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Journées théâtrales de Carthage
 

Ever since it was initiated in 1983, the ''Journées Théâtrales de Carthage'' event has been eager to open up to theatre from around the world in addition to its natural Arab and African connection. Its main goal has been to present new theatre productions, to develop futher cooperation among professionals, to widen distribution networks, etc. This ninth session, the last one of the century, opened with the theme of ''Theatre in the City''.

The programme was extremely varied and creative. Two big symposiums were held - one entitled ''Networks'' and the other on ''Theatre in the City''. There were 94 theatrical performances from 30 different countries in 11 venues in the Tunisian capital. Certain productions were selected to participate in a competition with an international jury that included Robert Abirached. Others were invited from abroad. Lastly, a third part of the programme, entitled ''A Panorama of Tunisian Theatre'', gave an idea of the wealth of activity in current Tunisian theatre.

A report by Louise Doutreligne on her trip to Carthage.


 

The Compagnie Influence, directed by Jean-Luc Paliès, presented Vita Brevis, which I freely adapted from Jostein Gaarder's novel for last year's Festival Off in Avignon. We were fortunate enough to meet Mr. Mohamed Mediouni, director of the Journées Théâtrales de Carthage, who came to one of our performances there. He immediately invited us to participate in the next Symposium in November.

I should mention that over the past few years a network of Mediterranean cultural exchanges has been developing thanks in particular to the extensive work carried out by the IITM (International Mediterranean Theatre Institute), founded by Spaniard José Monléon and of which Robert Abirached is the president of the French branch.

Last season Jean-Luc Paliès, the mainspring of the Ile-de-France chapter, began collaborating with ISADAC (Drama and Cultural Institute) in Rabat, Morocco, whose director is Ahmed Massaïa. The latter was in fact the person who advised Mr. Mediouni to attend our show in Avignon.

Tunis, 12 November. The entire Vita Brevis troupe, including actors, playwright, director and technical crew, arrived at the Hôtel International on avenue Bourguiba in Tunis on Friday evening, in full swing of the first day of the festival. The smoke-filled lobby of the large hotel was swarming with a thick crowd of people. There were lots of hugs, reunions and introductions. We were immediately welcomed by Ahmed Massaïa. But it was already past midnight and we had to be at work by 9 the following morning. Jean-Luc Paliès and I were involved in the "Networks" symposium, and our technical crew would have to go through the usual obstacle course inherent in this kind of event: finding out about the venue, the material, the Tunisian technicians etc... After a few friendly remarks, we headed for our rooms.

The "Networks" Symposium on 13 and 14 November. The networks are actually umbrella organisations whose members - directors of theatres, stage directors, actors, agents, etc. - work together either by affinity or for geographical reasons. Their aim is to promote intercultural exchanges and facilitate access to vital information for developing theatrical activities. Being part of a network implies a certain mind set. It means having a multilateral viewpoint that involves partners who share the same artistic, as well as financial, challenges. The network's quality stems from its horizontal system of operation - i. e. no vertical structures, no executive management, no orders from on high - as well as its rapid communications, permanent renewal of its members, and each group's personal reponsibility. We were there first and foremost in order to give rather than to take! Or else just to listen and be present. The network stands for trusting in cultures from other countries. The word "network" is linked to technology (telecommunications, motorways, etc). So it is naturally a tool for communicating. There are over fifty cultural networks around the world today.

Mr. Lassaâd Ben Abdallah, who was in charge of organising the symposium, wanted the discussion to open around the topic of developing and promoting works from the South in the North, as well as creating a greater wealth of South-South exchanges.

There were a great many participants in the symposium. The few French people there included Monique Blin and Patrick Le Mauff (the former and future directors of the Festival des Francophonies de Limoges), Daniel Girard (director of the Centre National des Ecritures du Spectacle de La Chartreuse); many representatives of Arab countries (from Irak, Iran, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Tunisia, Morocco, Palestine) and from sub-Saharan Africa (Benin, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso); and a few representatives from Italy and Spain, including José Monléon, the founder of IITM.

The most recurrent issue was the difficulty of promoting Arab theatre. The first realisation was that Arab playwrights do not exist because they have no status. As a playwright and representative of the SACD Theatre Commission, I broached the subject of author's rights in Arab and sub-Saharan African countries, as well as in festivals such as the present one for instance. The almost unanimous response was that it was the responsibility of the theatre companies performing the plays rather than the organisers.

Several Africans stressed the fact that, in their respective countries, all rights had to go through the government and that they experienced great difficulty in setting up independent companies and organisations to protect authors' rights.

For the tenth Journées Théâtrales in 2001, the participants proposed the idea of setting up an Afro-Arab network that would enrich and be enriched by the experience of the existing networks.

Setting up and rehearsing Vita Brevis. During the symposium, our technicians were getting acquainted with the Mohamed El Agrebi Theatre, a former chapel with a hot floor that was turned into a Theatre School in the Omhran district located in a residential area somewhat far from the centre of Tunis. They met the theatre's technicians and looked for the material that had been promised for setting up the production.

In the evening we shared fish couscous to the tune of lovely Tunisian chants accompanied by a lute player in a warm and relaxed atmosphere. Then it was back to the reception desk of the smoke-filled Hôtel International, where larger and larger crowds were gathering, with not a free seat in sight. Stars from Algerian, Moroccan and Egyptian television arrived, and all the TV and radio networks were there. We escaped out onto avenue Bourguiba, which was strangely empty for a still rather warm Saturday night. There were no cafés, no sidewalk cafés, and very few strollers, almost all of whom were men.

The festival's programming. The productions in competition came from Syria, South Africa, Palestine, Benin, Irak, Burkina Faso, Saudi Arabia, Cameroon, Algeria, Guinea, Lebanon, Senegal, Jordan, Nigeria, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Sudan, Egypt, Syria, and Tunisia. The invited productions came from The People's Republic of China, France, Spain, Rumania, Italy, Russia, Quebec, Portugal, Germany, Palestine. Lastly "the Panorama of Tunisian Theatre" featured 11 Tunisian productions.

In his opening remarks, Minister of Culture Abdelbaki Hermassi stressed President Ben Ali's constant support for culture, for which the budget is to be doubled, and underlined the vitality of Tunisian theatre. He also emphasised the importance of such events, considered crucial steps on the path to overall cultural development of the kind that Tunisia is currently experiencing in this time of change and reform.

The opening production at the Théâtre Municipal - with its wood panelling, gold leaf and statues - was the Beijing Opera's Jiansu's which dazzled the audience even in this stripped-down version for 3 performers and orchestra. The following day featured a Tunisian production by a new young playwright, Chama Ben Chaâbane, entitled Sonate d'automne, directed by Hatem Derbel. The acting was excellent, particularly the female roles.

I also saw: Aberrations du Documentaliste by Ezéchie El Garcia-Romeu and Françoise Toumsu, another French production that was invited not by our network but by the more official channel of the Institut Français de Coopération, the house was limited to 40 seemingly initiated spectators, who watched a strange puppeteer manipulating figurines and trying to solve the enigma of the world; and Eden Paradise, a Tunisian production about Rimbaud's last moments by playwright, director and set designer Hassen El Mouadhen. He seemed very inspired by Mesguich, although he had only seen his work in print and in photographs. Simultaneous translation by my friend Salem Labbene, a journalist and man of the theatre, enabled me to follow the entire show that was of very high quality and full of humour.

I was able to see very few productions, as I was only participating in the Journées Théâtrales de Carthage for a few days, and was also acting in Vita Brevis.

The "Theatre in the City" Symposium on 15, 16, 17 November. Organised by the Tunisian Ministry of Culture, this symposium was attended by large and attentive audiences. It was conducted entirely in Arabic (with simultaneous translation) with the exception of talks in French by Robert Abirached, René Rizzardo, José Monléon, Monique and Alain Léonard (Avignon Festival Off), by Daniel Girard, and in German by Dr Manfried Linke.

Very scholarly and historical talks referring back to the ancient Greeks and their city-states were presented by intellectuals and academics reflecting on the general function of theatre in the city. They reminded us that cities are not just clusters of commercial centres, banks and so on, but are also places for spreading knowledge and culture. The theatre is currently faced with three challenges: social inequality, the lack of culture in the suburbs, and financing problems.

Paul Chaoul, a poet, dramaturg, and editor-in-chief of the Lebanese newspaper

El Mustakbal, had some harsh words about the traditional image of the theatre, expressing the wish that it might be freed of its function as a mirror of society, which has its own systems of communication in the form of the media, newspapers, etc. Only Alain and Monique Léonard, speaking about the Avignon Off, and José Monléon (IITM), talked about concrete experiences. In a district in the southern part of Madrid, for example, a playwriting workshop brought ten contemporary Spanish playwrights together around the theme of "Grandfathers and Memory". The workshop resulted in plays performed by 50 actors at "Madrid Sud", a festival in the Madrid suburbs that took place in October 1999. The Avignon Off 2000 will accent playwrights, their status and place in the theatre chain.

The various speakers talked of their concern about the challenges involved in globalisation, which could slowly eliminate creative people's endeavours. When everything is a matter of domination, markets and profit, there is a risk of people's differences and singularities being rubbed out. Globalisation could make Art uniform in order to turn it into a mass consumer product or else reject it, edge it out, and finally destroy it. We must remain vigilant!

At the end of each day of the symposium, there was a ceremony awarding medals from the city of Tunis to important figures in Mediterranean theatre. These included Spaniard José Monléon, a tireless traveller and founder of IITM who made a claim that he was also Arabic due to his second name, Benasser; Egyptian actor Yahia Fakhrani, who was very jolly and got quite a few laughs when he evoked his early acting career in Carthage; and Iraqi actress Fatma Al-Rébiî, who was very moved to be there after a ten-year absence and broke out in tears, winning over the audience.

Symposiums have the advantage of sparking pleasant encounters. I'd like to mention in particular Leïla Tabel, a magnificent actress and an intelligent woman with such sadness in her eyes, with whom I had a talk while sipping coffee and tasting delicious pastries. We made a date to get together in the near future. Leïla works with Ezzedine Gannoun, a playwright, stage director and director of El Hamra, a former cinema turned into a theatre in the friendly, working-class quarter in the Medina of Tunis where we often met. Their last production of Gannoun's play, Les Feuilles mortes, had just been a big hit and an international tour is in the works.

Performing Vita Brevis on 16 November. The technical conditions at the Agrebi theatre were very different from what was described in the technical specifications. Luckily, the Compagnie Influence is a solid team, which meant that they gave free rein to their imaginations and sense of improvisation. In particular Renaud de Manoël - a one-man band and magnificent actor and a real "man of the theatre" in every sense of the word - expended an amazing amount of energy before even going on stage in order to finish the lighting in time for the curtain. As for Jean-Luc Paliès, he made up the lighting plan as we went along with only 12 projectors instead of 40! The set was put together using the curtains and platforms found on site, and all the props and bits of sets that we were wise enough to bring with us. Luckily, we got through the day in relatively good spirits.

The first performance was at 6 p.m. to a full house. Thanks to help from a Moroccan friend, young playwright and director Bousselham Daïf, and to the ingenuity of our manager, Florence Joly, we were able to hand out programmes in Arabic and French explaining how the scenes progressed. At the end of the performance a lot of very enthusiastic young students asked for our autographs and would have liked to prolong the discussions. But unfortunately at 9 p.m. we had to put on the second performance to a half-empty theatre. We regretted having this second performance on the same day which was originally scheduled on another day. On the same evening at the municipal theatre in the centre of town across from the Hôtel International, an Egyptian show was going on. The Egyptian stars are really big here because they are on all of the daily soaps on television .... like everywhere else! As an anecdote, Leïla Tabel told me that people in Tunis have been known to change the date and time of their wedding so they wouldn't miss a soap opera...!
 

Given how pleased we were to participate in the various symposiums, to meet artists, journalists and people involved in cultural endeavours, and to see productions from other countries, I still believe that we must pursue all experiences - regarding both author's rights and presenting artistic creations - that allow us to be present at events in countries with such different experiences and past histories. But it is hoped that the energy we have expended in bringing this project to fruition on all levels - artistic, administrative and technical - will provide concrete help in improving all forms of exchange and effectively establishing recognition of the status of playwrights, the promotion of their works and respect of their rights in those countries. In conclusion, I would like once again to salute the initiative of Mohamed Mediouni and his entire team in organising this multicultural symposium of fundamental importance for the present and future.

Louise Doutreligne, 28th November, 1999