A first under pressure for “Mother” by Wajdi Mouawad at the Théâtre de la Colline – Le Monde

Friday 19 November, the premiere of Mother, by Wajdi Mouawad, at the Théâtre national de la Colline, in Paris, looked tense. In the end everything went well. For weeks, the author, director and director of the theater had been violently attacked on social networks for having ordered stage music for Mother to Bertrand Cantat, the murderer of Marie Trintignant, in 2003. He was also accused of programming, for the 2022-2023 season, a show by Jean-Pierre Baro, who resigned in December 2019 from the management of the Théâtre des Quartiers d’Ivry after a complaint for rape, which was closed.

The Collages Féminicides Paris group has put up posters on several occasions in front of the theater, with “Cantat assassin, Mouawad assassin”, the # metoothéâtre movement has continued to denounce the choices of Wajdi Mouawad, and the defense of his position, which he brought to a forum on October 19. Marie Coquille-Chambel, one of the most active voices of the movement, who accuses Nazim Boudjenah of rape, a resident of the Comédie-Française, called on her Twitter account, the very morning of the premiere of Mother, to also hold theatrical critics to account “Which is totally part of the cogs of the patriarchal system in place”.

Padlocked doors

Friday evening, Marie Coquille-Chambel was in front of the Hill, where there were about twenty demonstrators. Arrived around 7.45 p.m. – three quarters of an hour before the start of the performance – they padlocked the doors of the theater to prevent the public from entering, while chanting slogans (“Cantat assassin, Baro rapist, valid Mouawad”…). A few police officers joined the Hill Police Department, where some spectators had already entered. In a leaflet that they distributed, the demonstrators demanded, in the name of their group called “Action Colline”, the cancellation of the play. Mother, the deprogramming of Jean-Pierre Baro, and “Public apologies from the Théâtre de la Colline. “

They finally accepted that the spectators enter the theater, which they did, one by one, one by one. At 9 p.m. the great hall was full and quiet. Wajdi Mouawad walked up to the front row, he asked as he should to turn off the cellphones and, without making any reference to what had happened, he introduced Mother, the third part of the cycle on his family, after Alone, and Sœurs. No incident disrupted the performance, which lasted two and a quarter hours.

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