Paroles d'Etoiles: UP

(l to r. Sophie Sergio, moi, et Isabelle Bondiau-Moinet)
Well, this is my 4th play. And I'm hooked...I was hooked before, but really, I must see more.

I've also been quite fortunate. My colleagues, my co-conspirators of theater, decided to go see this play. I haven't really insisted on a play... my only selection thus far has been "Un fou noir", otherwise, I've just tagged along on others, and really, the selections of others have been quite formidable! Formidable! It's meaning in French is different--For me, its equivalent would be delicious, sumptuous, magnificent...(think of ways of describing theater (or food) at its best!)

Today, at 14h05 we saw "Paroles d'étoiles: Mémoires d'enfants cachés 1939-1945" at Le Gilgamesh Theatre (2, bis Place des Carmes (really on rue de Carretières)).

This is an adaptation of a collection of the same name, that I bought for 2 euros. It is published by Librio, France Bleu and Radio France.

Here is the collection's epigraph from Boris Cyrulnik's Un merveilleux malheur:
"Les adultes inventent le passé puisqu'ils ont des idées à la place des yeux, alors que la mémoire de l'enfant est plus précise que celle des adultes, piégés par leurs théories."

My translation:
Adults invent the past because ideas have replaced their eyes, while a child's memory is more accurate than that of an adult's, whose memory is trapped in theory.


The actresses were magnificent. At first, when I looked at them, I could not see them as the voices of children, 3, 6 10 or 13...they wore dresses of the same color--a neutral lighter than beige hue, but I noticed immediately that each dress was tailored to each actresses body type. I just get lost in certain details. I could tell you that the material was a mixture of viscose and rayon, perhaps a bit of lycra. It hugged in certain places--but on one actress, the skirt was narrow, on the other it flared in an "A" line.

The set was again all black as in my other plays, but on this stage, strewn all along were clothes, newspapers, books, dolls, and old suitcases...

I was intrigued most by the way the actresses danced with 4 black cubes of different sizes some rectangular, others more authentically cube-like. They were wooden, painted black, and were adjusted as they shared each story. At first, I thought this story were the souvenirs of one family's experience...two sisters...but soon, it was clear...connecting with the first moments of the play when each woman named a child...and these children were born in different times...they were from Rwanda, Somalia, Chernobyl...France. Before they share the stories of the children from 1939 to 1945, the performers remind us of the children who lived through the hell of Rwanda, Somalia, and Chernobyl...recent genocides, recent moments in our history belying the cry "never again..." but yes, these things, these horrors continue to occur...and there is still too much silence.

The collection of stories that we hear are the memories of 800 children who survived in France during a time when people--their parents-- of Jewish faith were being deported to concentration camps--527 of these children were saved by Le Réseau Marcel situated in and around Nice. I liken it to a sort of underground railroad, and it operated as such. This réseau was organized by Moussa Abadi and his friend and future wife Odette Rosenstock, along with the assistance of Paul Rémond, the bishop of Nice. It is important to note that Moussa and Odette never discussed what they did. Monsieur Abadi went on to be a theater critic, having obtained his a degree on medieval French theater from La Sorbonne right after the war. No one knew what he had done until some of the children who had been saved by the réseau urged him to do so!

The play is beautiful, relating the stories of these children, the actresses becoming so many children...and then it hit me...I no longer saw this story through the eyes of a woman who comes from a people who have been oppressed, who suffered from the hands of the powerful and downright mean...I realized suddenly, that I was listening to this story from the mind and heart of a MOTHER! And the moment this came to my consciousness, the moment I realized I was mother to all those children who suffered, the tears would not cease. I was broken...my heart broken again, and again...and from that moment, I realized... I would not be quiet again.

After the performance, I spoke with Isabelle Bondiau-Moinet and Sophie Sergio, the two actresses. Mme Bondiau-Moinet is also the director of the play. She said that during their first rehearsal, neither of them could get through it because they were crying so much. "To think, we didn't hear about this until 1995!" Monsieur Abadi died in 1997. Wow! They also discussed the fact that as mothers they were torn by these stories...and these were of the kids who made it." There were 72,000 Jewish children in France in 1939, and by the end of the war, there were 60,000.

I asked Mme Bondiau-Moinet about her staging with the black cubes. She said, "As a director, I'm always looking for different ways to represent different concepts. Here, the cubes represented anything that was outside, outdoors..." I was fascinated by this play because it was like a huge puzzle being choreographed, as the cubes fit within each other, or formed steps to a podium, or a parade stand. They seemed to provide effective, smooth transitions from scene to scene.

At the beginning of the play and at the end, Monsieur Abadi's voice is heard as he urges all of us not to remain inactive. This recording was from a speech he gave towards the end of his life in the 1990s. He says we must do all that we can to make sure this type of thing never happens again. And, "if you feel that you cannot do anything...then cry out! cry out with all your might!"

It was a very thoughtful play, and I likened it with Pie Tshibanda's performance (see the Un Fou noir post). Both plays speak for those who have not been heard.

SILENCE = COMPLICITY.

Read more about Moussa Abadi

in English from a fellow blogger Gottfried Stutz:
http://gottfriedstutz.blogspot.com/2006/01/unknown-syrian-part-1-who-is-that-man.html
http://gottfriedstutz.blogspot.com/2006/02/unknown-syrian-part-2-more-information.html
http://gottfriedstutz.blogspot.com/2006/06/unknown-syrian-part-3-lives-he-saved.html
http://gottfriedstutz.blogspot.com/2006/10/unknown-syrian-part-4-at-last-his-name.html

in French
http://moise.sefarad.org/livre.php/id/112/