Following the call for applications for the 9th edition of the “RFI Theater Prize”, eleven unpublished texts were shortlisted for their literary and dramaturgical qualities and their originality. They will be submitted to the vote of the jury composed of artists and professionals, and chaired this year by Odile Sankara, director from Burkina Faso and president of the Festival Les Récréâtrales. The 2022 RFI Theater Prize will be awarded on Sunday September 25, in Limoges, as part of the Zébrures d’Automne festival.
Of Mireille Davidovici, responsible for the Reading Committee of the RFI Theater Prize,
” How much of us have we lost to endure such violence ? writes one of the authors of the many texts received by our reading committee. His question reflects the recurring questions that cross this theater of the South of the Francophonie, from Africa to the lands of the Pacific. The responses are abundantly diverse: monologues, dialogue or slammed pieces, realistic or poetic, raw or metaphorical worlds… Always political. Far from giving up, writers are speaking out to get out of the chaos, often keeping indignation at bay through humor or parody. We salute, for this ninth edition, the authors now more likely to entrust us with their texts: more than 15% of the 121 texts from 19 countries. So much so that the 2022 harvest has almost reached parity!
From year to year, new voices rise that never cease to alert; you have to listen to them. Often, these writings, still fresh, have not yet been screened for voice acting or staging, and would require adjustments. But the reading committee has given itself the mission of pioneer and not of censor, and it is above all committed to revealing the potential of the texts and to offering visibility to their authors.
A work that bears fruit: some have, since the last editions, found their way to the theater stages thanks, among other things, to the dynamics of this Prize which not only designates a winner, but each time distinguishes a dozen writers . Far from being discouraged, those who are not elected send us their latest opus and we thank them for it. The members of the jury and the partners of this literary adventure in France and elsewhere are relays to promote and live these writings which move our eyes and change our compass. Full of sound and fury, dynamic, they question theatrical forms, divert them, break them down…
We are attached to the stories and to the History that we are told here with a lot of verbal finds and poetic imagination. Languages are invented and dialogue with each other and our theatrical models are dusted off.
The parts selected
Leaving or Suffering, Cyril Juvenil Assomo (Cameroon)
Prison. Two hangman’s ropes.three voices : Me, You, and Them. Me wants to end life to find freedom, You don’t want to follow her and prevent her from killing herself… Them: the guard, organizes a purge to rid the world of these useless slaves. When Moi tries to hang himself again, the rope lets go…
In a tense dialogue, a dead end situation, but where the instinct of life prevails.
Port-au-Prince and its sweet night, Gaëlle Bien-Aimé (Haiti)
Night. A couple makes love with passion. Outside, Port aux Princes deploys an ominous silence. In imagination, they revisit the city and the neighborhoods that saw the birth of their love, in equally troubled times. He sees horrors in the hospital where he works. She plans to leave to live her life as a writer… On this last night, he asks her to leave: “I don’t want the woman I love to be planted in my ruins”. The ocean cannot separate them.
In seven sequences, and under this ironic title, the pangs of a couple on edge in an unlivable city…
Don’t be surprised if my letter smells of salt, Jocelyn Danga Motty (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
During his migrant journey, a man writes to his little brother. A letter at each stage, from Brazzaville to Paris via Tripoli, shipwreck at sea, Greece, Italy… He tells her about the difficulties of this perilous adventure from which he emerges victorious. Between the letters, dialogues sparked by his encounters or laconic reflections bring the story to life.
In this moving one-way epistolary relationship, the little brother remains the home base of the eldest.
I will return with the wind, Basma El Euchi (Tunisia)
A woman died in her apartment. His voice. She recounts: her exile at the age of six, her country destroyed, the smells and lights of her childhood… Discovering the corpse, the son, back after months of absence, calls his father who wants to get rid of the body as quickly as possible, erase its origins, while the mother wanted to be buried in the country. The ghost woman mixes her comments with their dialogue… The son is caught in the crossfire.
Voices mixed between reality and the supernatural, a dialectic of exile is played out here: frenzied integration for the father, nostalgia for the native land for the deceased…
A woman sewing, Sandra Elong (Cameroon)
The civil war is raging. Katamba refuses to give birth. She does not want to give birth to a girl: a child of rape, she would suffer the same fate as her. Katamba prefers to die and condemns the two humanitarian workers at his bedside. Wendy, a doctor, encourages her to give birth and Katanga, a journalist, prefers to flee in front of the soldiers who are advancing by “tearing the women”. The parturient gives us her sad story and her anger, accompanied by a chorus of voices from the depths of the forest.
Katamba symbolizes the thousands of women of Kivu, raped and ransacked. His dull anger castigates the useless compassion of humanitarians, the fascination of journalists for horror and the indifference of political personnel…
wild shadows, Djevens Fransaint (Haiti)
Samuel bids farewell to Libellule. He goes off to make his fortune elsewhere and promises the young girl a better life. A rotten cop, Apo, in love with Libellule, drives the young man to suicide by stealing his passport. Pile, a sort of puppeteer clown, picks up Samuel’s remains, but the crooked cop catches up with him and accuses him of being responsible for this suicide. Libellule, a few years later, in a brothel where she works, will take revenge on Apo…
Out of step with realism, the piece cruelly depicts the spirals of violence.
Lake, Djo Kazadi Ngeleka (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
What happened at the lake? There is a crowd and “it tells”. Indefinitely… Among the people who talk and move about, an old man and a young man start a political debate on the history of the Congo, while the gossip goes on… This lake, center and subject of palaver is the place of all hearsay and rumours. `
A beautiful energy emerges from this abundant language…
Aomby, Gad Bensalem (Madagascar)
Once upon a time there was a fabulous bird which would have delighted the king’s favorite son by literally tearing him from his mother’s breast and gouging out the king’s eyes… Truce of legend: we follow the journey of a professor, traveling towards the south of the country, to take up his post. Kidnapped by highway robbers, he finds among them one of his cousins, who enlists him in his gang. He will become a zebu thief. His second cousin is no better off as a corrupt deputy.
Combined legend and reality reflect a society divided and confused by the carelessness of a State, like the king blinded by the bird of the legend
Collateral, Fatoumata Sy (Ivory Coast)
The son fled the country and the diamond mine, the village’s only resource. He hopes for a better future than his father, worn down by years of mining. His sister, who remained in the village, refuses the advances of the omnipotent owner of the mine and falls in love with the village gravedigger. She will pay dearly for it. Father and mother are offended by this misalliance. When the son returns, his sister is dead.
Between the village and the land of exile, the present and the past, a family and social drama is woven
copper eaters, Bibatanko (Democratic Republic of the Congo)
In Cuivroville, copper and cobalton are mined. A minor, Amani supports his wife and two children thanks to his hard work. But, victim of an accident, he returns disabled to his family. The mother, now a businesswoman, boils the pot. Amani can’t stand his physical impotence and his wife’s independence… The children suffer the effects of this upheaval.
Choirs from different communities put the action into perspective and anchor it in a social and economic reality.
Weird, Jean-Paul Tooh-Tooh (Benin)
We are in a country where hunger invades every home and opens fire. The survivors scamper off. Some throw themselves on the road to exile. Others offer their breasts to death. This is the case of Djibril who enlists as a mercenary to fight alongside the Ukrainians, less out of conviction than to feed his family with the money from the contract. As he prepares to embark despite his wife’s protests, he lives in a dream the horrors of war.
Oneirism and reality intersect to result in a text for peace.
► To read also: Haitian Jean D’Amérique, winner of the RFI Theater 2021 prize for “Opera dust”