Chapter 18 - Francophone Theatre-Makers in France

Summary

Examining five prominent Afro-descendant artists creating theatre in contemporary France, Miller first enquires about the ambiguous concept of francophonie by considering the potential for ghettoizing work when it is produced in venues destined exclusively for theatre from the French-speaking world outside France. A portrait of Black Francophone theatre emerges, in which Black playwrights capture the current malaise of people still defined by the dominant French gaze, the potency of which is only now beginning to diminish. Kossi Éfoui conjures parables where puppet-like characters cannot think themselves outside the confining walls built by others. Koffi Kwahulé places fragments of a personality ravished by a madman with Christ’s eyes, in dialogue with each other. Aristide Tarnagda confronts self-exiled beings with a plethora of reasons for their alienation. Gustave Akakpo takes Little Red Riding Hood on a voyage on which her consumerist parents want to sell her image. Marie NDiaye places offstage the nonetheless omnipresent forces that fuel the perverse and destructive energy of characters on stage. Experimentation with voicing and characterization, collage, absent presence and fractured fairy tale plunges audiences into a universe of constant danger, while gesturing to the possibility of liberation through leaps of empathy and imagination.