Berenice, queen of Palestine, loved Titus, the emperor of Rome. She, the stranger, the colonised person, decided to link herself with her coloniser and abandoned her homeland. She paid the price for it through a new exile, discarded by the man whom she joined in enemy territory. Faustin Linyekula based a work on this tragedy for the first time with the Comédie-Française troupe in 2009, questioning what the ideas of stranger and otherness could hide. He then took a doubly new look (that of an African and that of a choreographer) at one of the masterpieces of the French theatre, somewhat upsetting the wonderful organisation, traditions and habits attached to the performance of the classics. Today, in a second movement, he transports this heroine and the Racine-like language that accompanies her, to his own land. That of a country in troubled times whose borders are frequently stained with blood.
That of an officially French-speaking Congo, where mastery of the French language is however only the preserve of a minority. Berenice will surge up in the middle of the daily Congolese reality, creating friction between a language and the bodies that are foreign to it and that nonetheless will seize on it. Beyond this issue, Faustin Linyekula wishes to bring to the surface a large section of the dark relationship between colonisers and the colonised. Because it isn't always possible to forget the repercussions of a policy that, for nearly a century, imposed, more or less intentionally and with a quite relative success, cultural references on peoples considered, wrongly, as no longer having a culture. Repercussions often denied by the former coloniser that, after having used them as workers or cannon fodder, no longer acknowledges its African sons and considers them strangers because they no longer share the same homeland, whereas they shared the same history.
Distribution
artistic director Faustin Linyekula
assistant director Robain Lomandé Moise
music Flamme Kapaya
light Virginie Galas
with Innocent Bolunda, Madeleine Bomandje BIAC, Daddy Kamono Moanda, Joseph Pitshou Kikukama, Véronique Aka Kwadeba, Pasco Losanganya Pie XIII, Faustin Linyekula
Production
production Studios Kabako
coproduction Festival d'Avignon, Centre national de danse contemporaine Angers, Nouveau Théâtre d'Angers Centre dramatique national Pays de Loire, Théâtre national de Chaillot, Festival Theaterformen Braunschweig (Hanovre)
avec le soutien de CulturesFrance, Programme Afrique et Caraïbes en Créations et de la DRAC Île-de-France-Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication