How do you see the world when you live in a poor, very poor country like Madagascar and when you look, from there, at the West, which remains wealthy despite the crisis? Thierry Bedard asked Raharimanana to answer this question. The Madagascan author did so by bringing together a gallery of “figures” that recount, by fragments, what remains of the domain of the unnameable, what had been so deeply buried that an entire continent today is still “ill from its memory”. The West, often moulded from common places, remarkably sure of its fundamentals, is questioned when the world's disorder appears, the disorder of dominant thinking, the disorder of destitution which are at the heart of Raharimanana's writing. A writing that handles irony like a saving weapon, that likes strong images and scathing sentences. It is impossible to escape those voices that, against the protective immobility of the privileged and the powerful, disturb destructive and ineffectual conformity. The revolt of the active word is set against chaos, all those “people of little” who inhabit immense territories, more or less exploited, more or less ridiculed, more or less despised, against the figures of power. Figures of reality or fiction, humans or animals, heroes of novels or innocent victims, they all have their place to recount the state of the world. The gods, the dictators, the corrupters, the outcast, the abandoned and even the little Madagascar gecko, a supple and clever reptile, which goes everywhere and never closes its eyes. All of them take part in this “desperate but not despairing” nightmare, jointly orchestrated by an engaged director and author, served by a group of atypical interpreters who come from the theatre, stand-up comedy or music, from France and of course from Africa. JFP
Distribution
direction: Thierry Bedard
direction assistance: Tünde Deak
scenography: Marc Lainé
music: Tao Ravao
sound: Jean-Pascal Lamand
lighting: Jean-Louis Aichhorn
with: Rodolphe Blanchet, Phil Darwin Nianga, Mame Fama Ly, Mélanie Menu,
Moustapha Mohamed Mouctari, Tao Ravao, Véronique Sacri
Production
production déléguée: Bonlieu Scène nationale Annecy
production: Notoire de l'étranger(s)
coproduction: Festival d'Avignon, Théâtre de l'Union Centre dramatique national du Limousin, Scène nationale 61-Alençon, Châteauvallon Centre national de Création et de Diffusion culturelles
avec le soutien: de la Région île-de-France et du Centre dramatique national Orléans/Loiret/Centre
avec la complicité: du Centre culturel Albert Camus (Antananarivo)
Le Festival d'Avignon reçoit le soutien de l'Adami pour la production