In Kalep, a town in Sumal controlled by the brutal power of the Islamists, two young people are executed because they entered into a love affair. Resistance fighters try to oppose this new world order by publishing an underground newspaper. The Senegalese writer Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (2021 Prix Goncourt winner) describes how resistance is forming against this new world order characterized by violence and questions concepts such as courage and cowardice, heroism and fear, responsibility and truth. Vibrant dialogs, strong narrative moments and the exchange of letters between the mothers of the two victims create a contemporary reflection on a situation of terror and jihadism in the Sahel region and negotiates internal and external resistance.
“For some years now, our humanity has been the scene of an unprecedented barbarism. An unprecedented violence, a sudden madness, an infinite nightmare, a dense night that envelops the horizon of our mothers, our fathers, our sisters, our brothers and our children. (…) How did we come to this? And above all, what can we do? Terre ceinte is an attempt to talk about what is happening to us. To look ourselves in the face. Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, the author of this great novel, has already drawn the furrows of refusal of humiliation and degradation with his characters.” Aristide Tarnagda
BASED ON THE ROMAN Terre Ceinte by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr | DESIGNED AND DIRECTED BY Aris-tide Tarnagda | CO-DIRECTED BY Safourata Kaboré and Vincent Kaboré DRAMATURGY Jessie Mill | SCENE DESIGN Yssouf Yaguibou | WITH Odile Sankara, Minata Diene, Serge Henry, Alain Hema, Rémi Yaméogo, Noël Minoungou and Ali K. Ouédraogo | MUSIC Sydyr | LIGHTING Mohamed Kaboré | COSTUME Adjara Samandoulgou | PRODUCTION Théâtre Acclamations (Burkina Faso) | COPRODUCTION Le Théâtre de Namur, Le Grand T (Nantes), MC93 (Bobigny) | TOURNEE DISTRIBUTION La Charge du Rhinocéros
Aristide Tarnagda, born in 1983, is an actor, director and playwright. After studying sociology in Ouagadougou, he soon began working as an actor and director for the Théâtre de la Fraternité and founded the Compagnie Théâtre Acclamations in 2005. He has directed the Les Récréâtrales festival in Ouagadougou since 2018. He anchors his own plays in the reality of Burkina Faso, but transcends it with a suggestive power that enables him to be heard far beyond the borders of his country. He has already been a guest at africologne with Terre rouge (Red Earth) and Et si je les tuais tous, Madame (And if I were to kill them all, Madame), among others. In 2022, he stirred up emotions at the Récréâtrales Festival with his work Tu dis PDI with around 50 internally displaced people fleeing attacks by jihadists in their own country (Burkina Faso). In 2023 he will be the patron of the africologneFESTIVAL.
Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, born in Dakar in 1990, grew up in Senegal and studied literature and philosophy in France. He has already published three novels, for which he was awarded the Prix Stéphane-Hessel and Grand prix du roman métis, among others. He was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 2021 for Die geheimste Erinnerung der Menschen (Hanser, 2022), his first work to be published in German.