More and more companies choose the train to transport equipment and decorations to the Avignon Festival

The 2025 edition of the Avignon Festival began on Saturday.

The Avignon Festival gets to the train. For the second time, this 2025 season, the organizers of the Off festival prompted the companies to use this means of transport for their equipment and their decorations, to reduce their carbon footprint. And for the first time this summer, companies invited to the Festival In also chose the rail.

Barely the performances of the show Incredulous Completed, at the end of June in Nancy, the sets of this opera, scheduled in Avignon, were embarked in a container. “For us, it’s a real practical gain”, Comments Julien Achaintre, the technical director and production of the Lorraine National Opera. “”Instead of store, for a few weeks, the sets in our warehouses, he continues, We were able to directly load the container, (which) left for the logistics zone. So we did not have to unload and recharge the sets in Nancy and we recover the production, on July 18, at the Opera Grand Avignon. “

A saving time and maintenance too, explains Julien Achaintre: “We limit all the problems we can have in loading and unloading operations, where sometimes there is a little breakage, where sets are a little damaged and require recovery of decoration. So that has its advantage.”

For this first year of experimentation within the Festival In, two companies responded to the proposal: Nancy therefore and the Comédie-Française. This is a first step for a system that cannot concern everyone, explains Clara Moulin Thyrode, Deputy Production Director of the Festival: “You have to have the right carrier who agrees to do this to Avignon. The line must be already existing.”

“If you have to change the quay three times, it becomes much less profitable and much less interesting.”

Clara Moulin Thyrode

in franceinfo

“It would have no interest in doing this for a Toulouse company, for example, continues Clara Moulin Thyrode. It is not logical. So you must first identify what are the cities where it is interesting over a long distance, to put them on rails and in rail containers to bring them. ”

For the Off festival, 80 companies use rail freight this year. The principle being there to pool the transport of sets of several shows, notably from Île-de-France. In 2024, this had reduced CO2 emissions from the theater festival by 19 tonnes.