An Die Musik goes to the Avignon Festival-Le Festival d’ Avignon 1975
& looking at this group photo you may well think we were on holiday, but it wasn’t so! We were working, we were there to perform An Die Musik. The Avignon festival was impressive, our dressing room is in a tent, this was the festivals 25th year. It was (and is) an international meeting place for the performing arts, Theatre, Dance, Music and… us.
Group shot on the beach-Emil, Olly, Rod, Ben, Pete, Pip, Roderic, Chris, Sheila and Rowan front
Pete & Rod oggle Babette with touring van in the background
Paula, Roderic & Emil at breakfast with dove
Emil, Emil & Sheila, Roderic and Rod backstage, an actor prepares
Our festival stage is made of wood riddled with nails, our dressing room a tent with the mulchy aroma of damp grass, our show starts late about 9.00 we have a make-shift bar which is full every night, the festival audience are wild and young and exciting and I swear I saw Pierre Clementi. The nails in the stage wouldn’t usually matter except we have these carefully rehearsed ‘punishments’ & it is my turn to roll around in water on this improvised stage which tore my flesh. Next day Olly and I are sitting in the sunshine on the grass whilst he applied tiger balm to my shoulders to help them heal, a french couple walked by, they must have been in the audience, they spat out the words “so you call that theatre do you”
The so called ‘punishments’ are dolled out by our Nazi guard (Pete) The show starts with an an Air Raid Siren and a roll call. Everyone shuffles in to position and stands to attention. The set up is to entertain our audience, its Petes job as Nazi guard to make sure we do it well; a dance to Liszt’s Libestraum, a concert ‘Ode to Joy’ with a tin whistle 2 recorders and a Tuba, Rod did a strange routine bashing his head with 2 tin trays, Olly and Emil tell awful jokes, we all had our party piece; hang from a trapeze, endless buckets of cold water, we are picked on us for no reason, we don’t know who’s turn it’s going to be which creates the tension ! The physical demands are tough, we take it on the chin. Every one of us performing in this show realise the impact it has on our audience who feel culpable as they helplessly watch. This show is as hard to behold as it is to perform.
Avignon is beautiful, It’s no surprise that we take full advantage of every opportunity to visit the local wonders, The Camargue, The Pont du Gard, Orange … Ben was the person to be with, he knows all the best places to go. He has a map and we follow….
Peter Jon-field with Venus De Milo
We have a new Nazi guard played by a new recruit, Peter Jon-field a proper actor who had studied at E15, Fritz our original Nazi has left, he was German and didn’t want to be the Nazi guard, he argued with Pip …why me ! It was obvious to everyone why it had to be Fritz who could speak German, he made a great on stage guard, Pete Jon-field was even better, he scared us to death with his E15 training and kept us on our toes with our improvised punishments. We all decided on and carefully rehearsed these ‘punishments’ and took it in turns to do the really hard ones An Die Musik was a hard show to perform and even harder show to watch.
Rehearsals are in progress for the next show, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, an all singing all dancing show, we had to lighten up…..
All photos © Sheila Burnett