Your play brings together intimate narratives and collective histories. How did it come into being?
In each of my projects, I am driven above all by the desire to explore a collective and political question. For my first production, Koulounisation, I explored French colonisation in Algeria. For Bâtir, I turned my focus on the suburbs. As it happens, these issues are never very far removed from my own life. They affect me because I am of Algerian descent in the case of Koulounisation, and because I grew up in these neighbourhoods in the case of Bâtir. And throughout each creative process, I made a point of meeting many people who are also directly concerned by these subjects. For Bâtir, I also met a researcher, Janoé Vulbeau. For his doctorate in social sciences, Janoé wrote a dissertation entitled Roubaix: the construction of a city in relation to Algerians. Urban policies and racialisation (1950–1990). In particular, he examines the ways in which the allocation of social housing in that city may have been structured according to racial criteria. Discovering this research acted as a catalyst in the birth of Bâtir. Around the same time, at the Rencontres d’Arles, I came across the exhibition Bâtir à hauteur d’hommes, Fernand Pouillon et l’Algérie. This retrospective shed light on the work of the French architect Fernand Pouillon in Algeria, including the large housing complexes he built around Algiers in the early 1950s. As I walked through the exhibition, the images felt strangely familiar. Everything in those photographs reminded me of the housing estates in which I had lived, not in colonial Algeria, but in France: the proportions of the buildings, their long, narrow corridors leading to dozens of apartments on each landing, the vast concrete forecourts. I had come expecting to discover another time and place, only to find myself immersed in the environment in which I grew up. I was born in Les Beaudottes, in Sevran, Seine-Saint-Denis, a housing estate built from 1971 onward and heavily inspired by the principles of Fernand Pouillon. Beyond the aesthetic resemblance, I had the feeling that I was glimpsing, through these photographs, the same political intent. Separated by twenty years and several hundred kilometres, these Algerian housing estates and that of “Les Beaudottes” seemed to follow the same logic, the same segregationist policy. This discovery gave rise to a series of questions within me: what legacy do these housing estates represent? What vision of the world shaped them? And beyond that, what connection exists between colony and suburb or, more explicitly, between race and space?
Following these questions, you conducted an investigation. Would you define Bâtir as documentary theatre?
I am not sure I would define it that way; what I can say, however, is that investigation and writing are constantly intertwined in my theatrical practice. With the help of researcher Janoé Vulbeau and playwright Hanna El Fakir, I collected materials by using as my field of exploration the different housing estates where my family has lived in France since the 1950s. Janoé Vulbeau introduced me to his research methods, which fed into this investigation and now inform my work on stage. Together, we explored municipal and departmental archives relating to these developments in order to understand what motivated the creation of these housing estates. We looked for traces of the ethno-racial logic behind their allocation. We consulted a vast body of material: plans, tender documents, preparatory reports for the construction or renovation of housing estates, municipal council records, and so on. Alongside this immersion in public archives, we also conducted a series of interviews, with the aim of diversifying the sources collected. It felt essential to take the time to meet and include urban planners, researchers, but also and above all the residents of these neighbourhoods. I have a strong interest in the social sciences. However, I believe we should not limit ourselves to academic research alone. I want to give space to another type of discourse, which I consider equally rich.
What conclusions from this investigation do you present on stage?
Many of the documents consulted in these municipal and departmental archives reveal both the stigmatisation and segregation of racialised people through public policy. What struck us most was the relationship to language: several of these sources show that the question of social housing is primarily approached through the lens of race, without ever naming it explicitly. Across these archives, an idea emerges: that of keeping people at a distance. In the plans of French cities and suburban areas, one can see a materialisation of separation and removal. Very quickly, we observe an ethno-racial management in the allocation of housing, it’s very clear. Yet originally, these large housing estates were not consciously built to house people from immigrant backgrounds. When they were constructed, they were intended for the middle classes in general and embodied an ideal of modernity. Designed as modern apartments, how did they become spaces in which ethnicity plays a structuring role? As for me, I grew up in these neighbourhoods, mainly alongside racialised people. This obvious fact is never discussed. There is a gap between a reality and the way it is publicly articulated.
Interview conducted by Vanessa Asse in March 2026