Since 25 years that I work in the theater,
I found that in theaters, we always find the same type of audience.
85% of the French population does not go to the theater,
and the 15% who go are those who are mostly represented on stage.
Why do not people go to the theater?
Is this art, which I consider popular,
would be considered elitist,
expensive,
even dusty and boring for the most part?
Not for them, what!
Would there be a symbolic barrier
between people and theater?
And at that moment, how to break this imaginary barrier?
If people do not go to the theater,
maybe the solution would be for the theater to come to them.
So if we went to play at home?
To achieve this challenge, I proposed to Alain Grasset to help me.
It is one of the forerunners of home theater in France,
and I chose a territory completely stigmatized by the media,
considered a cultural desert,
factory of jihadists and den to dealers,
I went to see the mayor of Sevran,
a city of 93 of 50,000 inhabitants,
one of the poorest cities in France.
Well, despite that,
he was very excited about my proposal,
and he agreed to give me the means to carry it out,
with actors and professional artists from the national network,
while being free for the inhabitants.
The first barrier was passed,
that of money, which is not least of all.
Now, we had to take up the challenge:
how to find the first person
who would accept to go play at home?
March 1st, 2011.
I arrive in this great territory that I do not know,
I travel the city in all directions in search of the rare pearl.
I go to the city party,
in municipal services, neighborhood houses, associations,
and one day that I was in the district Rougemont, neighborhood of large ensembles,
at the foot of a tower,
in an association where ladies meet to make pastry,
I see a young woman arrive.
Geraldine.
She was looking for someone to be her guinea pig,
to test the massage classes she had just taken.
I said to myself, “Here is a wacky person like me,
maybe she will accept my proposal. “
I do not know if it’s the prospect of receiving a show in his living room,
to debate with the artists after the show or to meet their neighbors,
but she said yes.
A few days later,
I find myself at her place, a small apartment in downtown Sevran,
to organize the evening.
We agree that she should invite about twenty people,
his friends but especially his neighbors,
that the show obviously would be free and followed by a debate,
and that, on the other hand,
everyone could bring something to drink or eat
to finish the evening sympathetically.
A few days later, I come back with the artistic team.
We set the scene,
and, when installing the seats for the spectators,
I ask Géraldine to update her guests.
She tells me :
“Well, I’ve found some friends, of course, who will come tonight,
but I have not managed to mobilize my neighbors at all.
– Well, OK, it does not matter, we’ll go ring at home! “
And here we are parties in the building ring on all floors.
In the evening, we were so many that I spent all the performance
glued to the wall of the bottom of the apartment.
After the show,
we had a very rich and emotional debate,
and I understood why Geraldine had accepted.
The theme discussed in the play, the coma, touched her particularly,
because his sister-in-law had been in this state for several years.
I think it was very good to be able to put words on this silence.
The first barrier, after that of money, had fallen.
We had managed to play a contemporary theater show
before an audience that, for the most part, had never been to the theater.
Some lucky and especially courageous have accepted the challenge in their turn,
and take a performance at home that evening at Géraldine’s.
The “snowball” system was launched.
The first year,
we performed 45 home theater performances,
the second year, 75, the third year, 150,
and last year there were 240 performances.
As and when …
(Applause)
As and when the inhabitants demand,
the broadcasting territory was increasing,
and then, thankfully, the subsidies with.
We went from one city to twelve cities.
(Applause)
Nevertheless, the first year, I thought:
“Great! People agree to come play at home,
now we have to find a way for people to come to the theater.
How can we do ?
maybe
to include them in the creative process would change things.
I went to another Géraldine, who is an artist,
and who is used to doing participatory shows.
We decided to do a show called “Put your suitcase”,
on the issue of migration.
And there, Geraldine told me:
“It would be nice if twenty people agree to go on stage,
with the artists. — OK.
We will go get them. “
Here we are again in Sevran,
no longer looking for people who would agree to come play at home,
but people who would agree to play with actors on stage.
Géraldine explained the project,
Salah and Nasreddine, the singer and choirmaster of the show,
played a little song and I took the inscriptions.
We met about 200 people, 100 registered,
and finally, not 20, but 50 people,
have agreed to go on stage with the artists.
The evening of the first,
What was I happy with when I saw the theater
people, men, women who came with strollers,
with cakes, with mafés like at home theater.
Another barrier had been dropped,
because it was not the same audience anymore,
uniform, which I had always seen in theaters,
but really a multiple audience, which is a reflection of our diversity.
Finally,
after the show, we made a big beef,
it was really crazy, pretty happy,
but even if everyone was crying,
we did not want to leave each other,
and I thought, “We have to find the way
that these artists can stay longer in the territory
to soak up the life of the inhabitants. “
And there, I imagined cycles of creation that would last two years.
The artists would first come and listen to the inhabitants,
interview them, write pieces from their testimonies,
these rooms, the first season, were going to turn in the home of the inhabitants.
The second season,
another team was going to make a big show, a synthesis of all that.
We were going to play theater with other inhabitants.
I proposed to the different teams to work, that year,
on the question of the masculine and the feminine.
Everyone has seized the subject in his own way:
there are some who wanted to work on mother-son relationships,
others on domestic violence,
others again on the question of so-called “feminine” work.
or so-called “male” occupations.
In any case,
not only the 3,000 spectators we met at home
during the first season,
came back the second season see the show at the big hall,
but above all we had dropped a barrier,
but this time, on the artists’ side.
They had agreed to write some pieces,
no longer from their point of view,
but from the point of view of the inhabitants.
Eh yes ! It’s not that easy
to confront his opinion to that of others.
As Larry Lessig, a Harvard professor, says,
and specialist in the law on the Internet,
with the advent of algorithms,
as we talked about earlier,
in social networks,
we are always facing people who have the same profile as us.
The contradiction no longer really exists.
It is therefore very important to recreate citizen spaces of dialogue and exchange,
where we speak with people who do not have the same opinion as us.
A few weeks ago, while we were finishing
the tour of “I am a woman but I am caring”,
in the apartments in Sevran,
a resident, Noémie, who lives in a small suburban area
near the Powder Park,
call me and tell me:
“Valerie, I’m very worried because for tomorrow night’s performance,
almost everyone has withdrawn, there are more than 5 people. We cancel?
I do not know if it’s because of the holidays … “
I said: “Everything is organized, it’s still very annoying.
I’ll call you back. I’ll see what I’m going to do. “
And here I call Aisha,
another inhabitant of Sevran, who lives in a neighborhood of large ensembles,
– which is called Pont-Blanc –
and who participated in the writing of the play.
Aisha,
I also present him the problem,
she says to me, “I’ll see what I can do. I’ll call you back.”
Two hours later, Aïcha reminds me and says:
“I found fifteen people to go to the lady tomorrow night,
is that enough? “
The next day we ended up at Noémie’s.
Noémie was not afraid to open her door to Aisha, whom she did not know,
and Aisha was not afraid to come with her fifteen friends to Noemie’s house.
They all arrived with dishes they had prepared for the occasion.
The debate that followed this representation
was particularly rich,
because he put in dialogue
people who did not have the same opinion on the subject of the play
to know “Women and Islam”.
Everyone listened to divergent opinions –
It must be said that a polycultural buffet, it helps to think sometimes.
But that day,
another barrier had been dropped:
we had succeeded in creating a citizen space for dialogue between the inhabitants.
Moreover, as this experiment was especially convincing,
we decided that from the beginning of the school year,
we were going to propose to the inhabitants who live in different districts
to organize together performances at home.
All that
comes from the trust that has built up over the years,
between the inhabitants, the artists,
and the small team that formed around me.
It’s an ant job,
but now, when the last collective artists,
who just arrived on the territory,
to be in total immersion with the inhabitants,
asks us to go to sleep at home,
it’s immediately possible.
All that was not easy
all these barriers have not been easy to overcome.
I think there will be others.
And it’s true, we’re not used to mixing, neither in theaters,
neither in social networks nor in neighborhoods.
We all stay together because we all
our fears, our prejudices, our certainties.
But at the time of the rise of extremism of all kinds,
I think it’s important, even vital,
to agree to open his door to discuss,
to open the dialogue with the other.
I did it with the means that is mine, the theater,
and you see that it is possible, since since the twenty spectators,
we met at Géraldine’s at the first presentation,
we soon opened the dialogue with 20,000 spectators –
(Applause)
twenty thousand spectators who agreed to be jostled,
and sometimes even transformed.
So, you, tomorrow,
with what means could you open the dialogue?
Thank you.
(Applause)
”
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