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IT WAS OUR LAND
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Open in the appThe Montaigne estate, somewhere in northern Algeria. 653 hectares transformed into an agricultural operation, where eucalyptus, vines, oats and wheat grow. The Saint-André family has always ruled this land – or more precisely, since they settled there in the mid-19th century,… The Montaigne estate, somewhere in northern Algeria. 653 hectares transformed into an agricultural operation, where eucalyptus, vines, oats and wheat grow. The Saint-André family has always ruled this land – or more precisely, since they settled there in the mid-19th century, like so many other families carrying out the French project of a settler colony in Algeria. In a choral narrative, the voices of six family members intertwine to each express, in their own way, the moment their world collapsed – the Algerian war of independence. Bringing together five actors on a stage inhabited by the paintings of Kabylie artist Kamel Khélif, Célie Pauthe gives voice to this chorus of characters who, through their violent contradictions, expose the sheer madness of the colonial system – French, but not only – its self-destructive rage, its sickly nostalgia. The stage director brings to the stage for the first time the burning, baroque and relentless language of novelist Mathieu Belezi, by adapting the first of four novels he devotes to the colonization of Algeria by France. With this narrative that weaves the voices of the dead with those of the living, Célie Pauthe invites us to "look History in the eye", as German dramatist Heiner Müller said – and reopen a history, that of colonization, which is far from finished, nor from spreading its harmful logic into our present.