Yes, this play takes the form of a monologue. Although, to be more precise, perhaps we should say that, besides Mohamed El Khatib, there is another character, permanently absent from the stage: his mother. This play was created when Mohamed El Khatib was a resident artist at the L’L theatre research space in Brussels. He was working on an interview with his own mother, with a view to writing something intimate that escaped the confines of the play and that allowed him to bring his native language to the stage. However, during the process, El Khatib’s mother died of cancer. The playwright found himself trapped between life and the stage. From this traumatic experience, a new way of working emerged, finding its initial expression in Finir en beauté. The author has continued to explore this method in later productions, including C’est la vie, which will also be shown at this year’s Grec Festival. Finir en beauté revisits, through the means of a diary, spaces and characters that tell us about the author’s mother. It is a kind of immersion in memory offered directly to the audience, without any intermediaries, on a bare stage, through administrative documents, interviews, emails and text messages. The account of his mother’s death, the story of mourning, and hints at multiple layers and implications, all within a remarkably simple structure, grab the viewer and engage them in a high-intensity emotional experience.
Mohamed El Khatib’s stage language is located where the theatre and other disciplines, such as cinema and installation, converge. He has also created autobiographical documentaries, such as Renault 12 (2018), where he reconstructs a car trip to Morocco to collect his inheritance. Currently, Mohamed El Khatib is an associate artist at the CDN d’Orléans and the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris.
A production by Collectif Zirlib.
Collectif Zirlib is funded by the Centre-Val de Loire Region, the Ministry of Culture–DRAC Centre-Val de Loire, and the city of Orléans.
Mohamed El Khatib is an associate artist at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, at the Malraux – Scène Nationale in Chambéry and at the Théâtre National de Bretagne in Rennes.
Author, director and performer: Mohamed El Khatib
