La Maison Jean Vilar, the keys to the Festival d'Avignon (opening July 2025)

Maison Jean Vilar (the place to remember the Festival d'Avignon)

The Maison Jean Vilar is a place for remembering, transmitting and inventing the work of Jean Vilar and popular theater. Jean Vilar passed away in 1971. It immediately seemed necessary to collect documents relating to his work, those of the Théâtre National Populaire when he was its director (1951-63), and those of the Avignon Festival as a whole, which he created in 1947. On the initiative of Paul Puaux, his closest collaborator and successor as director of the Festival d'Avignon (1971-79), the Association Jean Vilar was founded in 1972. A joint effort by the Association, the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the City of Avignon led to the certainty of the importance of a house dedicated to Jean Vilar and to reflection on today's world of the performing arts. In 1979, with the city's acquisition of the Hôtel de Crochans, the Maison Jean Vilar became a place for exhibitions, archives and research, as well as a venue for meetings and events in keeping with the spirit of popular theater today. This project is part of a quadripartite agreement between the City of Avignon, the French Ministry of Culture, the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Association Jean Vilar.