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we talk about us
The path ? save the world
How ? doing theater
With whom ? with everyone
For who ? for those*who don't go there
Laurence Van Goethem, “When translation comes into play”, 2020
EXTRACT
"Finally, it seems important to us to discuss the work carried out by the troupes who work in difficult areas, sometimes in conflict, as does the Théâtre & Réconciliation company directed by Frédérique Lecomte. There, the material collected for the shows comes from improvisations carried out beforehand A patient work of translation takes place, both during rehearsals and on stage during public performances, because the chosen participants, sometimes from ethnic groups at war, are often non-French speaking and not educated in theater. then plays a delicate “(re)conciliatory” role: it is essential that a relationship of trust is established between the director and the translator, so that not only the information, but above all the “inner text” of each person circulates properly. , the innuendoes, the suppressed feelings During performances and tours in different African countries, an actor takes turns putting himself slightly aside and translating live what the others say, assuming the ambiguous role of the actor. actor playing translator, while actually being one. We can observe this "embodied" translation in detail in Sanaz Azari's short documentary film, which is entirely centered on the actor-translator, leaving the action of the play to take place off-camera.
Maëline Le Lay, “From the rag picker to the anthropologist: status of the text and positioning of the researcher on a literary and theatrical terrain”, | 2019
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"But the specificity of Frédérique Lecomte's method is less improvisation as such than her singular way of using the material born from improvisation to create the text of the show which will be performed, a text which varies from one performance to the next. the other is not so much the fact of weaving together the scenes born from improvisation that is original as the editing in reality. On the day of the performance, the actors integrated the different scenes born from them. improvisations made in local languages (Kinyarwanda in Rwanda, Kirundi in Burundi, Swahili in Congo) during rehearsals, each characterized and identified by a gesture with which a song is associated. That is to say that each scene has been worked on. until the director is satisfied and the actor is comfortable, but the editing of the scenes between them is never the same, the director improvising the sequence of scenes live. The actors do not. know in advance only the opening scene and the closing scene. For the rest of the show, they will have to let themselves be guided by the director, standing at the other end of the stage, facing them and drawing, through her gestures, her injunctions and questions, the order of the scenes previously integrated as so many autonomous entities. Frédérique Lecomte herself never knows the order of the scenes in advance; it is during the show that she establishes it by improvising it intuitively. His credo is to listen to the rhythm of the show."
Chérie Rivers Ndaliko, and Samuel Anderson (editors). The Art of Emergency: Aesthetics and Aid in African Crises. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Abstract
The Art of Emergency charts the maneuvers of art through conflict zones across the African continent. Advancing diverse models for artistic and humanitarian alliance, the volume urges conscientious deliberation on the role of aesthetics in crisis through intellectual engagement, artistic innovation, and administrative policy. Across Africa, artists increasingly turn to NGO sponsorship in pursuit of greater influence and funding, while simultaneously NGOs-both international and local-commission arts projects to buttress their interventions and achieve greater reach and marketability. The key values of artistic expression thus become "healing" and "sensitization," measured in turn by "impact" and "effectiveness." These rubrics obscure the aesthetic complexities of the artworks and the power dynamics that inform their production. Clashes arise as foreign NGOs import foreign aesthetic models and preconceptions about their efficacy, alongside foreign interpretations of politics, medicine, psychology, trauma, memorialization, and so on. Meanwhile, each community embraces its own aesthetic precedents, often at odds with the intentions of humanitarian agencies. The arts are a sphere in which different worldviews enter into conflict and conversation. To tackle the consequences of aid agency arts deployment, volume editors Samuel Mark Anderson and Ch?rie Rivers Ndaliko assemble ten case studies from across the African continent employing multiple media including music, sculpture, photography, drama, storytelling, ritual, and protest marches. Organized under three widespread yet under-analyzed objectives for arts in emergency-demonstration, distribution, and remediation-each case offers a different disciplinary and methodological perspective on a common complication in NGO-sponsored creativity. By shifting the discourse on arts activism away from fixations on message and toward diverse investigations of aesthetics and power negotiations, The Art of Emergency brings into focus the conscious and unconscious configurations of humanitarian activism, the social lives it attempts to engage, and the often- fraught interactions between the two.
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BRINKER (Virginia), The literary and cinematographic transmission of the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. Paris: Classiques Garnier, coll. Literature, history, politics, 2014, 481 p. –
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"Frédérique Lecomte, director of the Belgian non-profit organization “Theater & Reconciliation” who has developed a real method – theoretical and practical – to put this notion to the test in a socio-political context close to that of Rwanda: Burundi. A Breed shows how this phenomenon is approached in this case with caution and circumspection, F. Lecomte taking care to maintain, between the public and the fiction, a necessary distance, which serves as a safety valve.
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Breed, Ananda. 2006. “Performing Reconciliation in Rwanda.” Peace Review 18 (4): 507–13. doi:10.1080/10402650601030468.
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I observed theater practitioner Frédérique Lecomte in the prisons of Burundi who conducted theater workshops with prisoners on death row. Lecomte had the epiphany that participants of Hutu and Tutsi origin often try to 'out suffer' one another. Thus, she began staging theatrical competitions of suffering between historical narratives in conflict. From the observations in Burundi, I was able to observe how ethnicity was openly discussed in the reconciliation process and to explore varied theatrical techniques for audience and participant engagement for the purpose of promoting dialogue.
Chérie Rivers Ndaliko, and Samuel Anderson (editors). The Art of Emergency: Aesthetics and Aid in African Crises. Oxford University Press, 2020.
extract
The Art of Emergency charts the maneuvers of art through conflict zones across the African continent. Advancing diverse models for artistic and humanitarian alliance, the volume urges conscientious deliberation on the role of aesthetics in crisis through intellectual engagement, artistic innovation, and administrative policy. Across Africa, artists increasingly turn to NGO sponsorship in pursuit of greater influence and funding, while simultaneously NGOs-both international and local-commission arts projects to buttress their interventions and achieve greater reach and marketability. The key values of artistic expression thus become "healing" and "sensitization," measured in turn by "impact" and "effectiveness." These rubrics obscure the aesthetic complexities of the artworks and the power dynamics that inform their production. Clashes arise as foreign NGOs import foreign aesthetic models and preconceptions about their efficacy, alongside foreign interpretations of politics, medicine, psychology, trauma, memorialization, and so on. Meanwhile, each community embraces its own aesthetic precedents, often at odds with the intentions of humanitarian agencies. The arts are a sphere in which different worldviews enter into conflict and conversation. To tackle the consequences of aid agency arts deployment, volume editors Samuel Mark Anderson and Ch?rie Rivers Ndaliko assemble ten case studies from across the African continent employing multiple media including music, sculpture, photography, drama, storytelling, ritual, and protest marches. Organized under three widespread yet under-analyzed objectives for arts in emergency-demonstration, distribution, and remediation-each case offers a different disciplinary and methodological perspective on a common complication in NGO-sponsored creativity. By shifting the discourse on arts activism away from fixations on message and toward diverse investigations of aesthetics and power negotiations, The Art of Emergency brings into focus the conscious and unconscious configurations of humanitarian activism, the social lives it attempts to engage, and the often- fraught interactions between the two.
Interview Bruzz: Musical over kinds of soldiers from Brussels
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There are many soldiers in Oost-Congo who meet various Belgian casts for two people in the streets in full in the city of Goma. Nu komt het muziektheaterstuk Vita siyo muchezo ya watoto ('Oorlog est geen kinderspel') van de Brusselse Frédérique Lecomte en haar Théâtre & Réconciliation ook naar Brussel. Wij dompelden onder in een warme repetitie.
LIMA, S.; KUHLMANN, P.; SILVA, L. A política sensual: o Teatro do Oprimido ea estética dimensão nas Relações Internacionais. PÓS: Revista do Programa de Pós-graduação em Artes da EBA/UFMG, Belo Horizonte, v. 11, n. 23, p. 358–386, 2021.
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An artistic creativity is a human activity, based on individual relationships with all. From the studies of aesthetics, awareness of the senses, introduce emotions, sensations and body into the production of knowledge. No field of international politics, our aesthetic studies percorrem alternativas of perception and analysis of our political and social phenomena, no qual as artes can be considered elements of communication and expression. From this format, the text sent to the Teatro do Oprimido (TO) and its application to the Bairro do Rangel, by João Pessoa-PB, to analyze the potential of art in the transformation of conflicts. The investigation is based on a qualitative approach that incorporates analysis, particularly the use of participant observation, as an analytical strategy.
Press article: Irish Examiner - Healing power of theater
Link: https://www.irishobserver.com/lifestyle/arid-30951124.html
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Frédérique Lecomte uses drama to help child soldiers, as well as other victims and perpetrators in conflict zones, writes Ellie O'Byrne.
When Frédérique Lecomte was working in the Democratic Republic of Congo earlier this year, she encountered a scenario that she thinks sums up the therapeutic power of her work in theater and reconciliation. The Belgian theater director, who visits Ireland this week, was improvising a scene with a group: one young man, Ushindi, was enacting a scenario with painful resonance in his own life.``
Dinesh, Nandita, Author, and Open Book Publishers. Theater and War: Notes from the Field. , 2016
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In a similar fashion, speaking to her theatrical work in Burundi in which she sought an engagement with armed rebels, Frederique Lecomte (in Balfour, Hughes and Thompson, 2009a: 185) shares the rebels' comments to her, that “it is because you are white and because you are a woman that you can do what you are doing now because it would be impossible for a Burundian, a Hutu or a Tutsi to do this, especially in this period”. Speaking further to the potential access afforded her by the outsider status, Lecomte suggests that the facets that make her an outsider might not only be her gender and race, but also the methodology with which she framed her interaction with the rebels ie, the theater. ``
Bibiane van Mierlo, Nicole Nagel and Willem van de Put
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In Brussels, many migrant women without legal status have no or limited access to health care and other basic services. Their access to descent care is mainly hampered by a lack of information, limited financial resources and poor experiences in the past. Three non-governmental organizations joint efforts to help migrant women without legal status to come out of their isolation. Action research during the implementation process was conducted in order to know which elements contributed to increased feelings of trust and reinforced autonomy among the target group and more willingness to support migrants among a larger population. Our major conclusion is that mental health and well-being is largely defended by (the quality of) social relationships and interactions – an aspect that is too often forgotten as a result of the medicalization of mental health related problems.