Theatre
Sébastien Kheroufi
Through the villages
16 - 18 Feb 2024
The event is over
"One day someone representing the authorities arrives with a tape recorder and a camera, he feels sorry us and expects us to feel sorry for ourselves too. But we want to be seen differently. We want to be praised. Even better: our place should be glorified with its colours and its shapes." Peter Handke, Through the Villages, 1981
Sébastien Kheroufi discovered Peter Handke's Through the Villages in the early days of his artistic career. He immediately felt recognised, understood by the Austrian author's prose: "Feeling justly represented, without pity or caricature. Having the good fortune to dream of something other than what our social heritage leaves us. This text saved me", he acknowledged.
Through the Villages presents an artist returning to his native village. A painful homecoming accompanied by a disappearance: that of the rural world he used to know, little by little erased by the plan and the promise of a modern city envisioned by new industrial projects. The voices of the "offended and humiliated" who formerly remained silent are raised in this crepuscular context, in which one world gives way in favour of another.
Sébastien Kheroufi embraces these words as his own: "Did I have to run away in order to succeed? Have I betrayed my people? How can I return?" He thus transposes the Austrian author's 1960s village to the 1990s suburb where he grew up. On the initial fabric of Through the Villages, Sébastien Kheroufi overlays another, subliminal, portrait of vast suburban complexes: agricultural areas, post-war urban utopias, confined and isolated spaces relegated to the commiseration of the powers that be. A precautionary work of contextualisation conducted before the sympathetic eye of Peter Handke himself – which refuses to yield to the desire to update, preferring to display the same process of "exclusion" and "marginalisation" that the residents of the "periphery" experienced.
Text : Peter Handke
Translation : Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt Éditions Gallimard
Directed by : Sébastien Kheroufi
Assistant director : Laure Marion
With: Amine Adjina, Anne Alvaro, Casey, Hayet Darwich, Ulysse Dutilloy-Liégeois, Benjamin Grangier, Gwenaëlle Martin, Lyes Salem, and alternately, Dounia Boukersi and Bilaly Dicko, Sofia Medjoubi and Henriette Samaké
Dramatised with : Félix Dutilloy-Liégeois
With the help of Laurent Sauvage
General manager : Malounine Buard
Scenography : Zoé Pautet,
Stagiaire scénographie : Zoé Logie de Mersan
Costumes : Cloé Robin
Light creation : Enzo Cescatti
Sound creation : Matéo Esnault
Photographs : Léo Aupetit
With the special participation of the residents of Ivry-sur-Seine
With the support and blessings of the author, Peter Handke
Production : Compagnie La Tendre Lenteur théâtre des Quartiers d’Ivry – CDN du Val-de-Marne dans le cadre de son association avec Sébastien Kheroufi. La Compagnie La Tendre Lenteur est accompagnée par le bureau de production des Aventurier∙e∙s dirigé par Philippe Chamaux ;Thomas Degroïde, chargé de production
Coproduction : Les spectacles vivants, Centre Pompidou, et Théâtre de Corbeil-Essonnes - Grand Paris Sud.
Construction décor : Ateliers du Théâtre Gérard Philipe - Centre dramatique national de Saint-Denis
Avec le soutien du ministère de la Culture – Direction régionale des affaires culturelles d’Île-de-France, des Ateliers Médicis, de L’AZIMUT, du Fonds Porosus, du dispositif d’insertion professionnelle de l’ENSATT, du Fonds d’Insertion pour Jeunes Comédiens∙nes de l’ESAD – PSPBB, du PSPBB et du ministère de la Culture dans le cadre du dispositif Culture Pro, de Cromot – Maison d’artistes et de production, du Jeune Théâtre National, et de l’association Bergers en Scène d’Ivry
Ce projet est lauréat 2023 du Fonds régional pour les talents émergents (FoRTE), financé par la Région Île-de-France
When
8pm - 11:30pm
5pm - 8:20pm
Where
Partners
Sébastien Kheroufi, Par les villages
© Yvon