OPENING HOURS, ACcESS & ADMISSION 

scroll

Jean-Vilar

General Information 

Located in the Maison Jean Vilar, the Library managed by the Department of Performing Arts of the BnF offers over 33,000 books and periodicals on performing art as well as archives and documentation on festivals and live performing arts in Avignon. It is freely accessible to everyone, researchers, students, professionals and amateurs and develops local partnerships with teaching and training structures.
 
Maison Jean Vilar’s website
  • Wifi
  • Café

Maison Jean-Vilar

8, rue de Mons,
84000 Avignon
Phone : +33(0)4 90 27 22 84
Contact : maison-jean-vilar@bnf.fr
 

The reading room of the library is open:

Tuesdays to Fridays
from 2 PM to 6 PM
Saturdays
from 11 AM to 6 PM
Closed on Sundays and Mondays

Please note

  • The library is accessible upon request outside of opening hours 
  • During the Festival d’Avignon in July, the Maison Jean Vilar and the library are open every day with extended opening hours. 
  • Closed on bank holidays*
  • Annual closing: August and two weeks before the end of the year
*1 January, Easter Sunday and Monday, 1 and 8 May, Ascension Thursday, Pentecost Sunday and Monday, 15 August, 1 and 11 November, 25 December 

Research Library

The mission of the Avignon branch of the BnF,  Attached to the Department of Performing Arts, is to collect, preserve and enhance the memory of the Avignon Festival, the OFF, the Winter festival and other showplaces in Avignon: archives, programs, files press, posters, photographs, videos. It also offers a large library specialized in performing arts, free and open to all. In its two reading rooms of 40 places in total, it welcomes free public - researchers, students, professionals, amateurs.

Library 

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
  2PM
-
6PM		 2PM
-
6PM		 2PM
-
6PM		 2PM
-
6PM		 2PM
-
​​​​​​​6PM		  

Access to the Library is entirely free 

Reading rooms 

  • 40 seats 
  • Group room  equipped for large screen projection

21,000 books free of access

  • 4,000 books on performing arts: theater, dance, opera, cinema, circus, clowns, marionettes, mime artists, street theater etc. in the main room
  • 17,000 texts from the classic and contemporary drama repertoire in the adjacent room 
  • About 100 general books on culture and cultural decentralization

and also

  • Albums featuring 10,000 photographies of the shows presented at the Festival d’Avignon by year (1972-2013)
  • A selection of books on Jean Vilar, the TNP and the Festival d’Avignon as well as programs of the Festival d’Avignon and of the Festival OFF

Catalogs and research tools  

The documents kept at the Bibliothèque de la Maison Jean Vilar are inventoried in two online catalogs: 

Manuscripts and archive collections 

The records of each archive collection contain a short historical presentation as well as indications on how to conserve them. 
For some archive collections, internal inventories on paper can be consulted on site. 
 

Manuscripts and archive collections catalog

Other documents 

To limit your research to the collections of the Maison Jean Vilar, use the ‘Localization’ filter and opt for ‘Maison Jean Vilar’.
All our documents are not yet in the general catalog. Some can be consulted on site on card catalogs and searchable by author, personality, title, topic, article, and periodical. 

 

General catalog

Services

  • Communication of Jean Vilar and Jean Rouvert collections: apply for authorization at Association Jean Vilar
  • Communication of heritage collections and storage book and periodicals
  • Free consultation of books, periodicals, photo albums, programs of the festival d’Avignon and of the Festival OFF. 
  • Consultation of digital resources of the Bibliothèque nationale de France: Gallica intra muros, periodicals in electronic format, online database, Internet Archives etc. 
  • Information and Bibliographic research both on-site and remote
  • Article research by topic, place or personality (actor, director, choreographer, author, scenographer etc.)
  • Paying photocopying service 
  • Wifi access: visitors can use the ‘BNF’ wifi network available in both reading rooms of the Maison Jean Vilar

Enhancing the collections  

  • We organize pedagogical activities on demand and a la carte (please request an appointment with the person in charge): Lenka Bokova (lenka.bokova@bnf.fr), phone: + 33(0)4 90 27 22 80
  • We make available bibliographies on the festivals d’Avignon and on Les Hivernales
  • We showcase and exhibit documents with links to the performing art world