"Je t'appelle de Paris"

City of lights, city of dreams: Paris ever fascinates its 45 million annual visitors who probably remember those first sights, sounds, and of course, tastes of the French capital, even many years later. Café and croissants at a bustling zinc, the Eiffel Tower shimmering against the evening sky, the winding streets and precipitous staircases of Montmartre….: Paris is a feast for the senses as well as the imagination, as Hemingway was neither the first nor the last to note. For visitors coming from far away, in both geography and references, the novelty can begin before even touching Paris soil, in the plane or airport for example, where scales of technology, architecture and services characteristic of a world metropolis can mystify, long before getting to the Mona Lisa. Such was the experience of Moussa Sanou, a Burkinabé playwright/actor who came to France in 2002. Eight years and many Ouagadougou-Paris flights later, Sanou relates those indelibly engraved, first impressions in “Je t’appelle de Paris” (emphasis on the last word): more proof, if needed, that the city continues to exercise its charm, though the effects on visitors hailing from a former French colony can be mixed...

Developed from improvisations around Sanou’s encounters and discoveries, this engaging and lively two-hander, performed with Sanou’s fellow countryman Mamadou Koussé, works safe “fish out of water” comic ground while raising the familiar specter of the Banania Negro (whose “Y’a bon” becomes “Il n’y a pas de problème”) to scratch more sensitive zones of French colonial history and its residue. Sanou and the other members of his company Traces Théâtre, invited by director Jean-Louis Martinelli to create and perform “Voyage en Afrique” at Nanterre-Amandiers in 2002, deal with suspicious neighbors and condescending pedestrians with unflappable aplomb and perfect manners, not to mention exquisite consideration (walking barefoot the five flights to their apartment so as not to disturb the elderly couple next door), but do so always with a wry interior smile. In its sources of both wonder (the Métro…) and bemusement (concerns with propriety and appearances…), and its treatment of both, “Je t’appelle de Paris” is certainly indebted to a classic of African literature, Bernard Dadié’s Un Nègre à Paris (1959), where a young Ivorian author and journalist undertakes a reverse anthropological study of the “Parisians” and the city they built. As Sanou says, taking in everything he sees, “Dieu est bon mais le Blanc est grand!”

Have times changed? Much of West Africa celebrates this year the 50th anniversary of decolonization. Globalization and fifty more years of French coopération obliging, French and Africans are no longer the almost total strangers they were when Dadié gazed upon the Arc de Triomphe. As Moussa Sanou shows, however, more differences remain than there are bridges over the Seine, though most of these are what generally translates into “local color”: surprising, hair-tearing even, but harmless, on the whole. Of course, some opposing views will take more time to reconcile: whereas Sanou and his companions, in sketches that take place back in Burkina Faso, feel a sense of community and take time to appreciate the people they meet, their French guests see only crushing poverty and rudimentary hygiene. It is with these reflections that Sanou offers food for thought: Why must aid be a one-way street? Can Africans contribute nothing to their fellow world citizens? If another canicule strikes France, Sanou has a few ideas he’d like to share with us…

“Je t’appelle de Paris”, to February 14, Tues-Sat, 9 pm, Sun, 4 pm, Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers, 7 avenue Pablo Picasso, Nanterre (92), RER A Nanterre-Préfecture + shuttle, 12 euros-25 euros, tel: 01.46.14.70.00.

Photo credit: Pascal Béjean