Almost fifteen years later The postera choral piece that tackled the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with as much virulence as sensitivity, globe-trotting author and director Philippe Ducros takes us back to West Asia with echo chambersa dialogue that allows the director of Hotel-Motel Productions to translate the complexity of the war that has been raging in Syria since 2011, a situation that is both fed and defused by social networks.
Although it is based on a correspondence between a Quebec theater man in search of global solidarity and a Syrian actress who refuses to leave Damascus, the play deftly transcends this convention. While Étienne Pilon portrays (with the aplomb to which he has accustomed us) the double of the author, a young father, a privileged North American citizen, a committed artist, tormented by guilt and thirsty for justice, Mounia Zahzam holds (with admirable accuracy) a more elusive role. She is first of all Samia, the woman of the theater who speaks by text message, or even thanks to FaceTime, Messenger or WhatsApp, but she is also, in a way, the narrator of the show, a voluble expression of the torn conscience of the main character, his inner voice, the embodiment of his doubts, his sensitivity.
Like a mediation
This show is certainly one of the most autobiographical of Philippe Ducros, who went to Syria twice, in 2004 and 2006, and who sponsored a family of Syrian refugees with friends in 2016. Formally evoking The door of no returnwhich discussed the role of Canadian mining companies in the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo, echo chambers is a face-to-face with oneself.
It’s 2019, and the people of Beirut are rising up. Stuck in Lebanon, in a hotel room, waiting to be able to join Samia in Syria, the author’s restless alter ego seeks to distinguish truth from lies by engaging body and soul in a quest for meaning where he could spoil well. Thus, while flirting with documentary theatre, the show is less an investigation than a mediation, it responds less to the desire to elucidate the situation than to that of bringing individuals together.
Abundant, not to say verbose, the representation exposes to a sum of information, which makes you dizzy, multiple echoes of the world which are also skilfully restored by a scenic device where video plays a crucial role. Requiring considerable intellectual and emotional effort, this overflow of names, places, images and dates draws the audience into a state comparable to that experienced by the main character. This profusion is both the greatest quality of the show and its greatest flaw. Thus, in this exhaustive restitution of the horrors of war, telescoping of tragedies and betrayals, revolutions and repressions, we regret the absence of a common thread worthy of the name.