Protesters Occupy French Theaters, Demanding Reopening

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/11/theater/france-theater-protests-pandemic-shutdown.html

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PARIS — Dozens of protesters stood outside the Colline theater here on Wednesday, waving signs. “Better ‘The Rite of Spring’ than a massacre until spring,” read one; “We want to dream again,” said another.

The protesters were there to support others inside the building who have occupied the playhouse since Tuesday, demanding the reopening of theaters across France.

Cultural institutions here have been closed since October, when rising coronavirus cases led the government to heavily restrict social life. France has lifted some restrictions since, including on some stores, but there is still a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew in cities, restaurants can only offer takeout, and museums, music venues and movie theaters remain closed.

Protesters, most of them actors, theater workers and students, now occupy at least seven theaters across the country — including the Odéon Theater in Paris and the National Theater of Strasbourg — in the hope of forcing the government to restart cultural life.

“We want to bring life back to these venues, not blockade them,” said Sébastien Kheroufi, a drama student and one of the occupiers at La Colline.

Frustration at the continued shutdown of cultural life in France has been building for weeks. Last Thursday, trade unions representing arts workers organized more than 30 protests around the country to demand a reopening date, as well as an extension to special unemployment benefits for actors and musicians.

During one of those marches in Paris, around 50 people entered the shuttered Odéon, one of the city’s most prestigious theaters, which was also occupied in the student protests of 1968. The demonstrators have since refused to leave, although they have allowed rehearsals taking place there for Christophe Honoré’s new play “The Sky of Nantes,” initially scheduled for a March premiere but now postponed until next season, to continue.

On Saturday, Roselyne Bachelot, France’s culture minister, made a surprise visit to the Odéon to meet with the demonstrators. “I understand the concerns,” she wrote on Twitter after the meeting. “My objective is to continue to protect artistic employment,” she added.

But this week, her tone changed. “Occupying performance venues is not the answer,” Bachelot told lawmakers on Wednesday, calling the occupations “pointless” and “dangerous.”

Yet a number of theater directors have welcomed the occupations, including La Colline’s director, Wajdi Mouawad, who said in an emailed statement: “La Colline supports, in dialogue and trust, the actions of the students.”

France is still recording high, if stable, levels of coronavirus infection. On Wednesday, the French government announced that a further 30,000 people had tested positive for the virus in the last day, while there had been 264 deaths after a positive test.

Joachim Salinger, an actor who is part of the occupation at the Odéon, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday night that there were around 45 protesters in the building, and that everyone was wearing masks and maintaining distance from one another.

At La Colline, the occupiers all took coronavirus tests before they entered the building, Kheroufi, the student protester, said.

“Occupying a theater is a lot of work,” said Mélisande Dorvault, 23, another protester at La Colline. “We try to listen to everyone, to take different opinions into account and vote on decisions,” she added.

The demonstrators at La Colline appeared to have support from nearby business owners also hit hard by the pandemic. Achour Mandi, a barman at the nearby Café des Banques, said he felt a kinship with the protesters. “We’re in the same mess,” Mandi said, pointing to the restrictions on restaurants.

When the government announced new coronavirus measures in the fall, it banned public performances but said theaters would reopen Dec. 15. That plan was scrapped when a target of bringing new case numbers under 5,000 a day was missed.

“Since December, we’ve had absolutely no visibility about what is going to happen,” Salinger said.

Other arts institutions, such as museums, have also called on the government for a reopening timetable. In February, the heads of dozens of the country’s major museums pleaded with the government to allow them to open their doors. “For an hour, for a day, for a week or a month, let us,” they wrote in an open letter published in Le Monde, the daily newspaper.

Soon afterward, the mayor of the city of Perpignan, in the south of the country, ordered his city’s four museums to reopen in defiance of national rules, saying his city had “suffered enough, and its inhabitants need this patch of blue sky.” The government took the city to court and the museums shut again.

The anger among workers in the arts sector is compounded by the French government’s recent decision to go ahead with an unpopular reform of unemployment benefits, set to take effect in July. The withdrawal of this change is one of the theater protesters’ demands.

On Thursday, union representatives held a video call with Bachelot and Jean Castex, France’s prime minister, where they announced 20 million euros in new support for cultural workers and young graduates. But in a phone interview afterward, Salinger said the measures were insufficient. “We will stay,” he added.

At La Colline on Wednesday, Kheroufi said he thought the protesters would be there for the long haul. “We’ll stay for as long as it takes,” he said. “If I leave, what do I do? Go home? Where can we go?”