Posted at 7:00 a.m.
tracks in a few words
“It’s a kind of odyssey,” says Étienne Minoungou. It is the initiatory journey of a man who leaves his home (in Africa), who crosses the desert, the Mediterranean and who arrives at the gates of Europe. There, he will realize all the difficulties that a man (immigrant) like him encounters. He will reflect on his own condition and return home. When he finds his community, he has things to say to it. He wants to talk about the wounds and bruises of our history, the traumatic encounters we have had with the West and the fury we have towards our rulers who try to break our momentum of life.
“At the same time, this man has something else to say. He means that the African continent has in itself all the elements necessary to repair the world. Despite history and all that we have experienced, one of the solutions for the future of the world is found in Africa, through the dream, the momentum and the work of its sons and daughters.
“There are sentences in Felwine Sarr’s text which are very revealing of this man’s thought, in particular: ‘we must turn our face towards the sun’. Also: “We have to resurvey the trace”, that is to say re-cultivate our memory, because we have a duty to make this trace a light for everyone. The march of peoples towards emancipation is a struggle of history, but we cannot carry the shadows away all the time. It is a march towards the light that must be made. »
Theater, an essential art
“In my language, explains Étienne Minoungou, the theater is designated by a formula which literally means: “Come, we are going to exchange to expand the family, the kinship.” For me, the theater meets what the Greeks wanted. This agora, this space, the catharsis… This place where society looks at itself through a mirror to question itself. When we miss it, we realize that this space for social discussion is essential. There is a dimension of the breathing of a community that is missing. Theater elevates our lives.
“The first strength of the theater is the assembly, it is elbow-to-elbow. It is irreplaceable. It is for this reason that we can draw a parallel between football and theatre! Major football fans will never watch the Champions League live stream if they are lucky enough to be able to go to the stadium. It’s the fervor and the collective adrenaline rush that make the match. And in the theater, it’s the same! »
The black actor in the West
“It’s still a battle to be fought, lets know Étienne Minoungou, especially in Western Europe. Color is always a marker, a sign. It’s difficult if color becomes a dramaturgical sign, because you can well imagine that the entire Western theater repertoire is closing down (for Afro-descendant actors). Unless you play Othello… You have to go beyond color as a dramaturgical sign and concede that the actor can play anything.
“This fight is also the sign of the opening, or not, of the Western imagination, which remains marked by history. The West is struggling to get rid of the negative liabilities of its history. The representation of the Black is loaded with respect to all the referents that have constructed it, from slavery until today. It’s very difficult to get rid of it.
“The struggle of Afro-descendant actors who try to deconstruct this imaginary to propose a new way of looking at things is absolutely essential. It is not true that we have gone beyond certain details of the collective history. The proof: the Black Lives Matter movement has shown us that we are still part of this tension that is so difficult to change.
“Performance venues such as theaters need to be at the forefront to deconstruct all of this. »
Traces – Speech to African Nations is presented from June 3 to 5 at the Maison Théâtre.