Annual meeting for authors of theater, the call for writings is launched this Monday, March 20. To apply for the 10th edition of the RFI Theater Prize, candidates have five weeks to invent, refine, polish, adjust their text and send it to us before the deadline of Sunday April 23, 2023, at midnight.
This RFI Théâtre prize, born in 2014 with the complicity of Marie-Agnès Sevestre, at the time director of the Festival des Francophonies de Limoges, and under the encouragement of Koffi Kwahulé, celebrates its tenth edition this year. Thus RFI renewed with the Inter-African Theater Competition which revealed so many talents between the 1970s and 1990s, from Sony Labou Tansi to Kossi Efoui who recounts in his latest novel, ordinary magic, how this award got him” save the life “. With the support of Koffi Kwahulé who kept saying that a prize was missing to motivate theater authors born on the continent, a new page has therefore opened, with new partners including the SACD and the French Institute.
The name of the new laureate will be known next September during the Zébrures d’Automne festival in Limoges, and he/she will complete this decade of theater where Julien Mabiala Bissila, Hala Moughanie, Hakim Bah, Edouard Elvis Bvouma, Sedjro Giovanni Houansou, Valérie Cachard, Souleymane Bah, Jean D’Amérique and Gaelle Beloved.
Send us your text before the deadline of Sunday April 23, 2023, at midnight
The address por the 2023 RFI Theater Prize remains unchanged : [email protected]. Each candidate must send his text with title and name of the author as well as the completed registration form. If the pages are numbered, it is much better !
Last year, Gaëlle Bien-Aimé won, becoming the third woman to win. She succeeded her Haitian compatriot Jean D’Amérique. Who will succeed him? An author or an author? From Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean ? The suspense will last until the jury meeting in September.
Before participating, read and reread your text, but also read the rules carefully. !
To participate, authors must be between 18 and 46 years old and send a text in French with a minimum of 15 numbered pages (which is much easier for the reading committee to read). The prize is open exclusively to authors born and living in Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean or the Middle East. To take local political situations into account, the call for papers is also open to nationals of countries in the aforementioned areas, who have been living in France for less than four years and who hold a residence permit or political refugee status.
With the reading cycle of the Festival d’Avignon, It’s alright, it’s alright people!and with the Theater Prize, RFI has been committed for several years to discovering and bringing to light new talents in dramatic writing. And it is clear that the winners of this prize have all evoked an essential human and artistic adventure in their career. All are read, some are performed, others published, but each has multiplied work meetings during proposed residencies and invitations to festivals and theater houses.
Accompaniment and support
This prize allows you to be heard on the airwaves of RFI as part of the cycle of readings of It’s alright, it’s alright people ! recorded at the Festival d’Avignon, but all the loyal partners of this prize allow the winners to benefit from working time, whether at the Villa Ndar in St Louis in Senegal, at the Maison des Auteurs in Limoges or at the CDN Normandie -Rouen, dramaturgical accompaniment with Théâtre Ouvert and unfailing support from the SACD and the Institut français. There will only be one winner, but among all the texts sent, a dozen will be shortlisted and proposed to an international jury. It is therefore the certainty of being read and spotted sometimes.
The RFI Theater Prize is organized in partnership with theFrench instituteI’French Institute of Saint-Louis of Senegal, the Normandy-Rouen National Drama Centerthere SACD, Les Francophonies – From writing to the stage and the Open TheaterNational Center for Contemporary Dramaturgy.