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.