Jours de fête

This year in Tournai, the heart of Wallonia, the Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles and the Maison de la culture de Tournai jointly propose, as equal partners, the season’s opening in another context, with other circulations of artists from Brussels, Wallonia and the international scene, as well as various artistic, popular and festive forms where play and experimentation occupy a large part. It’s vast. It seems limitless.

This is indeed a desire for the future, for festive and territorial friendships.

What if the Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles was a story, a language, and also a thought? What would we discover? The future of the Théâtre National de Bruxelles begins with a kinship, a momentum; that of Jacques and Maurice Huisman. First founding a theatre troupe of scouts. Then, Les Comédiens routiers belges in 1935, crisscrossing the villages of Wallonia with their truck, their marquee and their repertoire of texts, including during the war. And finally, becoming the directors of the Théâtre National de Bruxelles created in 1945 by Order of the Prince Regent, signed by the Minister of Public Instruction, to form a resistant social body.

The collective, the artistic requirement, the ethics of responsibility, a critical spirit, and cultural decentralization are the foundations and the condition of the Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, even today.

Like Philippe van Kessel (Semaine de Fête, Ateliers Jeune Théâtre), Jean-Louis-Colinet (axe Théâtre national, centres culturels et dramatiques wallons) or Fabrice Murgia (Les Week-ends d’Ouvertures), Pierre Thys wants to seize these intrinsic qualities in a spirit of circulation and celebrations. Code name: Jours de Fête. This translates each year into a weekend marking the opening of the season, in one of the five French-speaking provinces (Walloon Brabant, Hainaut, Liège, Luxembourg, Namur) which are territories of creation.

The Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles is not an impregnable fortress. It takes the opposite view of homogenizing season openings and exclusive territorialization. Faced with the repolarization of collective life due to the health crisis, reflecting on the future of theatre, on its foundation and its current state, implies putting the question, to other audiences, to other venues than itself. In other words, through committing to a policy of friendship between the theatres of Brussels of Wallonia, on questions of solidarity and relations with the public, it’s possible to bring out other territorialized and unrooted sensitivities, and give another meaning to theatre. To play a positive and beneficial role.