An area of freedom in Castellane

Hello Charlie, today I want to talk about one of my passions : theatre.
I've started theatre when I was seven and I practiced it in different classes but since almost a year I'm part of a troupe at the theatre La Cité in Castellane, Marseille.

I discovered this place thanks to a friend of my father who knew the stage director working in this theatre. When I first arrived in the troupe, they were working on "growing up", trying to explain what it means and to create scenes about this theme. I got on  stage and started to improvise a scene . Karine, the stage director, rather liked that and I liked doing that too so I got involved in this adventure.

Usually, Karine asks us to reflect on a certain theme during a few minutes and to create a scene about it. The last themes she proposed to us were "hypocrisy, judgement", "travels and fugue" or "the first party without our parents". After that we write a little bit about the theme we chose and we create a scene that we  play, or we improvise  directly on stage. As it's always about things that concern us, it's often hard not to cry or to laugh on stage. The best part of the troupe is being creative, because we often think about theatre as long long texts to learn by the heart and to incarnate even if it doesn't affect us at all , but here, it's totally different.

We work in collaboration with a writer, Valérie Manteau, who will help us write the play. We totally create it by ourselves and with the instructions of the stage director obviously. The troupe is made to give freedom of expression to teenagers who are not used to express themselves in front of an audience. There is no casting, no experience required to participate. It's just a space where you can write about things that matter to you and act them out, it's really a place where you can be heard. We have repitions every two weeks during the saturday afternoon and sunday. It means that we have 5 hours of repetitions a week on average, plus the traineeships that we have durng a week on every hollidays.

From the texts we wrote and the numerous improvisations we did, we will produce a play by the end of april. You might think that with all the opportunities it gives us, being part of  this troupe is very expensive but not at all. The participation is free, you just have to pay a 20 euros membership to the theatre because the goal of the troupe is made to be inclusive for those who don't usually have the opportunity  to do theatre and to be heard (  no, it's not an advertisement). I'm very thankful for what the troupe brings to me and impatient to see what our show is going to look like...Eva !