Street Theater and the End of A Beautiful Road Trip

France is a great place, and street theater festivals in France are good. Real good.

After spending a wonderful couple of days camping at Julian's place just outside of Geneva we spent some beautiful days in Arles, France's largest city (by area). We got to stay with some of Remi's friends who ran a great theater and artspace. They were extremely welcoming and we played cards and drank wine on their rooftop terrace. Good grief, pinch me, it was wonderful. I don't know how I missed out on photos of it, but I did. In fact I didn't get too many photos of Arles, but it's a looker in the city center, with some nice old buildings and narrow streets.

Narrow streets and arms-length walkers. 

After a few days in and around Arles we headed to Aurellac for the aforementioned street theater festival. Along the way we passed a really big bridge.

Action shot!

See? It's big.

We arrived in Aurellac and were reunited with a Frenchman we knew from Australia named Quenten, who was working the festival. Before he got us set up in a central camping area with the troupe he was helping we went straight for a show that was starting. It was hot. Blazing. I saw it the next night because it was so impressive. The entire story was told primarily in music, actions, and fire, with some songs containing lyrics but no dialogue at any point. When the songs did have lyrics they switched between French, English, and Spanish, so you had to just do the best you could with the action and fire.


Welcome to "Smile Brigade Play by Play Theater"

So everyone pictured stole a bunch of money, and the standing men and firehat women have a love rectangle going.

Purple suit is pissed and the music is awwwwesome.

There are a vast array of emotions in this scene, I can't really... Just check out all those... The fire dancing is impressive.

Big showdown! Shit goes down and they dancefight it out. Happily ever after.

Fin

That was one of a half dozen or so incredible performances I saw. There were puppets, bicycle ukulele juice makers, body percussionists, and acrobat hillbilly shows. Mix that with a street scene overrun with gutter punks (with their dogs, a near one to one ratio!) and French street food and you have a killer way to spend a whirlwind two days. 

Acrobatic hillbillies! I didn't get most of the dialogue but they jumped around a lot.

France!