Laëtitia Botella is an actress, director and improviser. Originally from the port city of Le Havre, in the north-west of France, Laëtitia is on her own scale the link between the inhabitants of the different districts, nourishing herself with the very particular town planning of this city classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Portrait.
” It is a very touching city. His face was busted. And at the same time, we redid it right away with super hard, super rough materials, and today it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site! It’s as if it were someone, you see: you destroy it, it rebuilds itself as best it can and we say to it “You’re ugly!”, and it stands proudly all the same. I find that incredible. The tirade of Laëtitia Botella, 33, on her hometown, resonates in the small cafe in the pedestrian streets of Le Havre. Later, to take the photo at the head of this article, we will stroll around the Volcano, a cultural center designed by the famous architect Oscar Niemeyer, after passing through the austere streets of the city center, whose buildings have come out of our heads. by Auguste Perret, a lover of concrete, following its almost total destruction at the end of the Second World War.
Like many people from Le Havre, Laëtitia Botella proudly defends her city. The actress owes her a lot, as much for her inspiring maritime and urban lines, as for the inhabitants who support her and for whom she multiplies artistic and cultural projects.
Built against the city
Yet she has not always been a fervent defender. As a teenager, she thought only of fleeing Le Havre, to live from her art in Paris, like many actresses and comedians. ” When I was 17, you had to flee if you wanted to be in culture, there was nothing in Le Havre, in working-class town mode. Do you want to work on the port? That’s great. Do you want to work in import-export? That’s great. But otherwise get out! And suddenly, when I went to Paris, when I saw the Eiffel Tower, I cried and I said to myself ‘that’s where I want to go,’” she recalls, her forgotten coffee in front of her warming up over her stories.
In CM2, in the 1990s, Laëtitia the actress is far from being. His thing is karate. She multiplies the competitions, reaches a good level for her age, and finds a good outlet for her hyperactivity. But when her school teacher puts on a theater show, everything changes. Her speech rate, already high, accelerates when she describes the discovery of the scene: ” I am transcended because I find the same heat as when I do a fight, my whole body is active. And at the same time, there is a possibility of deploying lots of universes, full of facets too, and of assuming the girl that I was 100%. I felt that the society I lived in, in the 1990s, was not yet ready to imagine girls doing karate. There, there is something where I say to myself but in fact, this thing gives me so much power, I feel in my place. »
She takes her first acting class in ninth grade, and the teenager already knows that she will be an actress. Laëtitia enters the Porte-Océane high school, located at the junction of the port of Le Havre, the Channel and the basin of commerce, and rushes to the theater option. ” My life is absolutely changing. That is to say that I who was a little dyslexic a priori, who thought I was useless in French, in fact, I discover my abilities in a field by saying to myself but that, I know how to do it, I feel it, I want to learn , everything fascinates me and if I can’t sleep I don’t care, it’s happiness. I also meet people with whom I enjoy creating, even if we are in high school, our team is amazing, what we are able to invent together is super strong. »
Parisian disillusionment
Driven by this discovery and by her two teachers, she wants to go to Paris. His parents set him one condition: to be enrolled in the faculty. She enrolled at the Sorbonne for a degree in modern literature in 2009, took a theater course in a conservatory in the 15th arrondissement, and worked as a cleaning lady to pay for her studies. But quickly, she feels constrained. One of her two teachers in high school, Claire Thomas – whom she describes as her ” Ariane Mnouchkine to me, from Le Havre -, taught her the humanity of the theatre, the importance of the troupe, of listening to her body, of working with others… In Paris, she discovered another theatre, which she did not jeer at but which did not not match. ” There, you build your comedian on yourself, by looking at yourself, by thinking about your competitions, by trying to get yourself noticed. And suddenly, the notion of collective, for whom? Why ? In fact, it no longer exists. And suddenly, I no longer knew how to play. I really need the other, in fact, to understand what it’s for. »
In her second year, she enrolled in two other conservatories, where she discovered contemporary theater and a game centered on the body, which inspired her much more. Laëtitia nevertheless decides to return to Normandy, and after two years in Rouen learning and consolidating a network in the region, she returns to her home port in 2013.
Return to Port
What brings her back to Le Havre is an energy she found neither in Rouen nor in Paris. ” A city has an energy, really. When you’re an actor, you know that the public is a bit like that or like that. What I like is that Le Havre is ultra frank. People don’t like it, you know that right away. People love, they tell you with tenderness. And one does not preclude the other. They may not have liked something and still trust you again “, she argues. An inspiration, too. The city and its lights, its right angles and its maritime curves push her to give her all. ” For me, the infinite horizon is super important for projecting oneself. When I was in Rouen I was very unhappy, it’s not the caricature of “you are from Le Havre you hate Rouen”, it’s just that me, it was a city that was too hollow and suddenly, I felt oppressed, whereas here it’s a take-off runway. »
First take-off phase: the discovery of improvisation. By chance, one evening in 2013, she goes to a show of the company The Improbable. She discovers improv theatre. ” I landed in the theater, it started and there, I said to myself “But it’s sick, it’s completely sick.” I wanted to get up, go play with them. It’s too good. There was the joy that I had lost in the theatre. Neither one nor two, she sends an email, and joins the company after an internship. She surrounds herself with friends, gradually appropriates improvisation, and traces a fabric of urban events in the city.
Since then, Laëtitia Botella has been anchored in Le Havre. She has her own theater company, Green Nights, and is part of the troupe Les Improbables. ” Now, these two companies work very often together. Because it’s important for theater people to realize that improv people actually have a lot to contribute. And it’s also important that improv people feel justified in saying to themselves, but in fact I’m a theater actor. »
social theater
The actress defends a social theater, which integrates into the city and which does good to its inhabitants. ” I think that making an art devoid of socialism is creating a knick-knack. When we raise awareness in the neighborhoods and bring back texts to read to prove to them that they are just as capable of speaking up and expressing their disagreement, we are playing politics, yes. By multiplying the partnerships with the town hall, she obtains enough to carry out projects in all the districts of Le Havre.
His company Green Nights goes to all the neighborhoods, sets up marquees in the summer to encourage residents to speak out. with his project Our reconstructionscarried in association with the company Fabula Raza by Clémence Weill, she organizes public evenings where everyone is encouraged to speak, to give their opinion, around reconstructions in the broad sense, always with this reference to the reconstruction of Le Havre in the 1950s. The Improbable, she went to the foot of the buildings in full confinement. ” Improv is modeling clay. We adapt it where we want, when we want. The conditions were horrible, it was raining, we couldn’t always be heard. But still, for 1h30, people were on the balcony laughing and talking with their neighbors, something they hadn’t done for very long. This year, the company Les Improbables is celebrating 10 years of the Mondial d’Impro which brings together Canadians, Swiss, Belgians and other French-speaking actors in Le Havre to practice improvisation.
Laëtitia Botella organizes readings aloud in schools, and with Our Rebuilds brings together authors and residents to write a play…” We tried to vary all the rooms, to ensure that the literature is not only in libraries, bookstores and in the theater. We go everywhere, in wastelands, in absurd places, in sheds. To also try to show that literature is a tool and that this tool, you can take it anywhere. Just don’t be afraid of it. “, she says assured by her own experience.
The actress breathes, lives and sleeps theater, she creates all the time, everywhere, and only takes time to read and spend time with her family, often to create with several hands. For her, the dramatic art is vital, because it is the binder of any society. ” For me, being an actor and an artist means being the link between all the people in a city. What will make bankers, people who work at Total or people who are in maintenance find themselves in the same room thinking or feeling the same thing? Only the show can do that. »
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