The title couldn’t be better found: And the heart still smokes. It is taken from a poem by Kateb Yacine, one of the figures of a highly recommendable show, on the poster at the Gérard-Philipe Theater in Saint-Denis. After a presentation in December 2019, disrupted by the strikes, this show is resumed until October 11. Wednesday September 30, the evening of the premiere, high school students from Lyon were in the room. They enthusiastically applauded what they saw for two hours: a perspective on the Algerian war and its consequences, from 1954 to today, which is part of the work on memory wounds carried out. by Margaux Eskenazi.
Margaux Eskenazi, director: “I grew up with Algerian culture”
Could it be a generational story? This young woman (34) is not the only one to look into the subject. Baptiste Amann, and the founders of the Birgit Ensemble, Julie Bertin and Jade Herbulot, also devoted shows to the Algerian war. “Our grandparents lived it, our parents can’t talk about it. They don’t have the perspective that we have ”, explains Margaux Eskenazi. Coming from a Jewish family that had lived for centuries in Algeria, she grew up in the east of Paris then in Les Lilas, in Seine-Saint-Denis. Her mother was a child when she arrived in France, and “For her, it’s always a heartbreak”.
“I grew up with the Algerian culture”, continues the director, who founded her company in 2007, and created, in 2017, We are those who say no to the shadows – a show on negritude and Creole which forms a diptych with And the heart still smokes. Margaux Eskenazi worked with Alice Carré on the design and writing of this second part on French identities. They gathered testimonies of conscripts from the contingent and professional soldiers, activists of the National Liberation Front (FLN) and the Organization of the Secret Army (OAS), harkis, blackfoot … and their descendants.
A back and forth between yesterday and today
From these testimonies, they have drawn a piece that does not seek to embrace everything – mission impossible anyway – but draws the threads of stories which draw, in a kaleidoscopic manner, the contrasting faces of the Algerian war. And the heart still smokes advance in sequences, and we go from the Casino de la Corniche, in Algiers, to the Goutte d’Or, in Paris, from a hotel room in Brussels to the Stade de France, in Saint-Denis … in a va -and-comes between yesterday and today which never blurs the tracks, but reflects the complexity of experiences, and points of view.
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