FRENCH EURODRAM COMMITEE

SELECTION 2020

The French-speaking Committee of the Eurodram network met on Thursday, March 12 in the Maison des Auteurs Sacd (Paris) to finalize its 2019-2020 selection devoted to texts written in French. Among the 113 pieces received and after a long discussion, it has been chosen to highlight these three plays  :

• LA CLAIRIERE DU GRAND N’IMPORTE QUOI  (The clearing of the big whatever) by Alain Behar
• ZONE A ETENDRE (Zone to extend) by Mariette Navarro
• CINGLEE (Insane) by Céline Delbecq

These three plays are therefore selected to be presented to the various language committees of the network and recommended to translators with a view to their diffusion and production across borders. In addition, within this corpus of very high general quality, the readers wish to draw the attention to five other plays beyond this reduced sélection :

• MANGROVE (Mangrove) by Lucie Vérot
• MEPHISTO RHAPSODIE (Mephisto Rhapsody) by Samuel Gallet
• BLEU PISCINE ( Blue pool) by Pauline Guillerm
• ELDORADO DANCING (Eldorado dancing) by Métie Navajo
• NEUF MOUVEMENTS POUR UNE CAVALE (Nine movements for a run) by Guillaume Cayet

Most of these texts were send by their authors. With their authorization, we would be very happy to send you one of these manuscripts or to touch you in contact with their agent or publisher.

For more information, you can also visit our site http://eurodram.fr/ (site currently under construction) as well as our blog http://comitefrancophoneeurodram.wordpress.com

For the selection of the other European committees, please go to http://eurodram.fr/2020-selections/

 SELECTION 2020

LA CLAIRIERE DU GRAND N’IMPORTE QUOI  

(The clearing of the big whatever)

Alain Behar

Editions Espaces 34

It’s a crazy geo-poetic epic, between theater and performance. Words and people escape from a globally devastated world and migrate on a very large paper boat, a kind of Noah’s ark on which all crossbreeding are welcome. Here, must be cross Vietnamese Berbers more or less LGBT, Icelandic Aristotelian Kabyles, Ivorians from Ulan Bator, Burkinabé Inuit … and everything is going very well.

ZONE A ETENDRE

(Zone to extend)

Mariette Navarro

Editions Quartett

The play takes place in a forest in which the members of a group advances together in contact with the elements and in the proximity of legends and magic. Everyone has different reasons to follow this movement towards a clearing where a community is reinventing itself. While walking, they exchange their certainties, their doubts, their stories. In a second part, the small group arrives in the clearing, a surprising “area to extend” which he will discover how it works and seek how to take part in it.

CINGLEE

(Insane)

Celine Delbecq

Editions Lansman

Since Marta Mendes stumbled upon an article about the first murder of woman of the year 2017 in Belgium, she has spent her days scouring the newspapers in a feverish search for those who will follow. In front of the list of which she keeps the register day after day, Marta sees no other choice than to write to King Philippe who will be able to put an end to this situation which makes her sick. This play relate the fight of a woman won by the madness of a world that refuses to see, recognize and act against the “feminicides”.

OTHER RECOMMENDED PLAYS

MANGROVE

(Mangrove)

Lucie Vérot

Editions Espace 34

French Guiana, in our time. Characters cross paths, draw trajectories, seek the meaning of their presence here. There is a young Guianian waitress, legionaries of all ages, engineers from the space center, exiles, ghosts. Among others. What they have in common, what unites  them, is this territory, made of dreams of elsewhere, of immigration and crossing between peoples and the weight of a past marked by slavery and colonialism. While the rockets soar towards the sky.

MEPHISTO RHAPSODIE

(Mephisto Rhapsody) 

Samuel Gallet

The theater of a small provincial town. As elsewhere in the country, the far-right party is at the gates of power. Among the permanent troupe of actors, some of them wonder about the capacity of the theater to participate in social struggles by staging committed plays while others dream of glory by interpreting the great classical works of the repertory.

Editions Espaces 34

BLUE POOL

(Bleu piscine)

Pauline Guillerm

Edition Lansman

In the street of the Olympic swimming pool, there is a florist, a swimsuit seller, a reporter, a midwife, many others… and fragments of conversation, apparently trivial, which unfold the stories of each other and suggest a disaster. Everyone has seen and heard. Nothing will be as before. And, in front of the unspeakable, a voice in shock tells a whole other drama.

ELDORADO DANCING

(Eldorado dancing)

Métie Navajo

Edition Espaces 34

In front of the Eldorado Dancing, a nightclub lost in the peri-urban area, Sofiane, banned from entering, addresses the surveillance camera. He meets Salomé, who will be that evening the heroine of the famous webshow of “Merlin the Demon”, great master of the virtual world. A prevention officer intervenes and applies new police methods. Under the eye of the followers, the possibility of entering in the Eldorado Dancing is gradually becoming a political question, a collective and symbolic action of resistance.

NEUF MOUVEMENTS POUR UNE CAVALE

(Nine movement for a run)

Guillaume Cayet

Editions Théâtrales

On May 20, 2017, the day before the presidential election, a gendarme shot Jérôme Laronze, 36, breeder of a hundred cows in Trivy (Saône-et-Loire) Fervent defender of an agriculture favoring the defense of the living and militant against animal flea and traceability, Jérôme has been in the crosshairs of the D.D.P.P (Departmental Directorate for the Protection of Populations) for several years. On May 11, 2017, Jérôme fled without any violence having been committed, before being kill nine days later , driving his Toyota .