Luca Giacomoni

« It all began on a day of violence. » Homer

Homer bequeathed us the two founding gestures of the Western imagination: a war and a journey. In a way, it is exactly what we do in the course of a lifetime: fighting to protect what is dear to us and overcoming a thousand obstacles in order to be able to say one day ‘this is my true homeland’. The opportunity to give stage form to this double movement arose when – in 2015, following the Charlie Hebdo attacks – the cultural director of the Meaux prison asked me to run a theater workshop on the roots of violence.

In a radical Islam prevention programme, I met men who embodied – in my eyes – the heroes and kings of Greek myth. The struggle for dignity and the wait for return suddenly took on a whole new dimension. Two years of work with a group of professional and non-professional actors, prisoners and ex-prisoners, gave birth to Iliad: a theatrical and human adventure that has since set a precedent in the French prison system.

ILIAD
Based on Homer’s Iliad and Homer, Iliad by Alessandro Baricco
Director Luca Giacomoni
Translation Paul Mazon, Françoise Brun
With Armelle Abibou, Mourad Ait Ouhmad, Samir Ben Malek, Hugues Dangreaux, Laurent Evuort Orlandi, Christopher Firmin, Cyril Guei, Jean-Baptiste Guinchard, Séphora Haymann, Peter Hudson, Brontis Jodorowsky, Sid Ali Hanifi, Lévy Kasse Sampah, Moussa Konate, Eliott Lerner, Ali Marsaoui, Louis Plesse, Bryan Polach, Michel Quidu, Jamal Yatim, Kamel Zada
Singing Sara Hamidi
Dramaturgy Marta Fallani
Assistant Director Giuseppina Comito
Lighting design Sean Seago

Production Why Theatre / With the support of the DRAC Île-de-France / With the support of the Ministry of Culture and Communication, Ministry of Justice, Arcadi Île-de-France, SPEDIDAM, Mains d’Œuvres, Les Plateaux Sauvages / Coproductions Centre pénitentiaire de Meaux Chauconin-Neufmontiers, SPIP Seine-et-Marne, DISP de Paris, Théâtre Paris-Villette / With the support of Humanités, Digital et Numérique Foundation and Meyer Foundation for Cultural and Artistic Development.

Duration / 10 episodes of 1h

« He who has been shipwrecked trembles even in the face of calm waters. » Ovid

In 2018, a friend invited me to propose a theater workshop at the Saint-Denis Women’s House: a shelter, in the Parisian suburbs, for women victims of violence. In order to familiarize myself with the place, I asked to take part in some speech groups: the first one was about excision and female genital mutilation. A sensitive and violent topic, so violent that we prefer to imagine it far away from us. That day, I listened to women talk about this mutilation, experienced by themselves and so many others they had known.

In the group, there was talk of snakes being born in human guise, like children; women being turned into goats, punished for their disobedience. All the participants nodded in silence. These were not tales, allegories: it was their reality. Those people had lived in a world where magic still exists; where mutation is a rational, even necessary process. This session reminded me of Ovid and his Metamorphoses: the invisible in ambush, transformation as the only possible horizon. In the background, the enslavement and domination of women’s bodies.

METAMORPHOSES
Based on The Metamorphoses by Ovid
Directed by Luca Giacomoni
Translation and dramaturgy Sarah Di Bella
With Diariatou Basse, Léna Dangreaux, Laëtitia Eïdo, Clémence Josseau, Hadassah Njengue, Sylvie Togba
Research and choice of music Eugenie De Mey
Singing Eugenie De Mey and Claire Trouilloud (alternating)
Assistant Director Giuseppina Comito
Costumes and objects Luca Giacomoni
Lighting design Bartolo Filippone

Production Why Theatre / In partnership with La Maison des Femmes de Saint-Denis / With the support of City of Paris, Meyer Foundation for Cultural and Artistic Development, Humanités, Digital et Numérique Foundation, L’Accompagnatrice Foundation, Les Ailes Foundation, Berger-Levrault Foundation, Adami and Spedidam / With the support of the integration programme of the École du Théâtre National de Bretagne / Creative residencies at Studio Théâtre (Stains), Gare au Théâtre (Vitry) and Théâtre de la Tempête (Paris).

Duration : 1h

Inspired by a series of feminicides reported in the gazettes of the time, Woyzeck is a story of violence that resonates sadly with the chronicles of our time. An investigation into the nature of evil. Thanks to a collaboration with blind and partially-sighted people, we have turned it into a sound ballad in twenty-two fragments. Our Woyzeck is a play that can be seen with your eyes closed. Each spectator has the choice of watching the show come to life behind closed eyelids, or opening their eyes and witnessing the strange ritual behind the scenes.

The crunch of a soldier’s soles, the whisper of a voice in the wind, or the first raindrops of a thunderstorm – these are just some of the elements that set the scene for this long funeral oration with the air of a work song. It was in Afro-American music that we found the loneliness and stigmatisation of people on the margins of society; it was by working with voice-hearers that we were able to give substance to the invisible; and it was in boxing gyms that we sought out the male complicity that is both the foundation and the framework of the drama.

WOYZECK
Based on Woyzeck by Georg Büchner
Directed by Luca Giacomoni
Translation Jean-Louis Besson and Jean Jourdheuil
With Fé Avouglan, Ulysse Bosshard, Luc Brasseur, Nicolas Cambon, Giancarlo Corredor, Flavia Lorenzi, Wabinlé Nabié, Louis Plesse, Mathilde Ponsford
Song research Fé Avouglan
Trumpet Nicolas Cambon
Assistant directors Marie-Eve Dorléans and Kristina Strelkova
Introduction to puppetry Nancy Rusek
Boxing training Luc Brasseur and Fred Voubrel
Costumes and objects Luca Giacomoni
Lighting design Bartolo Filippone

Thanks to Murielle Hénon and Vincent Demassiet of REV France for their valuable insight into the phenomenon of “hearing voices”; to Jule Japhet for his guidance and advice on sound effects; and to Robine Anders for her in-depth analysis of the issue of femicide.

Production Why Theatre / Coproduction Ateliers Médicis (Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil) and Nouveau Gare au Théâtre (Vitry-sur-Seine) / With the support of the City of Paris and the Ministry of Culture as part of the 2024 Cultural Olympiad, the Fondation d’entreprise La Poste, Fondation Jan Michalski, Fondation SNCF, Fondation Humanités, Digital et Numérique and Fondation Meyer pour le développement culturel et artistique / Creative residencies at Ateliers Médicis (Clichy-sous-Bois), Nouveau Gare au Théâtre (Vitry-sur-Seine) and Studio Philippe Genty (Paris).

Antigone’s gesture – throwing a handful of earth on the body of her brother, who was denied burial by King Creon – contains the very essence of the theatrical act: repairing the past through an action in the present. What form might this performative act, which connects the living to the dead, take today? How to reconstruct what the law of the state has broken? Antigone, conceived with artists in exile or who have lived the experience of migration, proposes to actualise this antagonistic and necessary act, opposing the government of men to obedience to the values of the Earth.

At a time of “solidarity crime”, identity tensions and the fantasy of a demographic “great replacement”, we feel it is imperative to remind ourselves of these universal laws based on ethics and human rights. Sophocles’ play will provide an opportunity to tackle some urgent questions: what does it really mean to be a community? What pact binds human beings together, and what is the limit that this pact cannot cross? Above all, can these bonds exist without being nourished by spiritual energies?

ANTIGONE
Based on Sophocles’ Antigone
Directed by Luca Giacomoni
Dramaturgy Linda Souakria
Translation Paul Mazon
With (cast to be announced)

Produced by Hagia Sophia / co-produced by Artavism / With the support of ARTCENA, CENTQUATRE PARIS, Agency of Artists in Exile and the Observatory of Refugee Camps and Fondation Humanités, Digital et Numérique.