Silence and fear

Nina Simone carries with her 4 centuries of history. Her real name is Eunice Waymon, a child prodigy born in Tryon, North Carolina, and an American star who became one of the voices of the African-American civil rights movement.
She is the great-great-granddaughter of a Cherokee survivor of the genocide of the American Indians, married to a black African slave. How does the fear of being destroyed, because of who you are, leave indelible scars in the bodies and minds of those who suffer it, and are passed on,
generation after generation? As Europeans and Westerners, we are also heirs to these wounds, inflicted or suffered. Victims and executioners, our histories are the fruit of the upheavals caused by the development
of the empires that would later become Europe, on the inhabited lands of the Americas from the 15th century onwards.

So how do we tell a common story?
What legitimacy is there for this? Silence and Fear tells the story of Nina Simone’s life.
A life that evokes both the story of the murderous conquest of the “New Continent” and part of the history of African-Americans, whose tragic destinies
are closely linked to the conquest of the “New World”. The aim here is to create a community, and to bring together the protagonists of two histories with very different consequences, in an attempt to build,
beyond the wounds left by our forebears, a common place. Beyond her music, we tell the story of the musician, the way her love relationships were forged, the way fathers pass on their legacies, and the way tragic events
drive people to create. And finally, what the fragmentation of an identity produces. At a time when questions of cultural appropriation are becoming an important issue for both theater and film artists, we are building a mixed African-American and French team.
Not so much to legitimize an approach as to get to know one another. Because no matter how much we study the history of Nina Simone and of African-American history, there will always remain a part of the unknown: that of experience.
And it’s this unknown that we want to encounter to create a shared narrative.
Not so much to reveal it as to make it present.

David Geselson

Production

Compagnie Lieux-Dits

Coproduction

Théâtre de Lorient, center dramatique national, Le Canal – Théâtre du Pays de Redon, Théâtre National de Bretagne – Rennes, ThéâtredelaCité – CDN Toulouse Occitanie, Théâtre d’Arles, scène conventionnée d’intérêt national – art et création, Théâtre de la Bastille, Espaces Pluriels, Scène conventionnée danse – Pau, L’empreinte scène nationale Brive / Tulle, Théâtre Le Rayon Vert, Scène conventionnée d’intérêt national – art en territoire de Saint-Valéry-en-Caux, Le Gallia Théâtre,
scène conventionnée d’intérêt national – art et création de Saintes, La Comédie de Reims – Centre Dramatique National, Théâtre des Quatre saisons, Gradignan,
Théâtre de Choisy-le-Roi – Scène conventionnée d’Intérêt national – Art et création pour la diversité linguistique in cooperation with PANTHEA,
La Rose des Vents, Scène nationale Lille Métropole Villeneuve d’Ascq, CDN Besançon Franche-Comté, Théâtre de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines Scène nationale,
Teatro Nacional Dona Maria II, Lisbon, Portugal.

With the help

Supported by the Ministry of Culture, Région Île-de-France, Spedidam, Institut français as part of its Théâtre Export program, FACE Foundation Contemporary Theater,
Harlem Stage – New York – USA.

With the support of

From Théâtre Ouvert – Centre national des Dramaturgies Contemporaines, La Chartreuse de Villeneuve-Lès-Avignon – center national des écritures du spectacle, and Théâtre de l’Aquarium.

Home in residence

At CDN Normandie-Rouen. Lieux-Dits is subsidized by the Ministère de la Culture – DRAC Île-de-France.
The text Le silence et la peur is published by Lieux-Dits.