In Nanterre, a Festival du Théâtre des Amandiers takes place directly in the accommodation of the actors. An initiative that brings together and opens the way to new meetings.
Five Italian reads, a bottle of red martini, mandolin and a mandolin wait on a table while the spectators settled at Didier Lovera, 72 years old, before he enters … in his own living room.
The twenty people who came to attend the show he plays on this Saturday afternoon are barely in the stay and most do not know each other: it is a festival of the almond Theater, in Nanterre, which led them to the second floor of this discreet building, avenue Pablo Picasso.
The fourth edition, on the theme of the kitchen, allows this self-proclaimed “king of Piedmont” to tell his visceral attachment to Italy, where his grandfather worker came from, in this living room which he designs as an “cave open for all”.
A representation in complete privacy
Full of trinkets, family photos, posters and children’s drawings, its orange walls offer the public a confusing dive of intimacy in the life of this longtime Nanterrian.
“The idea was to reverse: the theater does not invite but it is the inhabitants who invite the theater,” says Christophe Rauck, director of the almond trees.
After the performance, drinks are offered and sofas prepared by Didier circulate on a plate. Instead of hurrying as if to get out of a room where the lights would have just turned upside down, the public linger, discusses, examines a photo or an object.
“It is a very political, democratic form of theater, people meet it creates links between them, we can meet the stranger from the door to the side”, analyzes Philippe Jamet, the director who had the idea of this festival.
Each “route” is made up of two stories, and the spectators move together, on foot, from one apartment to another.
“It’s really a golden opportunity,” said Housna El Farj, a 62 -year -old social worker, “there we dived in Italy, yesterday we were in Jamaica, after we are in France”.
“Lives behind these walls”
More specifically in Pas-de-Calais, at Geneviève Zarate, 75 years old. Only a few frames adorn the walls of its white living room where you settle down.
She too tells the story of her grandparents, taking the public to the small town of Wingles, where they held a grocery store.
“Have you ever heard the pancakes sing?” Asked the amateur actress, before remembering the sounds and gestures of her grandmother who were preparing for her “every Sunday afternoon”.
Participate in the festival provides this academic “the pleasure of making humble people known, who will never be in history books but who have made history”.
“I said to Philippe: I’m going to tell you about the fries, the pancakes and a story of social ascent,” she smiles.
“We pay attention to what there is all ages, as many men as women, people of all cultures and all horizons,” said the director.
“It was also a way to know this city through the words of the inhabitants,” notes Christophe Rauck.
“I discover neighborhoods, home, interiors, buildings next to which we pass and there it gives another aspect: it is not just a building, they are lives behind these walls”, enthuses Housna El Farj.
Because each inhabitant represents a small facet of Nanterre, land of immigration and city-prefecture of today almost 100,000 inhabitants.
To celebrate this diversity, Didier the Italian of heart first wanted his “course” to consist of a meal shared with his neighbors of West Indian, Kabyle or Tunisian origins.
On his level too narrow to welcome this feast would have missed only one thing: “Place for the public”.
