Une invitation

The mandate of artistic direction, which begins this season, opens up a new chapter alongside five guest artists invited to showcase their worlds.

Justine Lequette is far from being a stranger, having already entrusted her very first play – J’abandonne une partie de moi que j’adapte – to the Théâtre National. Writer and slam poet Joëlle Sambi shakes up fixed representations and helps us to continue the decolonization of our imaginations. Choreographer Ayelen Parolin, a familiar face in recent years, captivates us with the incredible uniqueness of her work. Gaël Santisteva, already acclaimed for Voie, Voix, Vois and Piñata Cake, blends artistic languages with moving humanity. An artist from outside the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, Rébecca Chaillon touches us with her deeply militant voice.

A shared commitment both on stage and with the audience. Their presence embodies our mission as a creative hub where diverse aesthetics coexist.

Ayelen Parolin

My work consists in trying to accept that I don’t know. When you don’t know, you become curious, you open up. There is something similar to vulnerability there that moves me, something similar to error and anti-error too, a way of questioning performance: how do you succeed, and succeed differently? I want to challenge and change the narrative around these notions we believed to be fundamental. To question the codes, to try and imagine another way of approaching society, of being in society. A way that is perhaps more fluid, less rigid, more joyful in terms of sharing, solidarity, connection …

I’ve been dancing since I was a child. And I think that my practice is closely tied to that childish relation to movement, to the sense of wonder as to what one can do with one’s body, the energy the body can radiate, what it can communicate. There is something here of the ordinary becoming extraordinary, which is deeply connected to my work, and linked also to a question that has run through it for several years: how can pleasure transform our relationship with the collective and multiply its power, its strength?

This question doesn’t merely concern what we do, but draws particular attention to how we do it: the bonds between people, the connections. How is somebody going to affect me? And how can I affect them through my movements? A work of relationships, encounters, exchanges and sharing – rooted within pleasure, and in pleasure

Joëlle Sambi

I am Belgo-Congolese. My home town is both Brussels and Kinshasa. I am an author, poet, slam artist and director. My artistic practice revolves around writing; it is my most intimate and powerful means of expression, one that enables me to describe the world in a slightly offbeat, slightly poetic way. 

Whether I’m an artist or not, as an activist, simply as a human being, I have a responsibility to speak out about the world around me: the streets of Brussels and the city’s rejects, the bombed-out schools in Iran, Gaza, the Congo – forgotten and sold out through sham deals. It is all of this that drives me; it is the fact that we still have to fight today in Europe for the right to abortion. All these things affect me. Whether I am personally affected or not is not really the issue. The question is rather how are we going to live in this world if we come together to speak out against what’s wrong – and not just speak out, but also fight against injustices and try to put things right where we can. 

Creating is a necessity, but I don’t have a strictly mapped-out path. I don’t tell myself, I have to talk about that! In 40 years’ time perhaps, when I look back, I’ll tell myself that, in the end, we’ve only produced variations on the same theme.
I actually think so already – everything has already been done and said. We haven’t invented anything new, just new ways of doing the same thing. That said, I love the spirit of competition, the questions, the depths, the doubts and the joys that writing, creation and this struggling plunge me into; they nourish me, in spite of it all.

Gaël Santisteva

What interests me is engaging with what surrounds us – in the sense of staging it, showing it. Starting from who we are: my friends, the people I meet, the people on stage with me, and the codes within which we operate; looking at them with humour and from a slightly shifted perspective.

There’s always a kind of chaos, something vaster, running through my thoughts. But I have the impression that by re-enacting on stage what is familiar to us, we can zoom out. And in taking a step back, something opens up: a way of thinking differently, of breathing a little more freely and feeling less alone in this undertaking.

I love it when, on stage, we talk about intimate things, even trivial ones, in a slightly unexpected, almost spontaneous way. A sort of improvised talking circle that springs up in the middle of a fictional story. A night-time picnic where we confide in one another.

In those moments, we allow ourselves to be more attentive, more receptive to what’s circulating between us. We listen differently, we take our time, we make space. A sense of closeness is created with the audience, and we expose ourselves as sensitive and vulnerable beings. For me, certainly, I want the audience to feel close to us on stage, for them to be able, while they’re watching, to think about other things they’d like to share.

As a spectator, I love going to see shows that move me, that challenge me, that invite me to look elsewhere, that really make me think about serious issues. But when it comes to my own shows, I want there to be, first and foremost, a sweet and appealing aspect, while playing with the classic codes of theatre. Perhaps also because I come from the circus world and, at bottom, we are fond of feats, that ‘wow’ factor. And I like mixing everything up, testing the limits of the theatrical format. I try to get messages across, but in a rather roundabout way, always with a bit of a twist. It’s a process that takes shape and is also a lot of fun. Humour and irony are very important to me, because I find they bring us back to a form of reality. 

Justine Lequette

There are two things that inspire me and that recur in my work. First, the question of the collective. I come with a desire to express something, but it is always through the friction between my own desire and other individualities that my intuitions find their way and take shape. And then I like to create narratives from which a collective emerges on stage, narratives that challenge a certain order of things while telling of other possible relationships between beings and the world through the presence of bodies on stage, which themselves tell stories. A different kind of relationship. That theatre might be the possible setting for something that is already emancipated.

Another thing that my work seeks to achieve is a dialogue with the past. My plays generally summon fragments of history, bringing to life people from the past, thoughts and certain struggles. In our neoliberal world, everything encourages us to think of ourselves as ahistorical beings. We have become one-person businesses, urged to think of ourselves in a perpetual hyper-present, when in fact we are part of a long history. For me, the theatrical act consists in re-positioning
the individual within this long history.

I like to summon figures from the past: to make their voices heard again, to make their bodies visible once more, their view of the world, their relationship to language. So that we can see: we no longer think like that, we no longer look like that, we no longer have those bodies. Theatre allows for this, which is wonderful. What interests me is the gap: to experience this gap is to remember that the world as we live it has not always been this way… This opens up the possibility of projecting oneself into a different future.

Rébecca Chaillon

I’ve always had a need for imagination, to create fiction, to embody characters. And what drives me to take action is this sense of irresolution, this experience of living in a world that is racist, homophobic and sexist, often all at the same time. I need to talk about fascistization and authority, excessive authority, police violence, systemic racism and the domination of marginalized people. I need to talk about these subjects that can hold me back, hurt me and share them with a community of artists, technical and production teams, and with an audience. To confront these topical issues – not specific events, but this overall accumulation of violence. 

I also need to explore the relationship with family, how one builds a family from my perspective. I’m 40, I’m Black, I live in a heavily stigmatized area, I’m a dyke and I’m an artist with a very demanding career. How do you cope when nothing is simple as to this desire to have children?

I need or want to talk about friendship, the strength of community, communities.

I’m lucky to have a medium like theatre, a place where people come to listen, reflect, discover… I try to ensure we raise each other up collectively without it being too intellectual, nor using codes people can’t understand; I want it to remain true to my style – a bit demanding, but accessible.