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on parle de nous

Le chemin ? sauver le monde

Comment ? en faisant du théâtre

Avec qui ? avec tout le monde

Pour qui ? pour  celleux*qui n'y vont pas

Laurence Van Goethem, « Quand la traduction entre en jeu », 2020

EXTRAIT

"Enfin, il nous semble important d’évoquer le travail réalisé par les troupes qui œuvrent dans des zones difficiles, parfois de conflits, comme le fait la compagnie Théâtre & Réconciliation dirigée par Frédérique Lecomte. Là, le matériau récolté pour les spectacles provient d’improvisations effectuées en amont. Un patient travail de traduction a lieu, aussi bien pendant les répétitions que sur scène lors des représentations publiques, car les participants choisis, parfois originaires d’ethnies en guerre, sont souvent non francophones et non scolarisés. Le théâtre joue alors un rôle « (ré)conciliateur » délicat : il est essentiel qu’une relation de confiance se noue entre la metteuse en scène et le traducteur, afin que circulent convenablement non seulement les informations, mais surtout le « texte intérieur » de chacun, les sous-entendus, les sentiments réfrénés. Pendant les représentations et les tournées dans différents pays africains, un acteur à tour de rôle se met légèrement à l’écart et traduit en direct ce que disent les autres, assumant le rôle ambigu de l’acteur jouant au traducteur, tout en l’étant réellement. On peut observer en détail cette traduction « incarnée » dans le court-métrage documentaire de Sanaz Azari, qui est entièrement centré sur l’acteur-traducteur, laissant l’action de la pièce se dérouler hors champ".

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Maëline Le Lay, « Du chiffonnier à l’anthropologue : statut du texte et positionnement du chercheur sur un terrain littéraire et théâtral », | 2019

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"Mais la spécificité de la méthode de Frédérique Lecomte est moins l’improvisation en tant que telle que sa manière singulière d’utiliser la matière née de l’improvisation pour créer le texte du spectacle qui sera joué, texte variable d’une représentation à l’autre. Ce n’est pas tant le fait de tisser entre elles les scènes nées de l’improvisation qui est original que le montage en livede celles-ci. Le jour de la représentation, les comédiens ont intégré les différentes scènes nées des improvisations faites en langues locales (kinyarwanda au Rwanda, kirundi au Burundi, swahili au Congo) lors des répétitions, chacune caractérisée et identifiée par un geste auquel est associée une chanson. C’est-à-dire que chaque scène a été travaillée jusqu’à ce que la metteuse en scène en soit satisfaite et que le comédien y soit à l’aise mais le montage des scènes entre elles n’est jamais le même, la metteuse en scène improvisant en direct l’enchaînement des scènes. Les comédiens ne connaissent à l’avance que la scène d’ouverture et la scène de clôture. Pour le reste du spectacle, ils devront se laisser guider par la metteuse en scène, debout à l’autre extrémité de la scène, leur faisant face et dessinant, par ses gestes, ses injonctions et interpellations, l’ordre des scènes préalablement intégrées comme autant d’entités autonomes. Frédérique Lecomte elle-même ne connaît jamais par avance l’ordre des scènes, c’est lors du spectacle qu’elle l’établira en l’improvisant de manière intuitive. Son credo est d’être à l’écoute du rythme du spectacle."

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Chérie Rivers Ndaliko, and Samuel Anderson (éditeurs). 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." Such 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 (Virginie), La Transmission littéraire et cinématographique du génocide des Tutsi au Rwanda. Paris : Classiques Garnier, coll. Littérature, histoire, politique, 2014, 481 p. – 

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"Frédérique Lecomte, metteuse en scène de l’asbl belge « Théâtre & réconciliation » qui a développé une véritable méthode – théorique et pratique – pour mettre cette notion à l’épreuve dans un contexte sociopolitique proche de celui du Rwanda : le Burundi. A. Breed montre combien ce phénomène est sollicité en ce cas avec prudence et circonspection, F. Lecomte veillant à maintenir, entre le public et la fiction, une distance néces- saire, qui sert de soupape de sécurité."

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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 theatre practitioner Frédérique Lecomte in the prisons of Burundi who conducted theatre 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.

En savoir plus

Chérie Rivers Ndaliko, and Samuel Anderson (éditeurs). The Art of Emergency: Aesthetics and Aid in African Crises. Oxford University Press, 2020.

 

extrait

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." Such 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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Interview Bruzz : Musical over kindsoldaten komt naar Brussel

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Deze zomer speelden kindsoldaten in Oost-Congo samen met een diverse cast uit België voor duizenden mensen in de straten en pleinen in en rond de stad Goma. Nu komt het muziektheaterstuk Vita siyo muchezo ya watoto ('Oorlog is geen kinderspel') van de Brusselse Frédérique Lecomte en haar Théâtre & Réconciliation ook naar Brussel. Wij dompelden ons onder in een warme repetitie.

 

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LIMA, S.; KUHLMANN, P.; SILVA, L. A política sensual: o Teatro do Oprimido e a dimensão estética 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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A criação artística é uma atividade humana, baseada na relação do indivíduo com o todo. A partir dos estudos sobre estética, ciência do sensível, introduz-se as emoções, sensações e corporeidade na produção do conhecimento. No campo da política internacional, os estudos sobre estética percorrem alternativas de percepção e análise dos fenômenos políticos e sociais, no qual as artes podem ser consideradas elementos de comunicação e expressão. Dessa forma, o texto trará o Teatro do Oprimido (TO) e sua aplicação no Bairro do Rangel, em João Pessoa-PB, para analisar o potencial das artes na transformação de conflitos. A investigação se estrutura a partir de uma abordagem qualitativa que incorpora a pesquisa-ação, em particular pela utilização da observação-participante, como estratégia analítica.

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Article presse : Irish Examiner - Healing power of theatre

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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 theatre and reconciliation. The Belgian theatre 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.``

 

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Dinesh, Nandita, Author, and Open Book Publishers. Theatre 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 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 i.e., the theatre.``

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Bibiane van Mierlo, Nicole Nagel et 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 fnancial resources and poor experiences in the  past. Three non-governmental organisations joint eforts 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 defned by (the quality of)  social relations and interactions – an aspect that is too often forgotten as a result of the medicalization of mental health  related problems.

 

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