Death of Monique Blin, legendary co-founder of the Francophonies in Limoges
Monique Blin (3rd from left) in 2019 at the Festival des Francophonies - from writing to performing, surrounded by Marie-Agnès Sevestre, Souleymane Koly, Etienne Minoungou, Dieudonné Niangouna, Aristide Tarnagda, Pascal Paradou.
Christophe Pean
Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow
5 mins
French-speaking and especially African theater owes him a lot.
For sixteen years, Monique Blin was artistic director of the great Festival of Francophone Theaters in Limoges, France.
Many famous authors, directors and theater troupes today were “born” thanks to her: from the Congolese Sony Labou Tansi to the Lebanese Wajdi Mouawad via the Canadian Robert Lepage.
She died Monday, January 24 in Paris, at the age of 88, following a long illness.
Advertising
Read more
She carried the colors of the Francophonie very high. In 1984, Monique Blin had decided to transform Limoges, this provincial town landlocked in the center of south-west France, without a motorway or TGV, into an international crossroads for new ideas in the performing arts, "
whether one is Montreal or Brazzaville, Brussels or Tunis, Beirut or Hanoi
”. Co-founded by her, and directed by her, after the departure of Pierre Debauche in 1997, until 2000, the Festival des Francophonies, both intimate and open to the world, became famous on all continents.
In this city, known in the 1980s especially for the deep crisis of its porcelain factories, this visionary woman knew how to create a unique mixture of artists, authors and emotions viscerally linked to these encounters far from Paris and destined to write the Francophone history of dramatic art with absolute respect for all Francophonies.
"
The dream of the founders Jean-Marie Serreau and Pierre Debauche consisted in bringing together French-speaking artists, not in Paris, but in a region, Limousin
", she explained to me one day the genesis of this unique initiative in world.
Monique Blin and Sony Labou Tansi
Before her adventure in the Limousin, Monique Blin had put her curiosity and her devotion to the service of the living arts as general secretary of the company of the Franco-Belgian director Pierre Debauche.
At the end of the 1960s, she also participated with him in the creation of the Festival Nanterre-Amandiers.
But, the project of her life will be the Festival des Francophonies where she has allowed many artists to break into the international scene.
The most memorable example is certainly that she introduced the masterful work of the Congolese Sony Labou Tansi to France.
And the legendary author was well aware of this, giving his title of nobility to this meeting in Limoges, renamed “
The Festival of New Fraternities
”.
"
Sony Labou Tansi made his reputation as a man of theater throughout Limoges.
He was an extraordinary man who wrote in a prescient way about everything
,” she explained.
Monique Blin, the co-founder of Francophonies in Limoges, died on January 25, 2022.
© Francophonies – from writing to the stage
A single watchword
: “
Write
!
»
Canadian Robert Lepage presented his first show,
Vinci
, here in 1986. And Congolese Dieudonné Niangouna, the first African associate artist of the Festival d'Avignon, also largely built up his skills in Limoges.
Without forgetting the Chinese Gao Xing Yiang, invited to a writing residency in Limoges, long before becoming a Nobel Prize winner, or the Lebanese Wajdi Mouawad, one of the greats of world theater and current director of the Théâtre de la Colline in Paris, who often declared to be "
born
" in Limoges.
She had met her in 1991 in Quebec.
He was 23 years old.
His invitation to come to Limoges was accompanied by a single watchword: “
Write
!
»
The legacy of the House of Authors
Even after her death, the legacy of this vocation awakener will continue, like the House of Authors, created by Monique Blin in 1988 to support authors and authors, at a time when "
no other place existed in France to welcome these creators
. In 2019, Hassan Kouyaté, actor and director from Burkina Faso, took up the torch. Since then, he has directed the Festival des Francophonies - from writing to the stage, which has since become a national reference center for the Francophonie. He will always remember the "
positive shock
" when he first came to the Festival, to accompany his famous father, actor and director Sotigui Kouyaté: "
I first came in 1986. In 1987 I came back as a storyteller with my own show.
Afterwards, I returned to Limoges more than twenty times as an artist.
The first trip here was a shock for me, a positive shock.
A decisive shock for the rest of my career.
Me, who came from Burkina Faso, it was in Limoges that I first met Congolese, Quebecers, Swiss-Romans, Belgians, Cameroonians... This was decisive for continuing my work in the art and culture.
»
"
Today these "we" come together to say Thank you!
»
On January 26, the Festival des Francophonies - from writing to the stage published an admiring, friendly and warm letter to say “
Thank you
!
» to Monique Blin in the name of
«
us, women, men, children, teenagers, adults, to whom you offered the world on a theater stage unfolding to infinity
;
all of us, for whom these lessons of humanity have profoundly changed the course of our lives.
»
In a very moving post, Véronique Saavedra, Monique Blin's daughter, paid her a final tribute:
"
My mother, Monique Blin, left last night for other shores, other discoveries... Thank you for remembering her, thinking of her…
”
Newsletter
Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_EN
Theater
Francophonie
Africa
France
Culture
Africa culture
our selection