“To be an actor is to enrich himself from the point of view of another”, three actors testify

The cross : What is your relationship to religion and faith?

Élie Boissière: I grew up in a Jewish family, with two parents who converted to Judaism to the thirties and a father who became a rabbi of a liberal community. I spent my life in this world. As a child, I galloped on all fours in the synagogue. But celebrating my bar-mitzva having made me responsible for my actions, I took the liberty of sorting into practice, in my faith.

Today, I have a little more multiple identity, but I remain Jewish. I participate in the big holidays, I do shabbat with my mother. I have a practice by tradition more than by faith.

Mehdi Djaadi: I like to say that I am still in motion. I was born into a Muslim family, Sunni. While ado, I was flirting with the more radical circles, I was interested in Protestantism, I was even baptized Protestant, then I discovered the Catholicism with which I feel completely in tune.

As I explained in my show Coming out, Who tells this journey, at one point, I wanted to reject this Muslim part in me, thinking that I could not have both cohabited. Only it is impossible, there is always this DNA in me, even in my most daily reflexes. This DNA which, when I go up by car, will have me launched a “Bismillah” (In the name of God, the all-to-see) followed by a “Saint Christophe, pray for me”.

Today, I found a path of interior reconciliation. I like Bourguignon beef And Algerian street food. I am multiple without denying myself. And this single God, this Father God, to whom I speak, he remains common to Muslims and Catholics, I do not have the impression of having changed it.

Ismaël Saidi: I am a Muslim, but in Belgium, where I was born, I followed my schooling in a Catholic school. The first religious building in which I entered was therefore a church, at the corner of the street. I went to mass, to catechism on Thursday and, to finish sowing the bazaar, my parents had registered me at the Koranic school on Saturday (Laughs).

I lived in a fairly “complicated” district in the process of orthodoxization more than radicalization, and I was there, in the middle, with eyes sparkling when it was Christmas, parents for whom God is divided by three, c ‘Was anything, and teachers for whom Mohammed was not a prophet. You start to ask yourself the question of who is right and who is wrong. Above all this, I once went to the Koranic school with a cassette of Jean-Jacques Goldman, and the teacher forbids me to listen to him because he is Jewish. That day, I discovered people, the Jews, whom I did not know, but who obviously were our enemies. I was then interested in Judaism since I wanted to understand why I should not like certain people.

Today, I am a Muslim who believes, yes, that somewhere, in the desert, in the 7th century, a prophet heard a voice. But I am also a Muslim who is very strongly aware of what Islam owes to Judaism and Christianity.

Ismaël, you say that you are a “Identity lasagna” ?

IS: Yes, I only see that around this table (Smile). All our cultures, all our beliefs are diapers that add up. At Christmas, even today, I go to church because it reminds me of memories and I no longer count the shabbats in which I participate.

Eb : Resisting this injunction to have to choose your camp, your hut, it is a real richness which brings an incredible opening of mind and a desire that religion is really this possibility of connecting people between them.

Is the theater a good space to connect people, precisely?

EB: Yes because the theater is to get into a character and try to understand it without judging him. In my show I am not Arab, I play both my Algerian grandmother, who considered himself French and had modified his first name Mahdjouba in Magda, Father Lambert, who was mayor of Oran, independent politicians. To be an actor is to adopt the point of view of another and to enrich this new skin during a spectacle, like an inner journey.

MD: What are called “board edges”, when the actor remains to exchange with the public, are also great and beautiful moments of discussion. Playing the theater is to ask questions but also to leave enough space for people to be able to forge their own opinion, evolve, be in resistance or think against themselves. During the representations in front of schoolchildren, some teachers thank to leave these spaces where young people will be able to ask all the questions they want. At home, they can’t necessarily. And at school, secularism can sometimes tackle in a “We don’t talk about it”.

Does it create tensions sometimes, these post-statement debates?

IS: Rarely. In Jerusalem, Who was written before October 7, I tell the meeting between a Jew and a Palestinian. The first comes to take possession of the house of the second, which previously belonged to his family. And without knowing why, both find themselves in the body of their ancestor. A fairly burning theme. People come with their Propalestinian or pro-Israeli positioning and, at the end of the show, they no longer know what to think.

They cried for a Jewish grandmother, who tells them all the horrors lived from Poland to the Israeli-Arab war, they cried for a Palestinian grandfather, who told all the horrors lived from the Empire Ottoman until the creation of the State of Israel. It moves. You (He designates Mehdi Djaadi, editor’s note), You tell your story in front of young Muslim confession, for those who leave Islam is the worst thing. But if, among these young people, there are just a No one who feels the same thing as you, has the click and decides to talk about it, it’s great.

EB: School audiences are not obvious. You have to succeed in catching them! Recently I played in front of children. An audience of small fire (“Jews”, in Verlan, editor’s note). At the start they were dissipated. And then it told them about this story of a Jewish and Arab grandmother because they have Tunisian, Moroccan grandmothers … because we are brothers, in fact, we semites! So we don’t change the world but we can make mentalities move a little.

Is it easy to “sell” shows that talk about religion?

IS: No. My first piece was called Jihad, Tell the departure for Syria of three young people and started for Syria and started … Three weeks before the January 2015 attacks. In some cities, posters and performances were prohibited by prefectural orders. Now the play is on the school program.

MD: At the start, I was thinking of calling my room Apostate. And then finally no (Laughs). Come out was a nod to the LGBT world. But while I did the Olympia, which I was appointed to the Molières, a certain press never wanted to come and see me because his journalists thought it would be a spectacle to the glory of Catholicism.

So isn’t the theater for you a place of evangelization?

MD: No. By telling my conversion, I especially wanted to evoke freedom of conscience, this possibility of being able to question what we have received, to decide or not to change it and how spirituality can help in a life course. It was rather an ode to secularism, a deeply republican spectacle. But now, for some, it was already too much. While in the room there are Muslims, Catholics …

EB: My mother and her companion came to see you one evening. So there were also Jews! (Smile).

On February 15, the Vatican celebrates the jubilee of artists and the world of culture. What would you like to tell the Pope, if you meet him?

MD: I have already met him twice. I would invite him to continue to urge young people to create, to invent, to feed hope in a watered period of negativity.

EB: Yes, that he encourages everyone to go even more, via art, towards other cultures and religions!

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Three men on a set

Mehdi Djaadi is 38 years old. Muslim converted to Christianity, he retraced this spiritual path in Coming out, Only one on stage represented for the first time in 2022. His new show Raspberry color This time tells the adventure of fatherhood and the five years of infertility crossed with his wife. On tour.

Élie Boissière is 32 years old. The title of his show, I am not Arab, was inspired by a sentence that his Oran grandmother repeated. After two months of performance at the end of last year, at the La Reine Blanche Theater, in Paris, a tour through France is in preparation.

Ismaël Saidi is 48 years old. Franco-Belgian, he became known in 2015 thanks to his play Jihad. His latest creation, Jerusalem, features the meeting between a Jew and a Palestinian. On tour.
Rens. : ismaelsaidi.fr