Facing Mother by Jean-René Lemoine

Join the UK premiere of Cross-Channel Theatre 2021 laureate Facing Mother (Face à la mère) written by Jean-René Lemoine and translated by Amanda Gann in a staged reading directed by Julia Locascio (see biographies below).

A mother dies, tragically, in a far-off country, beset by violence and madness. Several years later, her son decides to set a meeting with her, beyond death, to confess to her, in this deferred and polyphonic interview, all that he never knew how, never dared to tell her. Over the course of this love song, a son retraces the tumult of a forty-year relationship. Buried images of the mother resurface and fade one after another, overlaying themselves on snapshots of continents, countries and cities crossed together, to dissolve themselves at last into the cataclysm of the native land. Can we, with the impalpable weapons of poetry, stitch back together the real? Can we still, in the dread of this world, invent mythologies and through them attempt to remain standing in the face of disaster, shed light on the chaos, cast a bridge out toward the other rather than take up the monopoly of sorrow? Such is the fragile and daring challenge of Facing Mother.

Fri 2 Dec 3pm

Venue:
Park Theatre
Clifton Terrace, Finsbury Park,
London N4 3JP

Nearest tube stations: Finsbury Park (Piccadilly & Victoria) or Crouch Hill Railway Station (Overground)

To book your free ticket(s), please write a message to the Arts Department via this address: mathilde.charras@institut-francais.org.uk (Please send your last name, first name, email address and number of tickets you wish to book).
 

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About the author:

Jean-René Lemoine is a playwright, stage director and actor born in Haiti and based in Paris since 1989. His artistic training began at the Conservatoire d’Art Dramatique in Paris. After a career as an actor and performer, he founded the Erzuli Company with which he has created many of his plays.

Award-winning playwright, Facing Mother is Jean-René Lemoine’s second script to have been translated into English as part of the Cross-Channel Theatre’s programme. Medea, Written in Rage was produced in 2017 by NFA International Arts and Culture, adapted and directed by Neil Bartlett, with the support of the Institut français du Royaume-Uni. it toured across the UK (Birmingham REP, Cambridge Junction etc.) for over a year.
 
About the director:

Julia Locascio is a stage director and designer working in the UK and US. She frequently collaborates with writers and composers to make work with big-hearted characters and a mischievous relationship to time and structure. From 2011-2021 Julia was Artistic Director of The Waking Theatre, a devising company with a focus on site-specific new work (Magdalene, Charlie blows a bulb, Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, The particular sadness of lemon cake, Eurydice). Julia has also worked widely as an associate director and designer in the West End, with the RSC, The Old Vic, Punchdrunk, and on the first US tour of War Horse. Among many awards, she has most recently received the 2018 Charles Abbott Musical Theatre Fellowship for Stage Directors and Choreographers.
 
Cross-Channel Theatre: French New Writing in the UK

Cross-Channel Theatre is a translation programme led by the Institut français du Royaume-Uni. Its purpose is to promote and support French contemporary playwrights in the UK. With its laureates, Cross-Channel Theatre highlights the diversity of the French-speaking world’s voices, ultimately striving to lead to their production on British stages.
 
Cross-Channel Theatre Contacts

• Isabelle Manci, Cultural Attachée, Head of the Visual and Performing Arts Department, isabelle.manci@institut-francais.org.uk
• Mathilde Charras, Culture and Education Assistant, mathilde.charras@institut-français.org.uk

 
This play benefits from the support of the CONTXTO network.