(Make it clear in para 7 that Coquereau is male)
PARIS, April 11 (Reuters) – French actress Isabelle Cagnat wants to return to the stage once the pandemic is over, but on Sunday she had to be content to perform from behind the windows of a fashion boutique.
Outside the hip clothing store in central Paris, a crowd of several dozen people gathered under a cold gray sky, some passers-by, others who saw notices on social media. Organizers begged the audience to stand well apart to avoid problems with the police.
“It’s an act of defiance to say ‘we’re here, we’re ready to perform anywhere,'” Cagnat said after an hour-long performance of ‘Amnesiacs Haven’t Experienished Anything Unforgettable’ based on the book by the French author Herve. Le Tellier.
“(It’s) to show that we need art in life, we have to think, we have to dream, we have to cry. You could see the audience was emotional. Everyone misses the theater.”
Theaters, cinemas, art galleries and other cultural spaces have been closed since October and with France in a third nationwide exclusion because coronavirus infections dominate Europe, it is unclear when they will reopen.
In the street, the audience relied on a speaker to convey the lines of Cagnat and her co-performer Etienne Coquereau.
Within the boutique, Coquereau said, any intimacy is diminished by the wall of glass that separated him from the audience, but there was still a connection.
“We had their expressions, their radiant faces, full of joy you could see,” the 62-year-old said.
Coquereau said it was time for the authorities to allow theaters to reopen with social distance measures – a sentiment some share in their audience.
“It was a wonderful moment, with everything going on,” said paramedic Jean-Michel Petit. (Edited by Michaela Cabrera and Clotaire Achi; Written by Richard Lough; Edited by Barbara Lewis, William Maclean)
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