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“After playing the role of a victim of domestic violence in the playAn ordinary man for four special womenof Slimane Benaïssa, I set up a reading featuring testimonies collected in the form of interviews,abused womenby their spouses.

These women, all housed in a foster home, offered me their word with great confidence and courage. The reading of their stories allowed them to put words to the unspeakable, the unspoken, the taboos.

What I demanded of them, what they gave me with the most sincere commitment, I could not have obtained without the professional support of the social workers who supervised them.

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Then, I carried out similar work with certain members of the Paroles d'habitants group in Saran, in the Orleans region, around the question ofsocial violence. This time again, our work was based on mutual trust, which allowed us to give birth to a very strong show where everyone could feel valued and heard.

Later, I was able to renew the experience with the members of the Vilpot district, still in Saran, around another sensitive subject: theliteracy. Between the months of March and June 2012, I followed the efforts, the progress and the evolution of people who came from far away to live in France and speak our language.

During each of these workshops that I led, I was able to see that the confidence of all the participants was built step by step, step by step, in the patience and self-sacrifice of the participants and the speakers.

I also saw the emotion, sometimes even the pride that people felt when they heard their own stories read by me.

The same work was carried out in 2015, at the request of the Association de Gestion des Formations en Alternance pour les Petites et Moyennes Entreprises (AGEFA PME), with students from a vocational high school in Villiers-Le-Bel, in situation of" dropout.

More recently, in order to complete my work on domestic violence, I collected various testimonies from male perpetrators of violence from their companions, in partnership with the SPIP of Meaux in an open environment.

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All these "life paths" have become readings in their own right, which the Théâtre de l'Imprévu can distribute in various places such as high schools, libraries, museums, prisons, etc. in order to make the voices of those heard that we rarely hear.

The debates and cultural actions that follow these readings are always rich in questions. Listeners are often touched to hear journeys other than their own, but sometimes also moved to discover that other people are encountering life difficulties that are common to them. »

 

Claire Vidoni, director and actress