TIMETABLES : from 2:00pm to 3:30pm - PLACE : at Amal - Grenoble
The cafés-débats gatherings took place during the Meetings as one of the four fundamental steps they are composed. These debates operate as useful environment where to discuss the shows performed the day before. 7 of them took place last years and they were attended by 60-80 participants and amateurs.
They allowed the companies to receive feedbacks, reactions, opinions as well as the emotions felt by the public. In addition, they made it easier to answer some questions and enlightened the audience about some aspects not always evident and comprehensible during the group’s performances. They were particularly useful to understand the conditions in which the final works had been thought and created.
With no doubt, some of these exchanges reveled as some interesting classes of European history.
The Arad Amifran, referring to its show Jim Moves the Rubble, shared with the attendants the Romanian history, including the government organization during the communist regime, the urban drift phenomenon, the great construction of labors’ buildings, the emerging corruption and so on. Their performance harmful humor was a way to take the distances from a sorrow that still lives in the country nowadays.
The Warsow Teatre Studyjny staged Family Scenes, inspired by the Federico Garcia Lorca’s pièce titled The Bernarda Alba’s House. It allowed a deep inside into the author’s life, his artistic relationships with Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel, his homosexuality and his engagement in the republican cause that, eventually, led him to be murdered by the Franco supporters.
The mentioned full immersion into the Spanish history was helpful for another debate: the one that commented on the Barcelona Teatre Pa’tothom performance, In an Authentic Manner. The plot was about a young teenager, Lisa, who tries to build her life on a different and more contemporary family model than the patriarchal one she received as legacy. Her seek for freedom is definitely modern.
We could go on providing other examples. Young actors and artists eagers to learn, took advantage from these cafés-débats, considering them very stimulating and informally keeping their exchanging of opinions while having their meals, during the workshops and the breaks.
Moreover, it is important to point out that the debates were a genuine environment to learn and practice foreign languages too. English and French were of course the two main spoken languages, but some of the interventions occurred in Italian, Spanish, and German, Polish, Russian, Hungarian and many others. It was a true festival of languages.
The cafés-débats 2017 were a great success. They opened interesting ways for the future.
Program
- Sunday 2nd July : debate held by the young actors and actresses from Sainte-Marie (Québec, Canada)
- Monday 3rd July : debate held by the young actors and actresses from Arad (Romania) and Grenoble (France)
- Tuesday 4th July : debate held by the young actors and actresses from Vilnius (Lithuania) and Rome (Italy)
- Wednesday 5th July : debate held by the young actors and actresses from Brussels (Belgium) and Warsaw (Poland)
- Thursday 6th July: debate held by the young actors and actresses from Barcelona (Spain) and Heidelberg (Germany)
- Friday 7th July : debate held by the young actors and actresses from Bergamo (Italy) and Oxford (UK)
- Saturday 8th July: debate held by the young actors and actresses from Budapest (Hungary) and Milan (Italy)
French version
