Mohamed El Khatib, the theater that “repairs” society – L’Express

From the stories he collects from children of divorced people, from residents of nursing homes or supporters of RC Lens, he creates plays performed by these same witnesses who are propelled as actors. From a collection of snow globes, he creates a show mixing intimate stories and great History with Patrick Boucheron. From a Renault 12 (or a Peugeot 504), he built an exhibition/performance recounting the “return to the countryside” in cars overloaded with millions of families in the 1960s and 1970s. Mohamed El Khatib has been walking for ten years from theaters to museums, from stages to cultural spaces, its project, both artistic and political: to tirelessly expand the boundaries of theater, too often reserved for a small part of the population. With a very personal method: bringing popular circles on stage, failing to attract them to the theater as spectators.

Whether it’s a cleaning lady in Me, Corinne Dadat, of museum guards with Guardian Party or “old people” in The Secret Life of Old People, he explores the blind spots of society and crudely reveals the “real” lives of these invisible people. But without miserabilism or demagoguery. Without mockery or contempt. His ambition with these shows where, in the role of Monsieur Loyal, he accompanies his amateur actors? “The meeting,” he summarizes. “First for me, by working with people with whom I am not supposed to work naturally. Then, by trying to put spectators in contact with profiles that they do not expect. not, slightly weakened groups that we rarely see on theater stages in France.”

Always on the edge between humor, tenderness and remarks that shake up or offend, somewhere between true story and fiction, his texts are documentary work which does not want to give lessons, political remarks which are not displayed as such and entertainment that refuses to be just that. “I am very sensitive to humor, it’s a form of delicacy,” he says. But his lightness carries a vision that he wants to emancipate society. When he depicts nursing home residents, he talks about sexuality, desire, but also loneliness, homosexuality that is difficult to accept and infantilization on the part of children.

In the same room, a character blurts out when introducing himself: “As my name suggests – Yasmine Hadj Ali –, I am from a nursing assistant background”. A brief reply that says a world. “Many people demand political theater but ultimately, there are very few which, concretely, transform people’s lives. I try to create theater which is of public utility, that is to say who tries to repair something in society,” he analyzes. Often silent subjects which, he hopes, will give his spectators the impulse to look differently at those around them. He remembers that after seeing Corinne Dadat, now deceased, on stage, some people realized that they never said hello to the cleaning lady at their workplace. “But it’s such a small effect, isn’t it?” he admits.

Mohamed El Khatib could be a sum of clichés. He constantly takes care to distance himself from preconceived ideas and conveniences. He hides nothing about the origins of his parents, Moroccan and popular, he has produced several shows, including the Finish in style on the death of his mother. He took on his studies at Sciences Po and his unfinished sociology thesis after a childhood in Orléans, but he never made a trademark out of all this. No class defector’s vocabulary for him – “neither denying, nor heroizing”, he says – but attention and reflection on what popular culture is and on the means of making art accessible to all. As success comes, he could settle into the comfort of only working for those who spontaneously frequent cultural places, but he refuses to do so. “The stories of the cultural petit bourgeoisie in Parisian apartments or the classics like Andromache Or Bereniceit interests a certain type of audience, but it excludes another. If we want to deal with fratricide, we do not have to take detours through ancient Greece, there are more current stories,” he insists.

In June, he exhibited the Mona Lisa at the Grand Palais

In a few months, from June 13 to 29, his work will be the subject of a “retrospective” at the Grand Palais, in Paris. In association with the Center Pompidou, three of its exhibitions/performances and five of its shows will welcome several thousand spectators every day. The word retrospective scares him. Institutionalization, too. A little. Not so much after all. His accomplice, the historian Patrick Boucheron, makes fun of him by labeling him a “state artist”. He assumes: “There could be a romantic vision where I prefer to be on the margins and say, I resist, but then I would not have the means to work. There, that obliges me to a responsibility, to put these means and my notoriety in the service of people for whom it is difficult to speak, almost to assuming a public service delegation.

During these two weeks, he ensures that the people who participated in his various projects can be present, in particular, people in precarious situations who worked with him as part of the festival. It’s not luxury at the Lambert Collection, in Avignon. From this moment, he also wants to do something other than a simple review of his past works. Here again, he enjoys subverting the codes of the industry. To those he meets these days, he announces with pride that there will be the Mona Lisa as a guest star at the event entitled “My mother’s Grand Palace” because “his mother only knew her in the history of art. In reality, the work – and the fantasies, disappointments, excitements that it arouses – will be an opportunity to once again question the relationship of the public – or rather audiences – to art.

The Grand Palais will mark, for Mohamed El Khatib, the end of a cycle of more than ten years which brought him notoriety and satisfaction but left him with frustrations. Certainly, during this period, he saw the theater open up to social subjects little explored until then, ecology, social questions, feminism. Certainly, he has seen places emerge, like the 104 in Paris or the Grand T in Nantes, which mix disciplines, audiences, ambitions. But the theater is still too often, in his eyes, a cathedral that some people never enter. Drawing on his experience with Paris City Hall last August for the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the capital – he imagined the show The Liberation with fanfare –, and worried about the political climate, he now wants to explore other formats, other places.

One of its projects is about to come to fruition with the Château de Chambord, where Pierre Dubreuil, the general director appointed in 2023, would like to counterbalance the “national novel” made of myths told at Puy du Fou with a unifying and accessible “national story”. to the greatest number. In the summer of 2027, Mohamed El Khatib should create, with Patrick Boucheron, a sound and light show telling the history of France in around ten paintings. The idea? Combining a very popular technique with a very rigorous approach to attract visitors who rarely visit performance halls. Bringing closer, always, again, while, according to the latest survey by the Ministry of Culture on the cultural practices of the French, only 14% of them went to the theater in the last twelve months. One of the arguments put forward by those who don’t go there? They “don’t feel like they belong there”.