In 2021 the hashtag #MeTooThéâtre began to take off on social media in France. 1000’s of tales of sexual abuse and harassment in theaters and theater colleges throughout the nation poured into. Requires change adopted, starting with an open letter signed by 1,450 members of the public within the newspaper Liberation.
The motion shortly coalesced right into a collective that took the hashtag as its identify and has remained a distinguished presence for the previous three years. It publishes a book of essays of the same name in 2022 and bought theater institutions to cease hiring aggressors and higher defend victims by holding demonstrations outdoors theaters, together with Theater de la Colline in Paris.
But many within the French theater world know the #MeTooThéâtre greatest by way of its Instagram presence: quick statements in black letters on a yellow background that learn like working commentary on circumstances of abuse which have come to mild.
Now the 5 most lively members of the collective put faces on the hashtag. This season they produced their first stage manufacturing “Les Histrioniques” (“The Historians”) which is played at the Théâtre de Belleville in Paris till January 28. In it, the band pulls no punches whereas lifting the curtain in witty, revealing methods on different points of their activism—beginning with the non-public price.
That is no simple feat as a result of a social motion is troublesome to seize in actual time on stage. Within the case of the #MeTooThéâtre, there’s the added risk of being sued for defamation – a really tangible prospect in France, the place quite a few males accused of abuse are won convictions against their accusers.
The solid of “Les Histrioniques” playfully pierces this actuality from the beginning, lining up in sun shades on the theater’s small stage. “We created a fictional area so that you just and we’re secure,” mentioned one performer, emphasizing the phrase “secure” with a touch of irony. “It is time to present you the faces of the actors taking part in us,” mentioned one other, earlier than the performers took off their sun shades one after the other, to the applause of the premiere viewers.
In repeated scenes, the ladies replay the moment messages they exchanged within the non-public messenger group they created in 2021, subsequent to the emojis they despatched in response. They face the viewers, relatively than one another, as a refrain, and describe what they’re every doing because the hashtag spreads on-line — schoolwork, present rehearsals, babysitting.
It is an affecting retelling as a result of as an alternative of the indignant mob that some French media have portrayed them as, the 5 solid members come ahead as people with advanced lives who began their marketing campaign for various causes. One, Marie Coquille-Chambel, a budding theater researcher who initiated the Twitter hashtag, was a sufferer of home violence by her ex-partner, a member of the Comédie-Française troupe. (He was found guilty in 2021.) The opposite 4 — Louise Brzezowska-Dudek, Nadezh Catellino, Sephora Heyman and Julie Menard — are actors, playwrights and administrators with direct expertise, they are saying, of gender inequality within the performing arts.
They usually deliver their theatrical craft to “Les Histrioniques,” which is co-credited by all 5 in addition to set designer Elisabeth Saint-Jalm. Between scenes of group dialogue, they swap to full of life reenactments: a category with a guru-like professor at a French conservatory, scenes between a stage director accused of rape and a distinguished theater director. All of those characters are given fictional names, though some are apparently impressed by publicized circumstances.
Catellino navigates the function of the accused director with specific gusto and comedian timing, at one level launching right into a tragedian’s lament in verse. She additionally leads the group in a memorable rap track impressed by the hashtag #ExposeYourPig which was trending early in France’s reckoning with #MeToo. “We expose the pigs, you fatten them,” they chant, gaining feverish energy.
There are moments of outright anger and disgust like this sprinkled all through “Les Histrioniques,” however the solid skillfully balances them out with episodes that present an emotional vary. Coquille-Chambel, the one solid member with out dramatic coaching, spoke with eloquent reticence in regards to the hate, rape and demise threats she obtained on social media. Brzezowska-Dudek performs a memorable administrator who poses as an ally however prefers to not hearth her male associates.
Heyman hits a few of the collection’ most painful notes when she describes rising up because the daughter of immigrants and shedding religion in France’s justice system. All 5 ladies wrestle with the realities of activism behind the scenes: unpaid, invisible work; missed alternatives; accumulation of casualties; too few assets.
Menard poignantly remembers the second her dedication wavered when well-meaning family and friends warned her to again off. But the reckoning is way from over: one determine the manufacturing hints at, actor Philippe Kobert, made headlines simply final week after new allegations by minor victims appeared in Liberation. With Les Histrioniques, the collective provides audiences a glimpse of what it takes to deliver such tales to mild.
The histrionics
Till Jan 28 at Théâtre de Belleville in Paris; theaterdebelleville.com.
