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Jaz : Theatre on the Edge December 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14 & 15, 2010 at 8:00 pm. Sunday, December 5 & 12 at 4:00 pm.
After 2004's resounding success La nuit juste avant les forêts with Denis Lavant, and Koffi Kwahulé's Big Shoot in 2007, Kristian Frédric is back, with Jaz. Cited in this year's Contemporary European Theatre Directors (Maria M. Delgado and Dan Rebellato, Routledge Ed., 2010) as one of the most influential contemporary stage directors in Europe, he has taken on another work by Kwahulé, the great Ivoirian writer whose acclaim similarly continues to grow on the Continent. Jaz springs from a meeting of minds: those of Kristian Frédric and the theatre company Les Deux Mondes, which has been exploring the possibilities of multimedia in theatre for fifteen years. Where are we? When are we? What do we see before us? Isolated, questioned and analyzed, sheer torture, feeling revolted, restrained but not enslaved, Jaz, in full view of the cameras, tells her story, then responds to it and resists it. Trapped in a sterile, methodical and mechanical Big Brother world, Jaz evokes the memories of her friend Oridé, "so beautiful she could wake the dead" (belle à réveiller un mort), the Boulevard of Burning Incense down which she fled filled with shame, a crumbling, stinking building, the Bistrot de l'ange, her rape by the man "with a face like Christ's", the fragments of a world turned-upside-down or perhaps dreamt, and feeling the aching wound in her belly. Are the feelings inside of her not those of the World itself? And the suffocation of this woman by a cold, implacable universe which tries to steal from her even the slightest shred of humanity, is this not the true image of Western civilization, its roots forgotten, and left to the mercy of the rest of humanity?Š It is the annihilation of speech, a general amnesia. Damned, Jaz tries to summon the embodiment of her Creole heritage. She grasps us with all that she has: her anguished words ... feeding them to the hunger of greedy, invisible consumers. It is the ultimate sacrificial leap into the hope of nothing but darkness. This world may wish to annihilate us but will it extinguish our sense of the sacred? Perhaps through this destruction, Jaz will find, finally, peace, a sense of fullness that may sound out as a note. And from a single note may be born a melody. "What is especially remarkable about this work is its spirit of lyricism, and the strength and freedom of its language. With brief strokes, in a style at once poetic and plain-spoken, the author gives voice and music to a tragic figure with an all-too-common destiny." (Bureau des lecteurs de la Comédie-Française)
Wielding African poet Koffi Kwahulé's fiery text, imbued with its jazz accents and dense, hypnotic spoken word, Kristian Frédric sets forth a multicultural parable in which play, robotics, sound and video interact.
A Québécoise of Haitian origin, trained at the National Theatre School, and truly an actress whose star is rising, Amélie Chérubin-Soulières powerfully depicts the role of Jaz, a woman who refuses to forget.
Production: Co-production: Co-presented in Montréal with Usine C.
Text: Koffi Kwahulé
Jaz is performed in French.
December 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14 & 15, 2010 at 8:00 pm.
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