Created at the Chapelle du Verbe Incarné in France at the Avignon Festival in July 1998, recorded by the radio France Culture, and broadcast on the airwaves in the autumn, Les Déconnards was awarded the Unesco prize at the Masa 99. This constitutes a fine trajectory for the play performed by a Sidiki Bakaba brimming with energy. Indeed, getting to grips with Koffi Kwahulé’s text, reining in its gallops and kicks, its peaks and its falls, its rebuffs and its caresses certainly takes some doing.
Sidiki steers a team of hilarious and fiery stories which do not all pull together, taking the spectator on a funny old philosophical journey, getting lost in the meanders of History, falling headily into the metaphysical precipices of African cosmogony, and sliding into the swamps of colonialism… In this web of tales, it is the whole of Africa that is out on parade in a display of derision and tenderness: the Africa of the past and the Africa of today, the Africa of the colonies and the Africa of De Gaulle, the Africa of the villages and that of the traditions, the Africa of tales and that of superstitions, the Africa of witchcraft and that of palavers, the Africa of football and the Africa of immigration…
At the end of the day, « Monsieur », the character who narrates these tales, can be taken to incarnate the soul of this Africa swindled by History, this schizophrenic Africa condemned to the tragic divide between its identity and its survival, an Africa doomed to wandering and madness.
Afriki Projections (Côte d’Ivoire)
Stage design: Aurélia Fronty
Lighting: Kodjo Ebouclé
with Sidiki Bakaba///Article N° : 5356
