la revue de presse - Le Théâtre du Soleil

open society panelvery courageous, to brave public opinion.They have to feel that they are supported, youknow? They have to feel that we admire theircourage and their struggle, that we won’t letthem down as long as they are there, that weare not going to ask them to do foolish things.That is important. You cannot put them indanger. But to avoid putting them in dangerdoes not mean that you have to tell them, “No,no, no, keep your scarf on.” If they take theirscarves off, good. You know?And this is good for us too, you know.Western women should not wear a scarf inAfghanistan, and that was something I wastotally convinced of, but it took relatively moretime to convince everyone else in the company.“We are not going to wear the scarf inKabul; we are not.” And we were told that weshould wear one, by very intellectual people,young and not — even by male diplomats, whotell you it’s better if you wear a scarf. Of coursenot! Why should we? But these women had tobe supported, they must not be pushed to dosomething rash that would put them in danger.(The same goes for the men.) I didn’t praisewhat they were doing onstage just because theyare women. When it was not good, I wouldtell them. It was more complicated to preventthe men from censoring them; when I felt thatsomething was not totally benevolent towardthem I would be very, very, very clear with theother students and tell them I will not acceptit. On that subject I was very clear, as I thinkone has to be. Even if it’s your best Afghanfriend, you cannot say to him that you approveof something if you don’t, just because of hisso-called culture. I mean, I don’t approve ofslavery, although it belongs to some cultures.I don’t approve, and I will not say otherwise,even if it’s part of the culture. There is somethingwhich is called les droits de l’ homme,human rights, and that is my culture.And what women! One was very courageous.There were six girls watching theworkshops and three participating, who werealready being very courageous just by going onthe stage. For an Afghan woman to go on thestage is outright heroism, because in Afghanistanit means that they are a prostitute — andthey went onstage and they worked. They didnot do badly, and one did very well, so this onewas among the group.We even had a scene with a Christianpriest on stage, with a little boy who playeda choirboy. We were very astonished, and Ithink the actors and I grew. In this group offifty there were perhaps seventeen who reallyled the workshop, who did really good work,so we gathered them at the end of our visit, forthe whole afternoon, and I asked them, “Sowhat’s going to happen now? Are you goingto stop? Or are you going to do somethingwith yourself? Why don’t you try and make agroup?” They started to talk about, “Well, yes,but what is going to happen between a Tajikand a Pashtun? Are we strong enough to leaveour origins at the door?” And I said, “Not onlyat the door, but at the frontier, and not only atthe frontier, but at the womb.”And so at the end of the afternoon, theydecided to create a group. They called it TheaterAftab — aftab meaning “sun” — so theywere actually calling it “Théâtre du Soleil” inFarsi. They elected a director, at least for themoment, as he said himself. And they decidednot to stop but to continue working, with thehelp of the foundation and Timor Hakimyarand Robert, who are going to lend them thegarden and the place to rehearse and to helpthem. We are very proud of that — and we planto go on helping them, too, because I thinkthey deserve it. I think there are some verygood actors among them, they will be goodactors in the future, so we have several projectsto continue with them. Except for thankingeverybody who helped with this adventure, Idon’t know what else I should say.72