The fabulous tales of Shéhérazade Photo Thierry Cortès
The Festival Les Zébrures d'Automne - From scriptures to the scene (September 22 - October 2, 2021) ended with a gathering note.Very different provenances and aesthetics, Flying Charriot (s) of the Indianostrum company, the fabulous tales of Shehérazade and the sea is my nation invent bridges between cultures.Everyone has their technique: Charriot, flying carpet, walking..
In terms of crossing between languages, between cultures, the zebraures - new name of the Francophonies in Limousin since the arrival at his management of Hassane Kassi Kouyaté in 2019 - no longer have to make their reputation.The fall edition of 2021 is no exception: among the programmed shows, many were born out of meetings between artists and cultural structures of different origins.The result is an open vision of La Francophonie, faithful to that which the director told us want to defend when we met him in the aftermath of his appointment (see here our article).
In his way of understanding this complex notion that is the Francophonie, he said to us then, "the language is not central.The important thing is culture.I defend a Francophonie of flesh, creation, dialogue, sharing ”.The last days of the festival, which we have attended, illustrate these words.With in particular the Indian play Flying Charriot (s) and the two Franco-Lebanese shows The fabulous tales of Shéhérazade and the sea is my nation, they were a moment of exchange, crossing borders in various ways, rarely rational, the mostoften carrying hope.
In the first two shows mentioned, it is by the tale, also practiced by Hassane Kassi Kouyaté From a family of griots, that artists throw bridges between cultures.Born in 2007, following the meeting of the author, actor and Indian director Koumarane Valavane with the director Ariane Mnouchkine for her creation the last caravanserail, the Indianostrum company of Pondicherry regularly draws its forces and its inspiration in a bigepic famous far beyond its Hindu origins: Mahabharata.This is the case in Flying Chariot (s), scheduled this year in Limoges, where the company has been well known since in 2018, under the leadership of its director Marie-Agnès Sevestre, the Francousin Francophonies have co-produced with theThéâtre de l'Union Le Spectat Chandâla.
Claiming "Indian, French and European roots", Koumarane Valavane starts From a fabulous history of the great Hindu text to evoke a recent tragedy: the civil war of Sri Lanka, which by opposing Cingais Buddhist and Tamils Hindu has made more than 100,000victims between 1983 and 2009.The central character of Flying Chariot (s), Ajay, is a young Indian plane pilot who, back From Sri Lanka, finds himself locked up as a psychiatric asylum for having revealed the violence that forced him to commit the Indian government.The Mahabharata invites itself into this near past through a memory of childhood of the hero: his mother, he said, often told him the story of King Yudhishtira and his flying tank: "He had a chariot that never touchedthe ground because he always told the truth.- Yes, but he lied once.Yes, during the Kurukshetra War when he said half a truth to defeat Dronacharya and Dhadaam!Its tank definitely fell on the ground!»».
The family of storytellers Darwiche, also invited this year to the autumn zebraures as part of an entirely Free sleepless night which closed the festival on October 2, takes hold of the fabulous tales of shéhérazade of another inexhaustible work:The thousand and One Nights.Response to the request of Hassane Kassi Kouyaté, who is keen to develop the share of creation of her festival, this spectacle apprehends the famous collection of tales with a Freedom very different From that which Koumarane Valavane allows himself to the other founding text citedearlier.Jihad Darwiche and his two daughters Layla and Najoua do not indeed use the writing of a contemporary fable to share with us some of the stories told by Shéhérazade to the King of Persia, Chahriar, in order to save the women of the kingdom ofthe death to which these were promised.In the pure tradition of the tale, they take together these stories with their words and their sensitivity, but with respect for the stories as they were able to discover them in the different existing translations.
The obvious complicity between the three storytellers places at the heart of the show the notion of transmission: without them needing to formulate it, they express the way in which the Thousand and one nights have fueled their dialogue, From Lebanon where Jihad and Layla areborn, to France where everyone lives today.And where everyone happy, everyone in their own way.Although less hybrid than Flying Chariot (s), whose scenography mainly made of roller platforms borrows without hiding From Ariane Mnouchkine whose almost choreographed decor changes are very recognizable - and this is only one of theMany examples of borrowing and quotes that Koumarane Valavane -, the fabulous tales of Sheherazade with malice, presents interesting discrepancies compared to the tradition of the eastern public storyteller.Starting with the presence on the same scene of three storytellers.By deciding to make collective an individual practice, the Darwiche affirm their anchoring in the present.We follow them happily on their trip, no longer on board a tank but a flying carpet.
The in-between countries, in the sea is my nation, is expressed in a very different way than the fabulous tales of shéhérazade.We have to do there to a contemporary writing: that of Hala Moughanie well known to Francousin Francophonies, for having received in 2015 the RFI Prize for his first text, shut up and hollow, and to have presented in reading in 2018Its second room, the sea is my nation.It is this year directed by Imad Assaf that she returned to Limousin.In Nexon precisely, in the new vessel of the National Cirque pole which is associated for the first time with the Zea.Lebanese too, but installed in France, the director presents his creation as part of "an approach and a desire for Franco-Lebanese collaboration;It aims to build a French spectacle around an artistic and human rapprochement between individuals, universes, realities, vibrations From these two countries ".
Unlike the two shows described earlier, this crossing of cultures is not expressed by an anchoring in one or more specific places: the city invaded by waste where the couple imagined by Hala Moughanie could well be located anywhere.And the mother and her daughter who, fleeing an ever named war, land in Front of the Fragile shack of man and woman, could come From any country.The author thus seeks to achieve a form of universal speech on exile, both inner - that of the couple - and provoked by a political, social or ecological context violent.Imad Assaf chooses to represent this anonymous space, metaphor of all spaces, by a small house lost in the mist.This image is not however strong and singular enough to give to hear the shades of the text of Hala Moughanie, to give to grasp the mixture of tragic and black humor which circulates between the four protagonists.
Hassane Kassi Kouyaté and her team measure these days how important it is to allow imaginations to deploy, meetings to take place, to have a good house.If they happily develop the festival in all Limoges and beyond, thanks to new partnerships with places in the region, they need a space where to work for the year and where to install the heart of their international festival.Now the barracks where a concert scene, a bookstore, a bar Les Offices or the canteen of the festival are located, may no longer be made available next year next year.
Anaïs Heluin - www.sceneweb.Fr
Flying Chariot (s)
Mise en scène Koumarane Valavane
Avec Anjana Balaji, Dharanidharan Ulagappan, Lakshmipriyaa Chandramouli, Garima Mishra, Maya S Krishnan, R.Natarajan, Abhay Mahajan • Song Siddanth Sundar • Music Arjun Chandran • Scenography Joseph Bernard
Production
Théâtre Indianostrum • Pondichéry
Sun Theater
From October 15 to 24, 2021
