Press

Date(s)

  • 8 juin 2019 – Derrière le Hublot – Capdenac (FR)
  • 10 et 11 mai 2019 – Théâtre La Filature – Mulhouse (FR)
  • 23 au 27 avril 2019 – Théâtre National de Bretagne – Rennes (FR)
  • 8 décembre 2018 – Equinoxe – Chateauroux (FR)
  • 28 avril 2018 – Mars-Mons – Mons (BE)
  • 13 et 14 avril 2018 – TLH – Sierre (CH)
  • 10 et 11 avril 2018 – Théâtre La Vignette – Montpellier (FR)
  • 7 avril 2018 – Théâtre d'Arles – Arles(FR)
  • 17 mars 2018 – Agora – Boulazac (FR)
  • 3 mars 2018 – Théâtre de Tulle – Tulle (FR)
  • 25-26 novembre 2017 – Festival Les Rencontres à l'échelle – Marseille (FR)
  • 11 novembre 2017 – TAP – Potiers (FR)
  • 22-23 octobre 2017 – Festival Sens Interdits – Lyon (FR)
  • 7-8 octobre 2017 – Festival FAB – Bordeaux (FR)
  • 25-26 juillet 2017 – Central Fies Festival – Dro (IT)
  • 11 février 2017 – Festival Reims Scène d'Europe, Comédie de Reims – Reims (FR)
  • 11-17 janvier 2017 – Théâtre de Vidy – Lausanne (CH)
  • Décembre 2016 – Projet en collaboration avec la Compagnie LagunArte (Pays-Basque, direction Kristof Hiriart) – Bordeaux (FR)

Hospitalités (2017)

A project by Massimo Furlan//Numero23Prod.
In association with Kristof Hiriart//Cie LagunArte and Centre Experimental du Spectacle
With residents of La Bastide-Clairence

11-15 january 2017 : creation at Theatre de Vidy, Lausanne (CH)

Timeline of the project

In 2014, musician and artist Kristof Hiriart invited Massimo Furlan for a residency in the village of Bastide-Clairence in the French Basque country. Listed amongst the most beautiful in France, the village boasts a population of 1,000 and a rich history of immigration and welcoming that goes back to the 14th century. La Bastide was built by the Kingdom of Navarre in order to gain access to maritime trade and was populated out of necessity. At different times in history, it has had to deal with the mass arrival of refugees from the Inquisition, as well as inflows of Basque people from Spain and of pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. In the village, Gascon and Basque languages cohabit. At the beginning of the 1980s, the population of the village started declining. At the initiative of the mayor in 2012, La Bastide decided to welcome artists, including Cie LagunArte directed by Kristof Hiriart, whose work focuses on music performance and experimental creations based on the spoken word.

Massimo Furlan immersed himself in the village in November 2014 and again several times in 2015. There he met many residents: the retired master butcher, property owners, various craftsmen, and both the current and former mayor of the village. He asked them to tell him about the village’s history, about their own lives, and about the future they imagined for La Bastide. He shared conversations while strolling around the village taking in the life stories and daily lives of its inhabitants. From these encounters, he devised a theatrical performance with the village and its actors, as close as possible to the heart of the village.

How do you write a story or how do you breathe life into fiction?

This project questions principles underlying the creation of a story: How is a story written? The story Massimo Furlan decided to commit to is based on the following idea: Residents seem happy to live in this village. They have become attached to it and have no desire to leave. Their only fear for the future concerns increasing housing prices due to the touristic value of the place, which, for the lack of affordable housing pushes younger generations to leave. What can be done in such a case? Slightly provocatively, Furlan began to reflect on the issue of hospitality and migrants. Indeed, the population of the picturesque village does not include any foreigners. Welcoming communities in need would lead house prices to drop or at least to remain at their current level. With the help of Kristof Hiriart, and in deepest secrecy at first, Furlan offered to take up and reflect on the question of hospitality with the former mayor of the village, Leopold Darritchon, an open-minded economics professor, loved and admired by everyone. Darritchon accepted and decided to draw up, with Furlan and Hiriart, a team of social ‘actors’ who would become responsible stakeholders in the story of the play to be performed.

The point is then to include an element of fiction in the real world—i.e. a proposition to open a Welcome Centre for refugees in the village—and to let this idea generate actions and reactions among the population by means of debate in the social space. During this first stage in the project, there is no audience and everyone is an actor: All the residents, through their opinions, conversations and gestures, unwittingly share in and create the story. The stage is the village and the village is the stage.

At the beginning, the aim is to breathe life into fiction. But as time passes, history catches up with fiction and at the end of the summer of 2015, migration becomes an urgent political and social issue all over Europe. The war in Syria, the political and economic conditions in Africa and the Middle East generate growing and continuous migratory flows. European leaders take up bold, generous or strict positions in the debate. Villages, towns and whole regions undertake to welcome communities in exile. Leopold Darritchon—who feels that the concept of hospitality that Massimo Furlan has devised as an artistic project is powerful, close to the very heart of life and that it should be taken seriously—decides to turn it into a real proposition, to be shared openly with the village, focusing on the following issues: How can we take in refugees, take care of them and welcome them, and design a hospitable structure?

In October 2015, with the current mayor and the main actors in the project, they invited various migration specialists, social workers, writers and sociologists to discuss with the public tangible solutions implemented in refugee centres in Bayonne and Calais, amongst others. On this occasion, several families from the village declared themselves motivated by the project, ready to provide accommodation in rooms, apartments and houses for migrant families. Since the end of October 2015, the collective has met once a week to debate questions relating to the activation of this hospitality project.

The collective created the Bastida terre d’accueil association, but the procedures put in place by the State regarding hospitality for migrants were prohibitive and there was no one to talk to. Finally, through another hospitality association and with the help of a Syrian-born hotelier committed to helping out migrants, the first family was welcomed to the village. A Syrian couple and four children thus arrived at La Bastide at the end of August 2016. They have been accommodated in a house provided by a member of the association. Three children are attending school in the village as well as in a neighbouring village. The father, a vet by trade, is training with a local vet who is teaching him the specificities of the trade. A woman in the association gives them French lessons three times a week, while others help them with administrative procedures, transport, meetings, etc. The association hopes to welcome another family to the village in the coming months.

Direction
Massimo Furlan

Composition
Claire de Ribaupierre

Artistic collaboration, voice and body
Kristof Hiriart

Light and technical direction
Antoine Friderici

Video
Jérémie Cuvillier

Costumes adviser
Severine Besson

Make-up adviser
Julie Monot

Sound technician
Patrick Fischer

Light technician
Marie Croc

Featuring : Eight residents of La Bastide-Clarence, Basque Country.
Gabriel Auzi (Hydro-electric engineer)
Francis Dagorret (Mayor of La Bastide-Clairence)
Léopold Darritchon (Former mayor)
Véronique Darritchon (Dance and PE teacher)
Beñat Etcheverry(Company director)
Marie-Joëlle Haramboure (Holiday home owner)
Anaïs Le Calvez (Beautician)
Kattina Urruty (Potter)
Thérèse Urruty (Organic fruits producer)