in France, Claudel's Tobie et Sara and La Terrasse de midi, Maurice Clavel's second play. So from the very first Festival, in September 1947, the programme offered a mix of little known classics and contemporary texts.

 

Jean Vilar wanted to reach a new, young, attentive audience with a different kind of theatre from what was going on in Paris at the time. "To breathe life into an art that is withering away in antichambers, cellars and salons; to reconcile dramatic structure with poetry". He worked with a young group of actors (Alain Cuny, Germaine Montero). Encouraged and supported financially by Jeanne Laurent, director of live performance for the Secretary of State for Fine Arts, this first Art Week grew steadily with ever-richer programmes attracting more and more people. Without doubt though, 1951 was the year the Festival took off: Gérard Philippe made his first appearance on the Avignon stage and Jean Vilar was nominated head of the Théâtre national populaire at the Palais de Chaillot in Paris. And from that began the greatest adventure of French post-war theatre.