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Finir en beauté
Mohamed El Khatib
Finir en beauté
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Actes du théâtre n° 85.[ imprimer ]
Mohamed El Khatib wanted to write a play based on interviews with his mother. On February 20, 2012, her death brought it all to an end. On her hospital bed his mother asked him: "No operation or anything? — No, nothing. There's nothing they can do."
The son's inner collapse is embodied in a sporadic narrative in a composite form using diary excerpts, emails sent and received, phone messages, texts, snippets of exchanges with his father, transcribed recordings and videos. The intimate material spans fiction and documentary. His snapshots of life are sensitive evocations of family, country, native tongue, memories and mourning. Alone on stage, Mohamed El Khatib takes this autobiographical story through a moving, but also caustic and funny cartography.

"The text Pièce en un acte de décès from which Mohamed El Khatib developed his show was published by Michèle Braconnier. The publication is as elegant as the performance by Mohamed El Khatib. It has been done in a beautiful and inventive way, a fine reflection of the author's intentions."
Jean-Pierre Han, Revue Friction, Impudique pudeur

"This is a story about life, not death, with memories that are joyful, anecdotes at times cruel and mostly funny, painting a portrait of an ordinary working-class family where the children have grown up in a little house bought on credit but with a garden. Mohamed El Khatib has fun telling it, featuring clichés about Arabs in general and immigrants in particular, about voting rights, always promised but never acquired, about slitting sheep's throats in the bathtub, about the childhood friend who converted to Islam, about the imam who sends text messages during the graveside service, holding his cellphone in one hand and the Koran in the other, and about mourning ceremonies as an obligatory ritual. You laugh and then you cry."
Marie-José Sirach, L'Humanité, Récit de la mère morte

Opened October 1st, 2014 as part of actOral – festival international des arts et des écritures contemporaines (Marseille). Then tour. Avignon Off 2015. Théâtre de la Cité Universitaire (Paris) September 28- October 23, 2015. Etc.
English translation by Bérénice Paupert.

Text and concept: Mohamed El Khatib. Visual environment: Fred Hocké.
Sound environment: Nicolas Jorio. Created by the collective Zirlib (www.zirlib.fr).

Characters : 1 men -
Publié en France aux Solitaires Intempestifs et en Belgique par L'L éditions (Bruxelles). - www.solitairesintempestifs.com

February 28th

We hadn't cried in 2 days.
It was about 7 p.m. and we had to feed all the well-wishers, not knowing if they were there for my mother or for the food or a bit of both.
So we went looking for the little soup bowls to put out and I couldn't find them. We started looking but couldn't find them.
My sisters joined in and so did my father. Nothing.
Nothing, and I could feel the tension slowly and relentlessly rising because of those little soup bowls. After fifteen minutes we still couldn't find those little hemispheric recipients designed to hold soup that would allow us to send people home.
They've got to be somewhere those little soup bowls. It's time they showed up those fucking soup bowls because I've had about enough of them. If someone has had fun hiding the little bowls, thanks that's very funny, but it's enough now, it's not the time for that, so just give the little soup bowls back before something bad happens.
Then my father suddenly bursts into tears, hit with the full impact of the little bowls disappearing and realizing how soup deprived of a bowl is useless.
At that moment the entire family - absolutely everyone - starts crying again, faced with this heartbreaking void, reminding us that she's no longer there, the only person who knew those fucking little bowls were inside the soup tureen.



Chronicle of a Death Foretold

"I assembled the 'life material' available to me between May 2010 and August 2013. I didn't always get permission. I didn't take into consideration questions of boundaries, decency or modesty. I assembled what I could and then pieced it back together. It all happened very quickly, with no premeditation. This documentary fiction is reconstructed arbitrarily here in the form of a book, in quite linear, chronological order. There's no suspense. At the end we know that she dies and her son is really really sad. We also know that if it were to be done again I'd probably do it differently. I would have been more present. I would have been more thoughtful. I would have been nicer. I would have been more curious. I would have taken into account the symptoms. I would have tried to help the right way. I would have tried to be more involved. I would have tried to find the best clinic. I would have learned Arabic. I would have stood together with the family. I would have tried to be above average. I would have been a son beyond reproach.
Parents are always wondering if they were good parents. But were we good children? Were we up to snuff as children? Were we Olympic?"
Note from the playwright