EURODRAM FRANCOPHONE COMMITTEE
2018 PRIZE LIST
The Francophone Committee of the Eurodram network met last Thursday February 22 at the Maison des Auteurs SACD. This year selection was devoted to texts written in French. We received 98 plays, a great number of them being of high quality.
After much discussion, we selected four plays that we recommend to translators from French, in order to promote their production or their publishing in other countries :
AMIR AVANT by Aurianne Abecassis
DELTA CHARLIE DELTA by Michel Simonot
Ex aequo :
L’ACCIDENT DE BERTRAND by Emilie Leconte
and
PIG BOY 1986-2358 by Gwendoline Soublin
The readers also want to draw attention on several plays that have been much appreciated :
POINGS by Pauline Peyrade / Published by Les Solitaires intempestifs (2017)
TIAMAT by Ian de Toffoli / Unpublished
PUTREFIES by Veronika Boutinova / Unpublished
NO BORDER by Nadège Prugnard / To be published by Editions Al Dante
L’ATOME by Julien Avril / Unpublished
BERLIN SEQUENZ by Manuel A. Pereira / Published by Editions Espaces 34 (2017)
UN DEMOCRATE by Julie Timmerman / Unpublished
ARTHUR ET IBRAHIM by Amine Adjina / Published by Actes Sud Papier (2018)
GENS DU PAYS by Marc-Antoine Cyr / Unpublished
SUMMARY OF THE SELECTED PLAYS
AMIR AVANT
AURIANNE ABECASSIS
Play written in 2014 during a residency at St Antoine l’Abbaye
The writing was accompanied by the collective A Mots Découverts, who made a public reading at Confluences in October 2015, as part of the festival Péril jeunes.
Play selected by the Textes en cours Festival (2015) and by the Mousson d’hiver (2017)
On the other side of the ring road stands the glass tower of a large company that has just relocated its headquarters from Paris to the suburbs. A young guy of the neighborhood, Shams, is hired as a security guard. He is smart, serious, efficient, and his manager, Valérie, quickly gets to trust him. But Shams has a younger brother, Amir, who has chosen a different path.
A very subtle and mysterious play. A writing from which a great tension arises.
MICHEL SIMONOT
DELTA CHARLIE DELTA
Play written in 2015, in Arcueil
Published by Editions Espaces 34
Created on stage in 2018 by Compagnie du Samovar
The text got The Artcena aide à la création
Won the 2017 Collidram Prize (a dramatic litterature award attributed by high school students)
Panta Théâtre’s reading committee’s favorite
One evening in October. Three children run because the police run behind them. Zyed, Bouna, Muhittin hide in an electrical transformer, in Clichy Sous Bois. A policeman sees, does not alert. Two children die. One survives. Weeks of rioting ensue. Ten years later, a court reconstructs the facts – hours, minutes, seconds, recorded voices of the police radio. Ten years later, the survivor is still the one who bears in his skin the two dead children, the one who faces the police, the one everybody has forgotten. Like a never-ending tragedy.
A thrilling and very moving dramatic poem, based on real facts, that raises the question of guilt.
L’ACCIDENT DE BERTRAND
EMILIE LECONTE
Play written in 2015 in Paris
Selected by « Les inédits de Cahors » Festival
Finalist of « Les jardins d’Arlequin » Prize.
Published by Editions ETGSO in 2017
Translated into German by Wolfgang Barth in 2018
After his accident, Bertrand became a real center of interest both for specialists who have no answer to the reasons for his condition and no suitable treatment as for those who know him or claim to know him (his worried mother, his curious family, his little neighbor and an old acquaintance who lives a new story). And each in turn comes up to visit him on his hospital bed and ask him a great number of questions. But Bertrand has only one idea in mind : making confetti with his punching machine. Confetti which fall, as the wing beat of a butterfly, causes some disasters far away.
An absurd comedy that is amusing and pleasant to read, and that also raises the question of normality and identity.
PIG BOY 1986-2358
GWENDOLINE SOUBLIN
Play written in Lyon, in 2016-2017
Won the prize of Journées de Lyon des Auteurs de théâtre 2017
It is part of the 2018 selection of “Eat your frog” Festival in Prague
Published by Editions Espaces 34, january 2018
Full translation into Czech, partial translation (part 1) into Catalan and English
A Breton pig farmer, crushed by the debts, sets fire to his farm under the eyes of the ushers who come to seize it. A television star pork is accused of a heinous crime: he fornicated with a young Japanese woman. His trial takes place live on the net. A sow chosen as a surrogate mother for human children tries to escape. Three stories about the pig of Brittany under John Wayne’s eyes.
An odd and very strong play, evokating the relation of man to his own animality and his supposed superiority.