FR HA Drama workshop ‘Unique’

The students met actor and director Simon Dusart after a performance of a play he is performing at the Bateau Feu theatre : L'enfant Mascara. Before the first workshop, he sent them a quiz inspired by the famous quiz that French writer Marcel Proust used to ask his friends to complete in order to get to know their personalities better, which helped to identify the areas in which the students were considering the cultural heritage.. 

The class was then divided into 10 groups : each group wrote a text from a topic and formal writing instructions. 

In addition, they were each asked to write a monologue completing one of the following phrases : ‘what's under my skin...’, ‘I'll do without’, ‘I dreamed that I was...’, ‘I don't want you to tolerate...’. All these monologues formed transitional moments recited in chorus between the scenes of the show.

Once the texts had been written in French, they were asked to introduce linguistic diversity by translating significant phrases from the texts into the languages they know (English, Spanish, German, Italian, Greek, Chinese, Arabic, Ukrainian, Russian, French sign language).Several rehearsals of the different scenes in groups and collective scenes took place, followed by two dress rehearsals in a rehearsal room at the Bateau Feu, where the sequences and soundtracks were worked on.

The final rehearsal took place the afternoon before the show, when the entire show was rehearsed with the theatre's lighting technicians.

The students present their show to their families and friends. It reflects the Erasmus+ class values : a class united around a common project, the staging of a text written through the prism of everyday life and current events, the defence of human values, an approach to culture that mixes registers and forms of expression, and challenges stereotypes and discrimination of all kinds. 

This performance particularly touched the audience because the script was intimate, composed of many elements from the students' personal lives.