There is no curtain or scenario. Either seats or ticket ticket. Only chairs placed to one side and one in the living room, rearranged to give some space to the actors. Representations resemble any theater. But here in Sevran, a town of the Outside of Paris, are based on its inhabitants. In his poetic imaginary. In their relationship with the territory, their problems, their fears or their desires. The free works are presented in their homes. Both in the great housing towers that usually characterize the suburb as in the small houses that also make up these peripheral areas. Complex spaces where, as in the rest of the world, it is not always easy to establish dialogue and discuss. Something that the Théâtre de la Poudrerie (theater of gunpowder) seeks to invest.
Sevran is located in Seine-Saint-Denis, the poorest department in France and the one that has the most immigrant and foreign origin population. To the town, of 55,000 inhabitants, the Cercanías line that connects the Paris Center with the peripheral neighborhoods of the North is reached. The city, with a poverty rate of more than 30%, has no theater. Its inhabitants do not usually go to shows either. But since 2011, a project has turned this situation around. If the population does not go to the theater, the theater goes to them. A theater of the inhabitants for the inhabitants. What Valérie Suner, the creator of the Poudrerie, calls “the theater of sociality.”
Gilles and Catherine Kujawski, two retirees who have lived in Sevan for decades, have decided to host a function at home. It is not the first time they do. The size of the house does not matter: they should only be the hosts of the night and invite their neighbors. The actors arrive a few hours before. Also the director and a technician, who installs the sound equipment while the comedians, already dressed, perform a vocal warming. Everything is installed. A dozen chairs have been placed on a crescent in front of a table and a large branch that represents a tree. “The first has arrived,” Gilles shouts, while heading to the door.
The work they will attend today is called Feet (With the feet) and deals with a family to which a tree grows in the lounge. The piece, directed by Jeanne Desoubeaux, reflects on curiosity, attachment and change. To write it, its author, Nicole Genovese, toured the streets of Sevran with a questionnaire. The objective was to probe the poetic spirit of the inhabitants and the result has been integrated into creation. During the show, neighbors and actors are less than two meters. Some observe while others act. Sometimes there are silences. Others, laughs.
The inhabitants of the area are in all the works of Poudrerie. The theater, in this way, participates in social debates and allows them to arise differently. The themes are multiple, but always linked to the territory. They address issues such as prostitution of minors, the presence of weapons, racism or white privilege. Also the revolts such as those of the yellow vests that flooded France in 2018 or the riots that shook the suburbs —Incluid Sevran – at the end of June 2023 and in October 2005. For one of the pieces, the creators interviewed young people who participated in these movements, triggered by the death of adolescents fleeing from the police, Zyed Benna and Bouuna traoré in 2005, and Nahel Merzouk in 2023.
Suner quotes the resonance notion of the German philosopher and sociologist Hartmut Rosa to describe the purpose of the project. “There is a cry that is thrown, a word that occurs and suddenly someone tends their ear, listens and receives that word. The goal is to try to enter dialogue and exchange ideas from those words and transform us. Do not follow each one by their side, divided, separated into points of view that, as we see today, are increasingly complicated to put in dialogue, ”he explains.
It is one of the aspects that Eric Ceprani, 55, likes the most. He is one of the neighbors invited by Gilles and Catherine Kujawski. “For me, the most interesting thing comes later,” he explains. “It is the fact of being able to talk to everyone, to be able to exchange opinions with the actors,” he says. He lives in Sevran since the late 1980s and has also hosted a work in his house. Before, he says, he had prejudices against theater, which he saw as something “outdated.” But the one that is done in the area, insists, is different. The project seeks that the theater be accessible to all. It seeks to break the cultural barriers between a certain elite and the most popular neighborhoods.
Between 100 and 120 representations are organized a year at home. After each show there are debates. And after the debates, moments of coexistence in which drinks and food are offered. The neighbors know each other and exchange reflections on the work they have just seen. Some will repeat the experience. Others will decide to host a work in their own home. This time it was in an area of houses with garden. But next week, the work will be presented in Les Beaudottes, one of the local priority areas. Here works mouth. Although for Gilles Kujawski, Poudrerie is already “an entire institution.”