In 2020, during the pandemic, theatre was defined as a ‘non-essential activity’. In France, Europe and just about everywhere else in the world, governments have agreed on this position: non-essential. The question is more than legitimate: is the theatrical act still necessary to the construction of an open and democratic society? Or are we, as dramatic artists, playing the role of musicians who entertain the passengers in first class while the ship sinks?

One way of answering this question would be to deconstruct the theatrical device from its foundations, confronting it with its limits and its responsibilities. Going to the roots of this secular rite and placing it – without artifice, without machinery – where the future of living together is at stake. To confront it with the brutality of reality, stripping it of the comfort of a theatre, and to relearn – through the school of sensitive relationships that theatre offers us – the value of ‘politics’ in the Greek sense of the term: that which binds us together.