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It is a long-term project that receives this Sunday 29 September the RFI-Theater Award. The Lebanese Valérie Cachard, born in 1979, worked on her hometown Beirut for seven years in multiple forms, before writing for two years the text today distinguished, as part of the Festival of Francophonies, The Zebra of autumn, in Limoges. "Victoria K, Delphine Seyrig and me or the little yellow chair" exudes stories buried by war and destruction. It is the story of two women and a city, "one day cut in half like an apple".
" I think, I will be very moved ... " His hopping voice reveals his joy to receive this Sunday in Limoges the RFI-Theater Award . Her piece, Victoria K, Delphine Seyrig and me or the little yellow chair , written in a very inspired and inspiring style, is a literary descent into the abyssal depths of pain suffered by the inhabitants of a battered capital.
The play surprises us with its structure and rhythm, a sort of improvised staging of abandoned house visits, like the Victoria House. This is where the author-narrator finds a click diary that wants to reveal its secrets: " on the first page there was the identity of this woman ". Little by little, we enter into her intimacy, discover that she is dyslexic, that she writes nicely in French, but " why she writes in Arabic in a disordered way "?
A city and women destroyed and rebuilt
Through photos of girls in ruins, letters received, notes as mundane as mysterious as " November 16, 1962 Victoria buys batteries of alcohol and soap " or personal items as " a flyer ", we are approaching a certain truth of the past of this person, who has hitherto remained anonymous. Before our eyes is unfolding the story of a city and women destroyed and rebuilt. Their souls turn into ghosts whose spirits haunt the deserted houses of Beirut.
" It's mostly the story of a city that was destroyed and rebuilt and the people who live there," says Valérie Cachard. Here I am talking about female beings, even if there are allusions to other male beings. And it's around the way how these human beings are trying to rebuild themselves in an environment that changes daily and has suffered massive destruction. "
Terror mixes with text like grapes in French toast. "Victoria notes Bomb in the tram in Nasra dead and seriously injured wounded. 16 amputations. Are you intrigued by the freedom taken with punctuation in this sentence? Know that Valerie Cachard is also an actress. When she writes, she seems to be already thinking of the breathing, the hesitations and the fluidity of a movement that can not be locked up between two punctuation marks.
" I think it has to be linked. This is the first text on which I took much longer to write than usual. By the time I actually sat down to do it, there were things of the order of the obvious in relation to the breathing of the text. "
" Behind a voice, there are always others "
Visibly attracted by strong contrasts, the author chose the form of the monologue to describe the bursting of points of view. " The first theater text I wrote and made public and also edited and played was also a monologue. I think it's a form that attracts me, because behind one voice, there are always others. "
Behind the title-river lie islands made up of short sentences, observations torn from oblivion, memories of today's life. All put together, these bits of remnants and memories, intertwined with historical events in Lebanon, reconstitute part of the existence of Victoria K. In the image of this literary archaeological excavation that is not structured in chapters, but in fragments and archives.
" This is totally a literary archeological dig, confirms Valérie Cachard. This piece related to a larger project on which I worked for seven years, a project of sociology and history around the city. Through this project, a lot of documents emerged. We tried to understand the history of Lebanon and Beirut. This piece is fragmented because it tells a fragmented story. She also tells of several lives that at one point end up being one. "
"The diary of a Palestinian fighter "
This originality concerning the structure of the text is also found in a work that has marked Valérie Cachard, The Fall , novel divided into six unnumbered parts, Albert Camus. " It's one of my favorite novels and I read from time to time. I love him for what he says, his tone ... And he also has something very theatrical that I like very much. "
The most surprising thing discovered by Valérie Cachard during her explorations of abandoned houses in Beirut? A small notebook with a manual for weapons. " It was the diary of a Palestinian fighter. In this diary, he explained how to handle weapons, how to mount and dismount them. He had made small drawings in support, so there was something extremely naive and extremely disturbing in this document. "
" Beirut is looking for itself "
Born in Beirut in 1979, Valérie Cachard distributed in her hometown the main role of this play telling a life of wars and destructions. Is it the story of a lost paradise? " Totally and definitely, it's a lost paradise. Today, Beirut is looking for itself. And we are looking for it too. It is difficult to find it ... Already twenty years ago, it was difficult to find what our parents told Beirut. Today, people of my generation, we have the same relationship with this city. What we knew twenty years ago is practically nonexistent. "
From the Prix RFI-Théâtre, she heard " a few years ago. It's something that has been circulating on Facebook. In 2015, she participated for the first time. At the time, his text is even among the twelve selected texts. She does not pick up the prize, but continues to believe in it. Four years (and some artistic interventions in French high schools in Angola and Ethiopia) later, his perseverance paid off. After Hala Moughanie , Valérie Cachard becomes the second Lebanese laureate of the RFI-Théâtre Prize.
" The French language made me grow up "
Presented at Limoges, as part of the Francophonies festival, Les Zebrures d'automne, this award also highlights its link with the Francophonie. In 2005, the one who lives with a French family name had already received the Young Francophone Writer Award. And the words of her current play, Victoria K, Delphine Seyrig and me or the little yellow chair , she found and wrote in Beirut, but also in Paris and Antalya.
" Francophonie, for me, is a way of living, of making a connection. It's thanks to the francophonie and the francophone structures - even if, sometimes, they are reproached for being ghettos and only bringing together a particular type of artists - that I made meetings where I could grow. The French language made me grow. "