ASSITEJ Artistic Gathering 2025
International selection
Based on ‘En découdre’ by Luc Tartar (Lansman Éditions)
A young girl teeters on the brink of being diagnosed with schizophrenia. But she finds within herself the desire to overcome it and the will to fight. She climbs to the rooftops, engages the combat, and shouts to the sky before the eyes of the town’s inhabitants, whose many hands are outstretched…
The story of this young girl is our story. We all live in fear, with the terrible sword of Damocles hanging over our heads. But we also carry within us a fabulous desire to live and the ability to fight back. To fight back is the little spark that wakes us up, the jolt of hope that stops us sinking into the dark night
It’s a meeting of cultures, languages, continents and artists: Jeannette Mogoun, Cameroonian actress, author, composer and performer; Luc Tartar, French author; Karin Serres, French author and set designer; and Pascale Grillandini, French playwright. It’s two shows in one, a combination of theatre and song, an embodied polyphony for adults and teenagers.
TEAM
Text: Luc Tartar
Concept and direction: Jeannette Mogoun
Music and play: Jeannette Mogoun
Set design: Karin Serres
Dramaturgy: Pascale Grillandini
Light design: Luc Degassard
Light manager: Jacques Bouault
Sound manager: Jean-Pierre Rigaud
Diffusion: François Fogel
‘Human beings abhor difference. Exclusion is a disease that eats away at our innermost being. Another form of schizophrenia, so to speak.’
Share
I. Under the gaze of a young man who holds me by the eyes. And in front of so many outstretched hands. Can’t believe this is happening to me. Because it is happening to me. This thing. This thing. At night in my sheets. During the day too. Monday Tuesday Wednesday and every day of the week. It’s there. In the ringing of my alarm clock in my bowl of cereals in my screams in the shower it bangs into my mouth and yet I can’t talk about it. How can I say it?
[…] It takes hold of the energy of my twenties. It’s here today and yet it’s been happening to me for so long. It’s in my repeated stays in hospital. It’s in the eyes of the doctors and the confusion of the parents. This. This thing. Day and night and again just now when the diagnosis was announced. My stupor and my tears. My father’s anger and my mother’s words What have we done? or Was that it! This happening to me and swallowing us up. This in my life. How do they say that? I. Schizophrenic. It’s lodged in my head and I fall into my feet. Help! Please help me!
Jeannette Mogoun takes on my characters with great generosity and delicacy. My texts suit her well, or let's say she instinctively understands their poetry and dramaturgy. This accuracy of interpretation, these characters who stick to her skin, all this delights the author that I am.
Press
Le Piccolo, February 2023
Residencies
January 2023, residency in Angers with the Compagnie LOBA.
August and December 2022, residency at the Robert Desnos library in Montreuil-sous-Bois.
December 2022, hosted by the SACD in Paris.
October to December 2021, TRAME residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.
Premiered on 5 and 6 February 2023 at the Cellier in Reims, as part of the FARaway festival in Reims, NOVA VILLA programme.
Partners
In Africa
Cameroon Ministry of Culture
French Institute of Cameroon in Douala and Yaoundé
Network of French institutes in French-speaking Africa
Douala Youth and Culture Centre, Cameroon
Ongoing partnerships
Kimoko Festival (Pointe noire, Republic of Congo)
Le Tarmac (Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo)
L’Univers des mots (Guinea)
In France
The Cité Internationale des Arts
Compagnie LOBA (directed by Annabelle Sergent), Angers
Association NOVA VILLA (directed by Joël Simon), FARaway Festival, Reims.