Footsbarn, or the Problem of Itinerancy

For the ancient Greeks, drama was synonymous with the vast ampitheaters in which their tragedies and comedies were played out, and to which Western theater remains faithful, from stage and proscenium to orchestra and seating. Since at least the Middle Ages in Europe, however, companies themselves have long been lured by the open road, to go in search of audiences and to entertain them with their stories. This tension between theater’s nomadic and sedentary forms continues today, according to a debate organized this past weekend by the magazine “Cassandre/Horschamp” devoted to the state of contemporary traveling theater, on the occasion of the presence of the Footsbarn Theater at the Cartoucherie (Bois de Vincennes).

Footsbarn is a long-standing practitioner of the genre, with 37 years of travels and encounters and over 50 shows to its credit. Founded in Cornwall, England, the company works since 1990 out of a semi-permanent base in the Auvergne region of France. Alternating periods of on-site work with touring, the company is perhaps not so different from others, except that Footsbarn travels by caravan, performs under its own tent, and by nature of its traveling ethic, is consequently subject to the dangers and laws of life on the road.

According to the panel assembled for the debate, which included Fabien Granier of Footsbarn and Alexandre Romanès of the Cirque Romanès, traveling theater is an endangered species in Europe and particularly in France, where the accumulation of often contradictory legislation, coupled with considerable fear of “gypsies” and their mobile homes generally, conspire against companies who aspire to live and perform wherever the road leads them. Whereas Granier noted the “pressure” the company is constantly under to “come inside” established theaters, Romanès lamented the dilemma companies face to either compromise with the constraints of the existing system or be considered artistic outlaws, in a very real legislative sense. As the writer/researcher Alix de Morant emphasized, traveling theater is first and foremost an “art of transgression” beginning with the very borders of individual identities, for the itinerant performer who goes in search of the “other” every day, even when those others may be afraid to welcome him into their presence. Added to these potential sources of insecurity are the real costs of operating a traveling company in 2008, from the soaring price of petrol to the ensuing environmental damage in the caravan’s passage. As Sabine Clément, Director of the Centre International du Théâtre Itinérant, confirmed, “Companies set out with far less ease today than ever.”

On the eve of a tour though Britain and Ireland that will occupy the company for most of 2008, Footsbarn has dropped stakes at the Cartoucherie. Although, according to Granier, the company has been invited by the municipality of Vincennes to keep a low profile in its day to day living, one of the most exciting aspects of the company’s presence in the Bois is the opportunity to see up close this vanishing way of life. With their caravan cars neatly lined up, bikes parked outside some, laundry hanging around many, and children playing about, the company is a family and a village to itself, while the brightly painted trucks and tent are a sure invitation to dream of faraway lands. Footsbarn returns here with its most popular show, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, tailor-made, it seems, to the company’s colorful, visual, burlesque style of theater, developed through all those years on the road, drawing on a multitude of cultural expressions and integrating dance, circus and mask work. Footsbarn’s current director Paddy Hayter stars as an exaggeratedly buck-toothed Bottom and a silken haired Lysander, both played with great comic aplomb.
To judge from the company’s energy and enthusiasm (and with a median age well above 40, the troupe is no longer particularly young), Footsbarn has a long life ahead of it. If laws are made to be broken, Footsbarn is set to break a few more before it goes unquietly into retirement.
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (in English), to Feb. 3, Wed-Sat, 8:45 pm, Sun, 5 pm, Cartoucherie de Vincennes, Route de la Pyramide, 12e, Mº Château de Vincennes + Cartoucherie shuttlebus, 12€-25€, reservations FNAC or tel: 01.43.74.20.21.

Photo Credit: Footsbarn

Mittérand et Sankara

“Françafrique”: the term denotes everything rotten about Franco-African relations in the decades following independence in France’s former colonies: the misappropriation of millions of francs in aid, the creation of a corrupt political class and the awarding of highly advantageous development contracts to French industry and engineering. That the current government under President Nicolas Sarkozy is at the least making noises to distance itself from the policies that were the bread and butter of French-African “cooperation” in the 1960s and 1970s (see the recent tribune published in Le Monde by French Secretary of State for Overseas Development, Jean-Marie Bockel), is testimony to the insidious heritage of French neocolonialism and the enduring power of its reputation even for the French public. That incredible and tortuous history, uniting figures as outwardly diverse as Georges Pompidou and Félix Houphouet-Boigny, Valérie Giscard d’Estaing and Mobutu Sese Seko, has interested writers from Mongo Beti to John Le Carré, and now becomes a piece of theater under the pen of Jacques Jouet.

In “Mittérand et Sankara” however, Jouet proposes a fictional meeting between two heads of state separated by much more than the Sahara : the French president who confided the secret dealings of France’s notorious “African cell” to his son Jean-Christophe (allegedly baptized “Papamadit” by his interlocutors) and the reform-minded leader of Burkina Faso from 1983 to 1987, Thomas Sankara. What indeed could these two have to discuss on the dimly lit terrace of the presidential residence in Ouagadougou? But seek each other out, they apparently did, on several occasions: if youthful idealism must have fascinated the elder statesman, the latter’s political instincts undoubtedly commanded a certain attention in return. The qualities of each are to be measured in the two speeches with which director Jean-Louis Martinelli has framed Jouet’s play : Sankara’s address to the U.N. on December 4, 1984, and Mittérand’s opening remarks at the 16th Summit of French and African Heads of State in 1990. On the one hand : Sankara’s verve and convictions, arguing passionately for the defense by the international community of the rights of the wretched of the earth, even going so far as to demand a reorganization of the U.N. itself to give greater voice to the paternalistically termed “Third World”. On the other : Mittérand’s bold bet (yet to be won) that democracy would and could, with unusually strict French encouragement and means, sweep across Africa as it had done in Eastern Europe.

Imagined by Jouet, a member of the Oulipo group of writers united by a predilection for word play and linguistic jousting via pre-determined and self-imposed compositional constraints, the coming together of these two individuals, however true, is a celebration of verbal oneupsmanship. In “Mittérand et Sankara”, Jouet develops his concept of “simple theater” which prefers the verbal aspects of the art over the visual, translated here into a contest of who, literally, has the strongest tongue : each character, including one representing “Simple Theater” in the flesh, must successfully spit a roasted grain of corn into a gourd at his feet in order to be allowed to speak. The device, while not preventing the characters from delivering the entirety of their respective speeches, nevertheless creates an imbalance of power. On the night I saw the show, “Simple Theater” won hands down, leaving “Sankara” and “Mittérand” (played convincingly by Moussa Sanou and Pierre Hiessler, respectively) to briefly duel it out. The “gallic chicken” (Sankara’s expression) allowed himself a certain number of exceptions to the rule of order (Jouet’s characters are close representations of their real-life counterparts) in order to best his junior, but Sankara, as the loser, had the last word.

As one of postcolonial Africa’s few leaders to place people and country over personal ambition and desire, Sankara was not long for this world. After defending the rights of women, battling corruption and illness and tackling environmental issues like the encroachment of the Sahara Desert, Sankara was no match for a certain “Françafrique” that had him gunned down and replaced by Blaise Campaoré, who remains in the director’s seat of Burkina Faso some 20 years later, with the faithful support of France. If the clash of social ideals and political status quo are the subject of “Mittérand et Sankara”, Martinelli’s idea to end the evening with the famous La Baule speech lends the impression that the French president’s vision for a democratic Africa found its impetus in Sankara’s vision for a socially responsible Burkina Faso that could in turn change the world. Between Jouet’s play and Martinelli’s interpretation, yet two more commentaries on the period face off.

To February 17, Tues-Sat, 9 pm, Sun, 4 pm, Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, 7 avenue Pablo Picasso, Nanterre (92), RER A Nanterre-Préfecture + shuttlebus, 12€-24€, tel: 01.46.14.70.00.

Photo Credit: Agathe Poupeney