 It's academic and it's theater and it's a place where they go to meet. We have the audience and the participants for each other. For example, there's a woman sharing what it means to share and how to do that. There's no way you can ignore that kind of thing anymore. What time is it now? It started out about different people and about different things. A whole sea of love. Theater for everybody. Yes, everybody. That's what's gonna be done. And do you like the center of life relationship? I've already changed. We see the theater center here. For part two of what I think is very significant and an important day. And we call it Marie Cholo. Theater of revolt. And I think we had already, I think, quite an afternoon with presentations and discussions. And also with the audiences. Many of you were here. Many of you are here this afternoon. That's wonderful. So thank you for staying. We all know how much it means to take out time, especially in a city like New York. We do need good theater. We need good writers. And also we do need good audiences. Who is saying that what we do is of significance and meaningful. My name is Han Kenchka. I'm the director of programs together with Antje Urgo. And the executive director of the theater center. We bridge academia and professional theater, international and American theater. And for many, many years we have done Haitian events here. Four or five. And a lot of it was Thomas Spear. Thomas Spear was also with us here. And Francesca Saltman from the European Institute. Who has really supported this whole day without her. This wouldn't have happened on that scale. So we would like to thank her. She was here as the opening speaker today. She would be with us in the evening. So we really would like to thank her. And it is really a meaningful cooperation here. The graduate center was also in college. So we would like to thank for the additional support from Ira Dach. Who helped us to get Gina over here for the readings in the afternoon. Really a lot of thank you to other sun directors. And also them who agreed this happened and came to me with the idea. So I think they really deserve a round of applause. It was a great opportunity to play right with us now in France. And wanted to also be part of it. Also emailed me about the project. We couldn't have ultimately come here. But I think it's a really significant event. And it also shows the vitality and the creativity that comes from a country like Haiti. And we all don't know enough about it. And some people do. And they were the speakers this afternoon. And this evening, really thank you for coming. We will have three readings on the program. And they are directed by Alice Friedman. Alice, where are you? Yes, over there. So thank you for doing that. And the readings will be followed by a discussion with panelists on your program. And Thomas was kind enough to give us some opening remarks. Also for some of you who haven't been here in the afternoon. Thank you again for all the speakers who contributed to this event. This live stream is online. You can also get to our archives and look at them. Please let everybody know about this. And contact us in case you have any questions or follow-up things. Or you want to create something around. And you also will come of course to do this. But I was with us here. So thank you for coming. And so, so many others. If you have a cell phone, now's the time to take it out. And I'll do the same. I'll make sure the sound is off. So it doesn't actually matter to me. It's that our events. And it's really, really true. There will be a little reception in this space after us. We'll be about to find in case you have additional questions. And then we go over to the archive. In case you want to join us after reception. We'll be here. It would like to say, Gina, is she still with us? She's not in the entrance. Who read the text in the afternoon? But she did a great job. And she will be back. So thank you. It does make a difference. That's what we also do here. We have a performance event. And we want to hear the words of the artists spoken in red. And they should be part of it. And also creates the community. So now again, thank you for coming in, Thomas. I'm going to hand it over. And congratulations. You've got an award for your work on patient literature. Thank you. Thank you. I'm officially a volunteer to lead the first non-Asian. It should be such an award at a carriage. I was there in May. I guess it's something to follow up on. In the thanks Frank Henschek mentioned the number of the people responsible today. I think it's important for me to acknowledge his work with the single community. They've been very supportive of our work. We have a lot of new playwrights from around the world, including from French language. And that doesn't mean necessarily from Europe all over. Introducing works to a lot of audience. And also, of course, from the PhD program here at the Graduate Center, the Henri Bayer French Institute, and the Il Hadard that helps sponsor this. And again, thank you so much. I'm going to sign off and put this together. They are also the editors of the special issue of the L-French studies that came out earlier this year. I just wanted to make a couple of comments about this, the centennial year. We did something in March to begin the year. This is the centennial of my initial birth. And her sister, who lives uptown in Harlem, worked about it and really wanted to come. I was really hoping to come tonight. But Lillian is 102 years old, and she's tired. But the family is here in spirit. And there's interesting stories in that there were celebrations, for example, here. In Haiti, there was a major event in May because there was their annual work festival, L'Homphorie, and Marielle Chauvet was the writer of honor this year. And there were a lot of events there, including a day-long session at the Bibidin National. And for me, what's most important is her works were censored for so many years, were prevented from being republished. And this year, the centennial of her birth, all of her works are available in Haiti for the first time. They were reissued for the best of work. It's wonderful for people here tonight to be able to hear some of her work translated into English. But what is really exciting for us, those of us who've been working on her work for some 30 years, it's only been since the clandestine edition of The Tramp Trilogy was published in 2003 that things kind of broke open to the family and they've allowed the works to be published. But it's really exciting to see what's being done in Haiti with young readers. And I think tonight you will see, I mean, Marielle Chauvet is much more known as a novelist and we had a very interesting panel, one of her, dealing especially with one of her plays. I think, you know, I think that's a minor piece and I just can't argue how it was. But from some of the things you will see here, now one is Joseph Piaz's version of Amour. And Amour was staged many times. He has done it with Magalie Coman, Coman de Denis playing. Michel Voltaire Marcellin has also played the role. I've always said that I think the first part of The Trilogy, love would make it great to tell him of that love. Stage, stage and period piece. But from what we've heard earlier, readings of Dancer Volcom, I think there's many, many possibilities in the work of Marie Chauvet to develop into theatrical interpretations, visual interpretations. And I think we'll see many more. There's a Haitian artist who lives in Berlin, Jean-Pierre Lézère, with the proof of a stage piece in Bartholomew called Amour Correlé, fully using iconography of François No, M.S. Isère and Descentor Bihar and others who revolted in many ways as Marie Chauvet did. I could go on, and I don't need to. There's an interesting story this year for, you know, I was interested in what, you know, this year, I wanted to put a flower on her grave. I figured if she was born in, if she died in New York, she must have been buried here. Well, through the family, I found out that they had cremated her and, not cremated, excuse me, embalmed her and sent her body to be buried during the dictatorship. This is on 1976, I believe, in the cemetery called France. And I wanted to go there and know what to find at home. And it's a family cargo. And Robert St. Alphonse, through my inspiration, went and found out where it was. It was completely covered with plants and overgrown. And for the centennial, they clipped it all up. And it's, I think, what I wanted to bring with you is I just, on this, a volume that was published in Haiti from the event of the Yvon Folie. And I'm over there, Marie, and a number of writers, especially Haitian writers, wrote a lot of things about what she means to them today. And I think we really are in what they say in French, where it's only been about 10 years that people have been reading, because their books have been reissued. And I think something's changing this year with the Yale French studies, with this text, with the publications, with the translations, I think, as we saw the dynamism this afternoon, is she's become the world-renowned writer that she is missing to see. There's going to be a before and after, and now she belongs to everyone. But for many, many years, people weren't reading her. So we're going to hear, I think, I think we can start the introduction of the readers. Alice can present the readers that she has scheduled to read. And among the things you're going to hear is Accepted Religion, a film translated by Alessandro Benedetti-Copri. You're going to hear from Pina's Theatrical Adaptation of Amour. And also an excerpt of Alehapas, this translated by Gerard Schrader, is here tonight. So I hope you all enjoy it. It's a play I would like to thank Ayama Glover for inviting me to be part of this album too, as well as Frank Henschger for preserving the notion of public theatre within the heart of my cherished commitment to this public in the university. Yu Chen for working so efficiently alongside us as well as Andrzej Robeca at the Steele. Judy Miller, one of the few two or three persons whom I can really call a mentor for accepting to be part of this event. Gina and Elise for being incredible this afternoon, and I can't wait to use it later. Christian Flavres sensitizing me over the years to the importance of theatre and performance as literary genres. And Thomas for all of your relentless work to make sure that the world knows about so many authors everywhere. Christian will be editing a volume about what will be coming out of this event, so if you're interested, come see me or Christian. So also would like to make a formal gesture to my students who are here tonight from our course titled Crime Narratives of the Americas as part of the Study of the Americas program at City College. I'll save my longer comments for the final readings we will hear tonight, but I've only briefly introduced the legend of the flowers. The play is one of Chauvet's earliest publications. She wrote it, published it in 46, 47, and Thomas can correct me if I'm wrong, under the pseudonym of Khudi Khudi. It takes place in Assumption's Garden in which all of the protagonists are of the non-human natural realm. There are various flowers with sun and a butterfly. The story seems harmless, but there are a pink rose and a violet to discuss their love interests and notably their attraction to the sun and the butterfly. The sun is the steady, reliable lover, one who comes every day at the same time but also must leave to attend to other flowers, i.e. lovers. For his part, the butterfly is a frivolous womanizer, sometimes constantly present and at other times completely absent. And, as Rachine D'Michel Jean-Charles and Christian Flo explained earlier today, despite the lightness of the dialogue and the beauty of the scenery, legend of the flowers is much more upsetting, but also a philosophical treatise on human nature, as Rachine D'Chesneff pointed out to us. So, to Alice, I think you can go. The actors know what to do. I don't think we need that. The Legend of the Flowers, a one-act magical extravaganza by Marie-Bouchervais translated from the French by Alessandro Benedicti Cochini. The scene is that of a large somewhat somber garden. On the grass, three flowers are asleep, a pink rose, a violet and a flower. Scene one, the rose awakes, stretching herself out so as to coquettishly flutter the rumpled pebbles that surround her. And the daybreak, coquettishly has adorned herself in varied colors. The dew drops tremble on her hair and her shawl resembles the azure of the sky. She's like a lady in waning who looks forward to her lover's awakening. She makes herself beautiful in the first light of day. She has hands that search and a gaze that spies. Oh, poor Aurora, always looking for new lovers. Today's the white cloud that passes, tomorrow the other cloud so bright it looks like an old man. She has loved everywhere. She is flirtatious with all of them. She thinks that she's irresistible because she lives in the skies and even when the sun goes down she tries in vain to continue her reign screaming loudly, tomorrow I will be back! Rose! Rose, what is it? Nothing, I was speaking about Aurora. She's still here. How naughty of her! Why is my golden star waiting so long to chase her away? Maybe she's waiting for you to wake up. Oh, there's nothing, right? There's nothing that he likes to do more than to wake me up by myself. I feel one of his reins now softly caressing my eyes, forcing them open. I am bedazzled to find him here, so close to me. It must be difficult to have such a seductive lover to keep him loyal to you and a lover that is so well-liked. Yes, indeed. He is loved by so many. I know. Is it possible to keep such a beautiful star from attracting all of the flowers, especially when the star is looking for so much love? Is it even possible to keep such a dazzling sun from breaking so many hearts without weaning to? For he is everywhere. He is the most celebrated, the most adored. He has caressed me so faithfully that when his golden rays and my petals had become one and the same. I remember meeting him when I was just a miserable, small flower, pale and fearful. He was always there for me, charming me and attentive to my needs. He kept me warm and helped me to wipe away the dew drops that were stuck to my petals. I let him do it. I didn't dare say anything. Is it possible to complain about being loved so intensely? And then every morning I started to wait for him, begging Aurora to leave, asking her to hasten her departure then he would come. With his golden rays joyful and charming, he would press his light on my trembling stem. But by hand of love he would remain there for a long time. A very long time. One day I saw brilliant the yellow just like the similar that I suddenly felt lost. Beguiled, forever lost to him. Tell me, sunflower, is it good to be loved so intensely? To become as you are, possessed by a unique thought. Have you not suffered? Yes. Have you not suffered from loving this globe of fire who shines his rays upon everyone? This fickle lover who bestows his fancies upon everyone? Even if there are some flowers that he leaves in the shadows, there are thousands of others that like you wait for him to awaken and so many others that like you hope each day to be caressed and touched. Are you yourself one of those that he's left behind? That being said, you really are beautiful. I'm scared of him. I run from his rays. I hug myself and even in the comfort of the humidity of my retreat I tremble from the cold just so he will leave me alone. If it's always you that he returns to it does not matter if his thoughts digress elsewhere for when he's sad it is your presence that he requests and when at night he retires, tired and frigid from the cold are you not the only one who guards his glow within her very being? Are you not the only one to preserve the golden aura of his rays within the shine of her petals? Enough. You could not possibly understand. And so because you love the sun, no other flower after you is capable of understanding your suffering. When I am close to him everything else seems pallid. It all makes me very selfish, I guess. And if I were to tell you that there are other lovers, lovers who mesmerize the roses and if I were to tell you that these lovers are the most unfaithful, the most fickle and the most thoughtless. Unlike your son, they do not take care of us. They abandon us. They break our hearts always frivolous and each day they resemble someone else. A beautiful white love of light enters. Lightly entarmingly he kisses the rose and the sunflower. The violet seeing him comes towards her quickly hides herself, burying her face in her arms. Good morning. Good morning. You look so shy. Sweet Violet, it really is a shame. And you, Rose, you are more alert than ever. These are minimum decorum. No, no. Are you angry? Certainly there's a reason to be upset. My God, what are you going to accuse me of now? What am I guilty of? But if indeed I have offended you, dear and beautiful pink rose, please, accept my apologies. Forgive you, that's all I ever do. Have you already tired with me? I'm not certain. Sometimes I just want to break everything off. I always see you conniving, always taunting me, always lighthearted, going from dragonfly to the humming bee, flying from one flower to another, priggish, so full of yourself, egotistical and charming. And in those moments, I cannot stand having you around. In other moments, I see you so weak, so childish and charming, too, that I fear for you as one worries over a burning candle when the storm's dangerous breath comes roaring in. In those moments, I want to protect you. To protect you from yourself, I want to scream, take care that they do not clip your wings. Take care that you do not lose the wind that alights beneath your wings. Rose, you've given me the shivers. What morbid humor, my darling. One might think that I am a drab and a sad butterfly incapable of holding my own. You know that you are a handsome butterfly. But if you still want compliments. Rose, please do not be upset. But I'm not angry. Fine, that's good. Ah, what a pain. I must get out of here. All righty. That's a business to take care of. Work, lots and lots of work. Ah, what I would give to stay a bit longer, but alas, I must go, Rose. Sunflower, nothing is as beautiful as you. Tim and Violet, show me your face. Let me be the best neighbor alone. But you silly little one, you are missing out on all that is the most delicious in this world. You hide. You are always in the background. You remain in the shadows ignoring the nuances that speckled the day. I have absolutely no admiration for you. You're nothing more than a little coward. And maybe among us all she is the happiest. The happiest. But how can she know happiness if she has never even lived? She does not know anything about life. She's terrified of everything. Of love. Of what others think of her. Of herself. Ah, happiness is anything but remaining closed in on oneself. The mistakes that we make and those that we learn not to make again. This is what perfection is made of. We seek out new conquests. We must aspire to ascend higher. Always higher. To love is to fight. To surmount the opinion others have of us. To live is to be able to look ourselves honestly in the face and say to ourselves it is good. Even if deep down we must be harsh with ourselves even if our action in our actions is born the suffering of others. Go! Leave! So tomorrow, Rose Can you use more sincere than the others? Why do you chase them away, Violet? I don't... The sun is coming. I can feel his heat which penetrates me which fills me with warmth. The sun enters at the same time that the room lights up. He's wearing an outfit of brilliantly shining gold with a sparkling diadem on his head. In each hand he holds a golden wand which he extends when he wants to project his rays. Oh, God! How beautiful he is! Why did you not wait for me to awaken you? You made me wait so long! My path was hard. Flirtatious Aurora would not stop smiling and this cloud that you see here so full of arrogance and dust kept me from passing. No, you will not pass, the cloud told me. Today is not your day. I must make rain. And for her part Aurora begged me let me stay just a little longer. I'm waiting for someone. And so I found myself having to force them so you got into a fight. A bit. You told me if I'm exhausted or do I just look it? Oh, no. You are stunning. The sun, extending his arms, projects a quick ray of light towards the violet who trembles a bit and moves to bury herself further into her arms. He bends over to get close to her. What is this? Oh, the violet! Do not see how she trembles, leave her in peace. Maybe you are jealous. Of you? That would be a true waste of time. In any case, she is in love with a butterfly. With a butterfly? Do you really think you're the only one who's attracted around here? I need help. I already have much, much to do. Violet gets up. She advances. Starstruck, her hands clasp. What are you doing here? It is so strange. For once I want to try and learn from my inertia. I have lived so long, collapsed unto myself at any gesture at this. They say that I am beautiful and so I too want to be in love. But my poor thing, you're far too terrified of living. I will give everything in the world to help you overcome your timidity. Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. Just have from having gazed upon you for such a long moment, my eyes are already burning. For the butterfly, I said that she would have more than a coward. The butterfly is a conceited idiot. Excuse me, please do not fight because of me. It is true, Howard. Look at how my hands tremble and how nervous I am. Well, back to your corner, Violet. We really will get sick. On the outside, we hear a noise, a song and laughter. The flowers are taking a walk. They are. They are looking for you while running after you. Hide yourself. Hide! Hide! But why? On the contrary, that they enter, that they come to me if they need my warmth. That they come closer for they love to fill my sun rays play on their pebbles. I belong to anyone who finds comfort and healing in my light. I am the fire that animates, that warms. My destiny is huge because I am the God of light and pain. I am the one who ignites the body, penetrates the heart and destroys the shadow. But because I... Love me, the flower that was created to look like me. Love me, if in the love that inspires you you find the poetry and suffering that nurtures great beings. But since you really do love me, do you really want to keep me from helping others? Do you actually think you are the only one to live from my warmth? I do not know. But I also love you. I love your pebbles, whose pebbles look like my light. I love your loving sweetness and this trembling stem that holds you up. I want to imagine that in the morning you are waiting for me to have to behave in yourself and sleep in tranquilly in your own bed. I'm sure are full of yourself. Now we're going to be an excerpt from which is a Pia's stage adaptation that was translated for us by Lena at our point. So love is the first part of Chauvet's incendiary 1968 trilogy Love, Anger, Madness and it tells the story of Claire Tramont a 39 year old self-prescribed old name who belongs contentiously to the so-called mulatto elite class in Haiti. The story is set in 1939 but it's unmistakably meant to resonate with Asian realities in the 1960s and beyond. Exposes and incisively condemns the class, gender and color politics the modalities of hate in other words that too often have made solidarity impossible in Haiti. Bitter, self-loathing and blessed or cursed with a keen social intelligence Chauvet's Claire is our window onto the privilege and pathologies that mark social relations in Haiti and in many ways the wider world. A theatrical adaptation of Marie-Veux Chauvet Unwood by José Plia translated from the French by Léna Rueblos Leaving the office, Father Paul asks me to attend the Feast of the Virgin next Sunday. I would be one among the twelve daughters of Marie, which I have been a part of for 25 years. I would extort the maculite carrying a banner dressed in white with a blue belt. Despite the ruins, despite the misery, our town is still beautiful. The mountains and the sea that surround its horizons are full of beauty. The dried coffee branches acquire soothing pastel colors from far away and the shore seems embroidered with foamy lace. A kelp odor emerges from the depth of the water. Light boats are tied to stakes stuck in the ground. White stains on the sea and the sky diving upon them mixes its colors. The main road, rocky, more or less ruined from the cyclones, is full of greenish ditches where mosquitoes thrive. Trimbling with fever, beggars are gathered at the edge of the ditches collecting in the hollow of their hands smelly water for drinking. In the alleys dilapidated shacks that are more or less holding on very shaky foundations give shelters to families with hollow cheeks and suspicious looks on their faces. Some poets persecuted by the police live there. That is also where Bob Shaveri the Syrian born whom a knight works. His he has his trading house a net the youngest one. 25 years old, 22 years old fresh, full of light she is my sister she is white golden under her skin her hair is black a blue black like her eyes except for her skin color she is a touched up copy of me 16 years ago she wanders around the house making exclamations of cheerfulness and happiness to her the house is lively a word for me it is appalling that Claire neglects herself so a word for Felicia poor thing you don't look well and there she goes her smile making dimples in her golden cheeks ah since that day when I was 16 and my dying mother gave her to me saying raise her like your father raised you and keep your sisters beneath your wing to protect them from sin one day I decided to water a beautiful plant that she had brought from Bob's store day after day I was marvel to see it come to life with the freshness of water one evening I watered the plant and that arrives Burson's laughter and that collects suitors I do she is young she is beautiful she is free I do as mother told me I watch I watch her the other evening I saw her in the arms of her Syrian boss she was in the backseat of the car they had parked halfway in the garage I saw everything heard everything I watched to make sure that no one bothered them mother can be reassured I raised her well today was Sunday the feast of the virgin the church bells have rung tirelessly since the morning I found myself dressed as a daughter of Mary I resembled a nun in the dress made for me it was I who requested the long sleeves and the high collar in the precision however I looked well in comparison to the others it was a horrendous cohort of old maids I am none the last the best one among them children's heads crowned in white moved in front of me looking down they threw handfuls of flowers from their baskets all the balconies were decorated in the garlands of artificial flowers made by the nuns hung sweetly between the trees and the street the virgin gradient sitting on a pedestal made by four young men we sung a choral arrangement composed by father Paul may God shower us with the goodly reign of his sweet blessing and may his holy name be blessed the prefect and the mayor dressed in their grey wool suits sweat blood and water as they watched the procession go by and they crossed themselves during the passage of the holy sacrament Kaladu and Mr. Long were at the door of the Cirque the priest blessed them running in comes Jacques the madman the gates of Hal are open to swallow us God curses us he opened the gates of Hal upon us the singing stopped Kaladu frowned he put a whistle to his mouth Jacques the madman screams still pointing at him father beware of the devil Kaladu lunged himself over at him taking him by the collar his face disfigured from all the hatred he slapped him Kaladu pulled a revolver from his belt and at close range shot the lunatic who fell to his knees without a complaint the procession stopped silence children cried religious women held their rosaries we remained standing our bodies tense in a hypnotic stiffness and covered in blood Jacques began to crawl towards us scraping the ground with his nails holding his head up he moved slowly painfully Dr. Adie walked towards him a bullet whistling at his feet nailed him to the ground terrified do not move Kaladu walked backwards his smoking gun in hand we stayed transfixed in place father Paul whispered something to the choir to the choir children and in an instant he was crowned with silence elevating the monsters above his head he walked surrounded by children up to Kaladu and now I ask you to allow me to perform my priestly duties Kaladu disappeared to the street corner the humming of the prayers began became more intense Felicia is of average height and rather voluptuous she has light skin and dull wand hair she has the delicate features of a white woman I dislike her too white to wand too warm and measured since her marriage no one exists aside from John Luz handsome John Luz intelligent John Luz John Luz the mysterious and exotic foreigner who sets up his library and record collection in our house and makes fun of our way of living and our backwards thinking he is the man without faults the ideal husband and Felicia's love and admiration overflows she is blissful and carries her fetus so proudly in her womb she trusts herself too much she trusts everyone her serenity exasperates me she spins her time smiling while she's so sure for her future son because it must also be a son her and I bet a net will be the godmother this morning I gave her her broth her belly is larger than her tunic in fact a sperm wing she will not leave the house in the arms of her husband she is cool-headed and thinks of everything her health is fragile and she is a bad housewife to leave the house would be to lose at the same time her housekeeper the old girl the servant who does everything who will wipe her son's bottom while she snuggles with her man behind the partially open shutters we observe the corpse lying in the streets as we told the story to John Lou's and Felicia are you sure that he is dead isn't there anything to do I will know later later and you will stay here with fear it is none of my business it's not my place to stand up to your district commandant I'm in your home it's not the passing foreigners responsibility to reform a place where he does not belong you have to protest respond to this with a demonstration face the danger together they will not dare destroy an entire town these murders these tortures are meant for you but if one of you leads an uprising of the town then the fear will shift to the other side you don't understand anything John Lou's opened the door of the living room and what the gesture of anger went out we saw him help carry the body he awkwardly helped defeat John I think I loved you from the very first moment I remember your arrival in our country on a morning last year similar, it was a similar time of the year a rental car covered in mud and dirt driven by a black chauffeur stopped coincidentally in front of our house all the shutters were open and at the same time curious eyes stared at the newcomers behind the dusty yellow laced curtains several days later Dr. Audier introduced you to us John Lou's the new employee at the export corporation these are the thermal sisters your amused gaze went around the room it made a net blush and stopped at Felicia Felicia she lifted her eyes looking at you both scared and with admiration her mouth half open she considered you as far as me I think I loved you from the beginning remember before the blonde of my sister's you I was there the day of your arrival I was sweeping the balcony you opened the door and walked up to me you barely said hello and asked me where to find the firm export corporation I signaled to it with my hand to you remember do you remember no like everybody else you thought I was the service I am not the servant and so that you can choose among the three of us and all fairness you should know who I am I am the eldest of the Claremont sisters the old girl the one who didn't find a husband who doesn't know what love is who has not lived in the best sense of the term I am 39 years old and I am still a virgin I am the different one the one who doesn't resemble anyone the one that came out wrong solitude has turned me bitter I am like one of those fruits that fall before ripening and rot beneath the tree that no one dayns to touch I repress a sea of love inside me I wasted my time in selfish solitude my time for loving is obsolete I am a desert that has no shelter to offer just to make me start living that's what I used to think what I used to tell myself before I saw you your large steps in the courtyard the way you climbed the stairs your voice yelling and happy lightly blurred that it seemed to mute the happiness it gives your perfect addiction the look in your eyes that caresses everything unconsciously including me I think I loved you from the beginning Annette decided to do everything to seduce our sister's husband me too Annette's strategy is simple relentless luminous the freshness of her 22 years when she has a man in mind she does not give up Jean-Louis is already taken he's subjected to torture he struggles but the outcome is fatal my strategy is this I will be Annette I will live this love through her because I am worth nothing and she has everything youth, beauty, whiteness I will do everything I mean everything everything to rush her into the arms of beautiful Jean and do nothing I mean nothing to open Felicia's eyes I will keep I will be on the sidelines because I am not existent I will be the stage director I will push them on stage cleverly without seeming to interfere yet I will be maneuvering I will be the Carolyn Shred who translated the text largely ignored by scholars and now he showcased one hundred or so page novella the vultures or birds of prey written while in Icelot in New York sometimes between 1968 and 1973 published posthumously in 1989 combined genres what year? 1986 it was important it was the year the dictator should have had theater fable and Romanesque prose and in Sojuil presents the reader with protagonists from various social categories beggars, the urban poor peasants the new it would be assumed Duvalieres bourgeoisie and of course the more long standing bourgeoisie from which Shovei herself emerged the story takes place at the time that the dictator passes away and it is generally understood that his young son will take over his legend of the flowers was about submission to a male and white order and the three novellas in Love, Anger, Menace are about what it means to resist oppression or at least try this last novella is about the inevitability of certain people suffering this is also the first place where Shovei fully embraces the victim who emerge from social classes that are not her own quite suddenly the novella privileges the narrative voice of a child as well as the non-human voice of a cat both which in addition to the third person narrator attempt to depict the various ways in which many different social types including the perpetrators experience suffering the cat literally ties the narrative together for it is the only being allowed to transit from the wealthy bourgeois family to the subalurist bourgeoisie to the poorest families at which Dantikat writing without Shovei's work reflects but is all suffering equal Mahen Shovei wonders when the people who suffer are not considered equal at the heart of Dantikat's question is of course the notion of human rights whereby all humans not just some humans should be protected from suffering and lurking in Dantikat's interrogation is the fact that Shovei understood very well that not all groups of humans are considered equally by an international world order Shovei translated from the French by Caroline Tren part two the poor the poor see they hunger for bread and so they eat the cat the blind girl wakes up and sits up on the mat she runs her hand over the younger brother to make sure he's there with her head towards a pile of wooden boards she stares at them with her eyes wide veiled by a double camera she sniffs loudly feels along the floorboards and smells her hands she senses the cat's presence immediately fearing it will escape she leans over the sleeping child and awakens him with a shake there's a cat in the house she whispers if you cry or go away don't say anything do anything topa pa gets back do you understand? yes, the child answers do you think it'll go away? no if you stay still it'll be here when the pa comes back lie down and suck your blood the hours pass slowly too slowly because of the silence because of the stillness the blind girl hears her heart beat she hears the heartbeat of the child lying next to her she hears the heartbeat of the cat usually she sings to make the time pass she knows lots of songs the sad and mournful farming songs that cradled her childhood joyous carnival songs and many more she learned along the way one day when she was singing a lady cried out good god where on earth does nature's beauty lie? Adelia had no idea what she meant but if she had she might have taken it as a compliment for her thin dark face with its small dimples she knew about people and the ways of the world where affliction had worsened gradual they knew she was blind the day she asked for light even in the bright sun she remembered Tulia her young mother worn down by pregnancies and her heart breaking cough great Hortensia who sat on the ground between her legs while she combed through her hair papati montay whose hair was so white it was as if he wore a cloud around his head she remembered too the large hut with its straw roof a field of coffee trees food pulled straight from the ground and grinding coffee then misfortune arrived and turned everything upside down from one day to the next her memories blur because that was when she went blind she found herself on the road carrying her young brother cradled in her arms unable to see him ever again papabondier she murmured please bring papahom early today the asphalt road with its sticky burning tar melts under Alcindor's bare feet stretches out endlessly before his eyes like the shimmering white belly of a great snake he follows it down to the docks to the busy bustling world where sailboats arrive from the country filled with carbos of fruit and salted fish and trainsmen with their mahogany trinkets and other curios spread out along the pavement waiting to be sold to tourists Alcindor too could have worked this trade buy for a low price then resell to long foreigners with a little profit on the side but to do it he needed some money to get started where could he find more that morning Alcindor walked many long hours under the sun hoping to find work pursued by misfortune to push nor a boat to unload as they say bad luck is an evil beast that latches onto its unhappy victims like a crab what was he to do he had to get the broth he had promised his children onto the fire whatever it took and if not a broth, then good God has been calling you to help me constantly then at least give us some sweet potato or a crust of bread something other than cassava something different from cane syrup it's all they've had to eat for months if he had to steal he would if he had to kill he would kill one way or another he would put broth on the fire as Alcindor was musing over these desperate thoughts he spied the toad man hopping and sliding over to him on his mat you looking for work brother that's right brother I need work for children you know sell your blood brother brother what do you mean where are you from that you don't know that round here they buy the blood of the poor however dirty and sick to death we are they pay us 15 piaustras for just one quart of our blood three whole dollars brother is that really true it's the truth go over there give them your arm and in less than an hour you'll earn 15 piaustras go see look how skinny you are brother so thin like me maybe you won't pass the exam either what they want is big strong poor people and that's pretty hard to find are they lululu are they vampires Alcindor wondered mistrustfully they're the only ones with a reputation for lacking other people's blood wouldn't it be better to find out before going and then heading over my arm like an idiot why do they buy our blood he asks the toad man to sell it again they say to the Americans and what do those foreigners do without blood that I don't know brother no one can tell me the poor people sell their blood and get their three dollars that's not for them they don't die from it no brother only sometimes they get weaker and they sell it too often two or three unlucky ones die like that young man with the stump arm but his last breath was in the arms of a woman so you see toad man raises a finger in the air the only thing that troubles me he confides is the bodies disappearing from the morgue now that brother that's a mystery if you faint in the street or die there and the ambulance comes you disappear brother poof just like that without a trace of course for most of the wretches there's no one in the body yes but if that ever happened to me I would have got four children who claim my body you're lucky brother toad man says full of hope alcindor hurries along to the place he's heard about he finds a wretched crowd there standing waiting under the beating sun the door of the simple building opens and a nurse and a white blouse appears she lets them in one by one then doctors press squeeze them in every crevice of their bodies you might have washed and changed your shirt the nurse approaches alcindor you stink like a hog although he's so skinny they decide he is strong and healthy enough to be bled he holds out his arms thoroughly overwhelmed and starts when the needle pricks him looking at the tube filling up with his blood he thinks you're my children I'm selling my blood for them to give them the broth I promised my god these people are good paying me three dollars three great big American dollars for just a quart of my poor blood when the nurse tells him they are going to give him back his blood he cries out in despair don't they want it no the nurse answers they want it but they've kept the part of your blood they needed they give you back the rest gratis for free the nurse smiles yes gratis blessing alcindor thinks to himself so this is work I can count on if they like my blood I'll come every week every day even to give it to them he collects his three dollars triumphantly and heads straight for the market he buys sweet potato yam salted beef a bunch of watercress then stops in front of a display dresses a daily really needs some new clothes but on further thought two yards of rough cyan cloth will be far more practical because one day or another the 11 year old girl will be a woman and in trepidation he had watched his daughters developing breasts for growing legs which two old dresses only half covered now yes soon he would have a young lady to care for a young guide carrying his supplies he returned quickly to the shack he noticed the door was closed and was concerned the blind girl recognized his footsteps and opened the door to him straight away she put her head around the door and placed her finger on her lips quiet baba she says or you'll let the cat out cat there's a cat in the house behind the wooden planks lucky day and to think just this morning he was feeling so hopeless all it took was a minute for everything to change for everything to regain its bigger in color I felt it I caught the scent as well as the smell of the ratidate she leaves down and sweeps her hand across the floorboards there baba that's where it ate the rat the father looks at the floor and immediately remembers the bloody marks he watched away the day he entered the shack for the first time so it was only the rat's blood blessed be the good lord often at night he had thought about it imagining he could hear a soul in pain we'll get that cat he exclaims he pulls a knife out of his sack and holds it ferociously with his fist clolo wakes up because he suddenly spoke too loudly my stomach's empty papa he complains you'll eat the father answers silently he moves towards the planks of wood and there he sees the cat with his eyes flippering in terror it's standing up fur on end tail straight staring at the armed fist as it rises it slips between the boards rushes through the man's legs and runs into the hole today Alcindor exclaims it's hiding in the hole he kneels down puts his arm in up to his elbow the animal's rough back the cat scratches him with its claws he pushes his arm in further feeling for the neck and grabs hold of it tight very tight, tighter and tighter and here's the suffocating rattle of death his hand shakes with the desperate convulsions of the animal then the twitches become more irregular the body drops heavy and very slowly he pulls the cat with its foaming tongue between its teeth out of the hole at that very moment Joseph and Tin Tin knock at the door open it the father tells Adelia I've got it it says the blind girl walking with her arms outstretched I don't hear its heartbeat anymore weed some good days ahead of us Alcindor announces to his children light the fire, put water on to boil in the pot as soon as night falls our skin the cat to salt and spice it Joseph, go dig a hole to bury its skin and remains there must be no traces of it anywhere as soon as you put the broth on the fire dig the hole, over there under the mappu tree, dig it deep, very deep do you understand? yes, papa the father lays the cat across his knees cuts off its head, feet and tails which he throws into a piece of paper along with the guts and skin then he cuts the body into small pieces, washes and salts it looks just like a fine mother hen Lolo exclaims it's true, it doesn't look like a cat at all says the father once they're washed and salt, all meats are the same they arrested two men near the market Joseph recounts as he pours water into the cooking pot why? they were thieves the police beat them and they were crying and begging for mercy if they stole Alcindor's states then they were wrong grandpa papa Timote never forgave a thief the broth cooks in no time on the big fire Alcindor fills the cup then three small calabash bowls that he hands out to the children replenished, the blind girl sings as she cradles her little brother after this good meal with the prospect of eating the cat stewing on the fire tomorrow, she feels her strength return along with her joy and when she feels joyous it comes out in song the voice coming out of her rises up so high that she has to work to tame it as it imitates everything bird song, reed flutes, cowbells sing while I dig Joseph tells her as he picks up the hoe sing a conbete work song it'll remind me of la cuit the patinote's compound while digging the hole Joseph discovered a body the hoe struck against something hard which at first he thought was a stone he dug away until a hand appeared then an arm then he dropped everything and ran for his father so it wasn't the rat's blood Alcindor said straight away the tortured soul of this man still haunts this house where I am taking refuge with my poor children throwing the remains of the cat down next to the body he buries everything feverishly piling the earth on the grave we've seen nothing do you understand Joseph it's a big secret that it cost us our lives burn your lips not a word don't talk about it to anyone not even your sister, not even your brothers we'll leave this place as soon as possible 100 cats stolen in less than a month 100 beautiful tender plump cats all belonging to rich and powerful rulers the cats owners immediately lodge their complaints miserable thieves demanding police security measures for their villas and their pets rewards will promise to anyone civilians or soldiers whose zeal would help the honest citizens rid them of these immoral criminals since when in this country have cats been stolen for food this could further spoil the image the irreproachable reputation of the rulers of this sunny isle it could damage the economic situation which had improved considerably in the past months look at these marvelous mansions the new buildings statues erected in memory of the old tyrant these short and long term projects and all the millions elicited from the united states and dropped by handfuls into the streets this trend in banditry must be curtailed immediately they must arrest and shoot without mercy all the lazy louts used to work and preferred a wait for night to go about their fevery grandiose speeches were broadcast on the radio and put in print sentencing all cat thieves to death and the order was given for anyone who was armed to shoot on sight all the rich villas and little palaces were placed under military guard under torture many unfortunates guilty or not admitted to having eaten a cat joseph said that morning they're arresting and killing all the cat thieves that's nothing to do with us mt. moine elcindor answers we didn't go into a rich person's house to steal it we didn't we found the cat here and it was nothing but a poor cat old mangy and living policemen shouted right in front of me death to all of them death to the cat eaters the vultures they're the vultures elcindor replies and revolt the lives of people and it's them who are the murderers well thank you to all the actors and to others for the reading to all the writers and to have them performed by truly artists who know their craft the university's craft their speeches and papers they do create takes the lifetime to do it all looks so easy but it's quite something unique and also as we feel I think that this room theater is one of the great things it's a great community I feel we already are a group everybody in the same room here we're at the same thing it is something unique it only existed tonight and it already connects us first maybe a question to the director what did you know what did you learn and what do you think of it I had not heard her name before, I should contact me to direct the readings by actors as well so we learned about her together I did a crash course I read all of your work especially Kianas and that's how I learned about her about her story, about her biography and her body work I'm thrilled, I'm so glad I know her she's right at my wheelhouse in terms of what I'm interested in so it was a good fit what did you hear about what does it say to you I'm going to say that I'm going to answer that around the corner I thought that legend of the flowers would be the hardest one for us to grapple with and then the second two would be more straightforward and that was opposite when we got to rehearsal the actors apparently really felt with the flowers they really knew what to do that and that was the easiest one to rehearse but the more difficult work was love and birds of prey I think because she's a beautiful, multi-layered ambiguous, she creates quite difficult characters to get a handle on so that's how it speaks to me I think it's like before and after the work that she did the legend of the flowers I think someone said it was a minor work I don't know if it was minor but it was certainly early and she wasn't a mature artist yet and the later work I find quite difficult to grasp the material that we were given that these plays have no character assignments so I could see love as being a solo show but birds of prey seems to me that it would want to have an ensemble but that adaptation leaves it up to us about how to assign the lines so that was another layer of complexity Could you see the snatch plays and is there any room for people to come and what do you think is it a message from a world that's too far away now or closer? No, it feels like it was right this morning I think love especially would appeal She's fascinating character Claire is amazing and how she manipulates and how she tries to get what she wants and how she reveals herself unknowingly I think it would be a fascinating role for a virtuoso actress Judas, thank you so much for coming it's always an honor for you to take the time from your for sure busy busy life you come and visit us and we've got our own combination playwright, choreographer, and three weeks under the earthquake you have followed theatre which is of course French theatre or what that hates in France in Africa what does she fit in what do you think first of all she doesn't really fit in because she's not a playwright except for the legend of the flowers and I actually came this evening with Olivier Barreau showing up at NYU to do a talk back with a theatre guy named Jean Chalry Olivier Barreau runs a kind of one day one book kind of program on French television and French radio he comes to NYU for months and he does the talk back and I'm going to do this thing on Marnier Chauvet and he said who is that so that's just an example of the fact that she is not as well known as she should be really because I didn't think that I would put her in for each it's a great book so as far as where the theatre is concerned with Marnier Chauvet and what I know about her is I didn't know about this adaptation which Stephanie Barreau knows and I'm sure that Thomas knows it and Christian knows it as well but I don't know how many people know it and it's pretty interesting to study because it is written as a monologue and all three of these novellas are reworked as monologues and while it makes a lot of sense to have done this with Amour because it is narrated as a first person narration by Clair this is not the case of the second one there's a third person narrator that devolves into something else but Josée Pia has decided to have it narrated by the mother by Lorre which is curious and the third one which is really narrated in the story of this drunken crazed poet René he turns around and has it narrated by the rape victim Cécile so all three of the, in his version all three of the novellas become resistance stories narrated by women which I think is a pretty interesting gesture on this part but I think as far as I was thinking about what you did Alice can I ask Alice a question so I could see why Amour would be really really hard to do because and as would be all of these three plays at the same time I think they would be fascinating to work on because as you say it's absolutely virtuoso sort of stuff but you felt I guess that you need to break up that monologue because you gave it to several of your actors to read well I hired five actors so I wanted to use them it's one thing, practical thing and secondly I was really cognizant of making the story clear to the audience trying to and so even when you're talking about themselves in the third person Elcindor goes and does this I had the actor playing Elcindor say it in hopes that it would filter down to the audience that this is what we were talking about so that it was practical actually more than anything else and also just it's kind of cruel to give an actress a nine page monologue with four hours of rehearsal so it was the other reason the other direction wasn't really very close to y'all but if you had enough time would you want to tackle it as a monologue yes it's not an impossible thing to do you don't think no I don't think so but it would require like the full four weeks of rehearsal in the version that I saw the only one I saw of the three but they were all reformed the director did not trust his actor to be able to handle his woman actor and so he put a dancer on stage to represent Jean-Louis the object of desire so he had this kind of strange situation in which there was a woman narrating and telling her story with this guy I need to say this but flitting around the stage kind of wondering what the hell he was doing and that's where it comes that's right so okay thank you so what did you see I saw this performance at there's a theatre space in Paris called the Tarmac which is set aside for Francophone theatre productions which is both a good thing and not a good thing because it kind of ghettoizes them since they don't get to play in other theatres there but that's where my thought is if I heard why you said you were teaching Jeanne at the moment and you see some lines of traditional modernity temporalities is that something you want to compare it to I guess what I so I was teaching Jeanne and I'll talk today which is interesting when you start thinking about your chauvet they're not similar really except where they might all come together is they're taking some place that shakes you up they're especially clear but the women are not easy to figure out and they do live in this place where they hate themselves and they love themselves they like themselves I thought that was very interesting the reading so you can't figure these characters out very easily and of course in Jeanne's The Blacks you have six different layers of reality so you never really get to the bottom of who's who you never even know what their real names are you just know that they're playing and being playing and being playing and being playing here I don't think you have that kind of confusion in terms of the people themselves are very complex and they're much more psychologically dense whereas Jeanne's characters are cyphers but they're not psychologically dense but certainly they are as he was a very very strong character strong female characters in that play with light and shadow with strong emotions and very weak ones in hiding and showing certainly makes her a voice of the 20th century of a woman writer we all connect to especially also looking at her extraordinary life you also read some pieces today what's your personal connection to Marguisho? well I don't have you on I think I come to Haitian literature in Chauvin in particular from a social science background I am an anthropologist by training a feminist anthropologist and I've done a lot of work in performance on my own but my interest in that work has always been really because she was such a rebel sort of like that sense of knowing about her and learning about her at school a rebel to tell us a little more a rebel I would say basically just went against social strictures and wrote as we heard earlier and you know I mean the thing that's interesting that I can add to this is I have this sort of a version of Haitian literature in a sense because I didn't come to it through it as part of my upbringing it was something that I just covered here I migrated at 11 and so forth and I didn't come from a literary family right so this says my entry into the arts was not at all Haitian so I've made a return to it and through that return you know the ability to sort of recognize a complexity that I now am writing against well I'm trying to expose more if I should say because I actually had learned it I often talk about the language of how Criole and French for me were my languages of submission right this way we learned how to be proper I went to Catholic school how to be a good girl like that good Haitian girl she was not a good Haitian girl and that's because she wrote well not just because she wrote because of what she wrote and when she wrote and how she wrote right you know when you look at the characters part of what we have a sense of that complexity is not something we're automatically given it is something you actually have to fight for it is something that has to be decoded and it's not just within the context of Haitian literature itself but blackness in the context of white imagination so for me you know coming at this situated in diaspora as what I call a Haitian American and I really do call myself that than being able to come at it with those lenses and I'm also a performer I'd like to think I was a rebel in the womb so that helps So how many of you could have mirror yourself? No not necessarily I mean I think the thing is it's less mirroring than I think you know when you think of certain ideas that you know sort of the tragic me laugh and so forth they need to be more complicated this is part of what I was trying to say earlier because too often if you're a Haitian well first of all to have someone write about the complexity of Haitian identities is already revolutionary right I mean that is a really important thing to actually have documented because the tendency is to think of Haitians in very simple terms there are people to this date does not recognize that Haiti has a range of somatic differences amongst people they will look at someone and say oh you're not Haitian you could possibly be Haitian because the image of Haiti and Haitians is always all black whatever that is and even within blackness there's a range that's comfortably ignored so part of it for me as a black Haitian woman really is to think through how complex that is knowing within my family for example there's a range of colors a range of classes we were never reducible to that singularity that we've been given yet that's the only way that people saw it so part of what I'm interested in is anything that complicates that and for me she does that well she does that well and she doesn't in such a way that it's hard to sort of incarcerate her and the ability that she has to be slippery is necessary to get a shred of that humanity that keeps polluting us thank you Alessandro you both are scholars it's a big universe what to write about what to focus on also in your career why did you chose her what is the reason that you think she's such a significant put on you know what's your evaluation and your meaning you see okay I started writing about chauvetia as part of a constellation of women writers that I was not sure of a constellation of writers of women that I was looking at from the Caribbean, I'm speaking in Anglophone and I've been particularly interested in what I started off by calling the ethics of narcissism but because narcissism is a term that immediately makes you think of pathology I've been thinking of it more in terms of the ethics of feminine self-care though self-care feels a little too you know humiliated so I haven't found the right word yet somewhere around the range between narcissism and self-care but the point was I'm interested in women who say no to coercive community even when that coercive community looks like the right one meaning people who stand maybe uncomfortably outside of what we see as feminism or who stand uncomfortably outside of racial alliances but who are in a position where their identities can't be so neatly contained and how that looks suspicious to the outside world and I think Chauvet is someone who yes I'm a literary scholar so I try to stay somewhat suspicious of biographical interpretations of text but I think in her work itself the women character she writes we talked about a little bit this afternoon they are difficult and disorderly and not always good people but what they seem to be to have in common is a desire to protect their selves their individual wanting to survive being in ways that I think women don't often get allowed to portray themselves and still be considered human or good I came to the project thanks to Kayana who invited me to work with her so I actually wasn't particularly interested in Chauvet for the reason that when I had read Amour Coderre for the when I was I don't know since about 20 years ago I found that it was it still is so upsetting to me and for me to reread something like that I think it depends on one's personal experience or how deep you get into the text to be able to have this document from the first time you read it and so the only work I've actually ever worked on intimately is the last one the birds of prey translated by Carolyn and I can handle that because it deals with more of a globalized space and also I've become recently very interested in Jewishness and the Caribbean and I was thankful to Thomas Speer for asserting that her mother was Jewish and I think she wrote that the raptors at the same time that Hannah Arendt was writing for the New Yorker and speaking about what evil is and who's capable of it and it's a very everyday thing and so to me I find so much affinities between Chauvet and Arendt and not because she went and read her and she decided she was going to do something similar and they were doing different things in different places and that's the work of Regine Jezeth so I am not at all a specialist I feel a bit strange being up here I'm just a hard worker who loves to work with Kayama but I love this play I really couldn't handle Chauvet's it's just too hard on me and I think you saw the difference between the first play and the other and Judith what do you think is there something like Tara from Isola by Haitian literature you observe in the context of the microphone a landscape is there something about it or is there this well I won't play many expertise in Haitian literature but let me tell you why that José Clia picked this novel he had just taken over he's from being so he's a West African but trained for theater in France and he had just taken over the National Theater in Guadalupe and he was looking for a novel to adapt that he felt would be THE novel from the Caribbean and he read a lot of novels from Guadalupe and Martinique and none of them spoke to him but his Haitian friend said you must read Manichauvet and he did and he said this is it this is what I want to do I think but I wish someone else would speak to this who's more of an expert so it probably should be Kaev who does this it took to my mind from what I read in Haitian literature it actually stands apart and she stands apart although there are other women writers who write about torture and rape in other novels that I've read by Haitian women like Andy Muck's for example but still there's something about the way it sticks with you this morning when I was rereading again and I kept thinking about Doha this character who has been raped but the word is never used nor is there a lot of narrative about we just see her walk down the street with her legs apart in great pain that's what we see I read this novel the first time maybe seven years ago I have never forgotten that so it's the way those kinds of things stick with you I think that's very, and she's just fantastic about setting up these images and making them stick I agree I think that something extraordinary that she's able to do that facilitates that making it stick is and perhaps what Piaz saw in this novel that was at once the novel of the charity for him despite perhaps even because of its singularity is the interplay between the local and the global that she embeds in the heart of every one of her works and it is extraordinary the extent to which many of her, many most all of her works have this claustrophobia to them they are aside from, yes no rigorously contained in the Haitian universe but she reaches a universal that goes that's unmediated to my mind or by the communal but is the individual in the world in their complexity, their inconsistency their degradation, their pathologies their narcissism and their and their generosity certainly but she is so unsparing in her evaluation of the human condition that she doesn't do the dumb thing of having these good characters, these bad characters people you're meant to feel sorry for and people you're meant to vilify that is in each and every one of the characters and it comes in in things about them that even seem contradictory mean that we have to be thinking about who they are we have to, they resonate in size they confuse us and make us uncomfortable but in those ways that that make them stick with us I think that make them relatable that I hope it doesn't sound banal but I do think it's extraordinary and you know regime is very good about keeping us contextualized you know a more called out for the 1968 that's like an explosive year right and as I was Sandra said it's not that she was picking from the outside and putting I'm going to do this version of this in Haiti she was on the pulse of this she was having these thoughts and these feelings within the cloistered role of the Haitian bourgeoisie in the 1960s and yet able to speak well beyond that world in ways that resonated so deeply of what was going on with Broadway and I'd say that's the case if you line up her works with their historical moment they match not only Haitian history but world history and her capacity to do that I think is what makes her so extraordinary so many of us I think that the other thing that's why the Légion du Fleur it's also kind of interesting but thinking about Haitian writers the other Haitian writer who does is Édouche d'Antica but and I think she holds on to that complexity and I think she gives us a feeling of the horror of the Duvalier regime so it's something about also in the context of other Caribbean novelists whereas everyone in the Caribbean claims Toussaint Louverture and the Haitian Revolution only the Haitians get to have Duvalier the other Caribbean novelists I think the other Caribbean novelists don't want to touch that it's too terrible and so there's something about that terribleness of that particular historical moment that's really very strong and Duvalier is a kinder and she's kinder she is gentler I think with the world gentler she's very strange she really manages it well I think another thing might sound simplistic but it's really important to keep her in mind in terms of that feminist tradition black feminist tradition of longing to tell that need to tell no matter how horrifying that story must be told the significance of the telling is something that I think again in terms of how we think about Haiti the whole Haitian narrative or narrative of Haiti in a sense she's in the dimension of a particular kind precisely because she's giving voice to the most horrific aspects of life of women and it's not something that proper girls do I think coming back to that notion of propriety is really key because it's also about the class aspect of being scientists it's been perfectly fine for someone to just blah blah blah to be from the bourgeoisie and be restrained and you're supposed to uphold certain social take them as she decided to eschew them I think so it's really important then to sort of look at the tension between that and the desire to tell and not just tell to go wrong I mean I was just like no I'm not reading this because I was like I read it once and that was enough for me that was, I'm with you but no I'm not reading that scene that's not the one I'm going to read and part of it I was just like I have a happy space and so it's really there's something to be said in terms of thinking about Haitian feminist agency and I grew up with a mother who always said buy me flour and I go wow what do you mean you don't have a choice that's sense generationally right that things happen to you and part of the burden in living with what happened whatever it is that I tend to find once people sort of grew up around under dictatorship is you didn't have a choice and you don't have to tell and so you die it implodes it stays in there what do you mean to then revolve and tell it and tell it that it's the worst possible form with the day good is something to think through and the integrity of that there's integrity in that which appeals there's incredible guts when you think that in was it 1961 that Jean-Stefan Alexis was killed by the Duvalier regime so writers were being killed about all the things I've learned in reading Christian shows I don't know that Marie-Fierce Chauvet has any antecedents any feminine antecedents that I don't know very much about at all because all of the great Asian novels up to Marie-Fierce Chauvet in my understanding of it have all been men not necessarily great but the recognized so that's all there may be a whole lot of other novels and writers that we don't know yes let's move on to audience questions so it's interesting I've been thinking about this a lot and so is there a way I drink the Marie-Fierce Chauvet Kool-Aid I love Marie-Fierce Chauvet which is amazing I've been writing about her since I was in college but I've been listening to you all talk and I just had this thought so is there a way, especially when I think about Shelta and I were kind of looking at each other because we have this friend one of our very good friends that have been out and the things that drives her the most crazy in life is when people say Marie-Fierce Chauvet was the first Haitian woman writer when obviously there were others before her so is there a way though that this we have to I'm happy that this spotlight is being shined on Chauvet but is there a way that we're creating a Chauvet exceptionalism right I would love for some people to talk about the dangers of that and how do we avoid that how do we avoid that as scholars and thinkers we don't no, I think about this a lot when I talk to people normally to native and to your uncle Lionel he's like, why are you writing about Chauvet don't you know about Lionel MacArthur I said yes and I had this kind of argument with him I lost but what I was saying I still believe I was just kind of like not courageous enough to keep fighting is that let us let her open space there doesn't need to be a Chauvet or it should be a Chauvet and if people are paying attention to Chauvet great fantastic and let us also then kind of push back against that she is the first and say out loud the names of the authors and the writers and the artists that made the space for her so it's up to us not to back away from Chauvet out of some fear that we're exceptionalizing her but rather again let her make more space around her so that she's not so that everyone knows she's not the only one but she is a transmate but you have you have you have I mean I think she and I appreciate what you're saying of these whores but there is no one understands this in English she has a level of language she has a way of working that formal French the most uptight and then she'll throw in these vulgarisms and and I'm sorry there is an exceptionalism with her I mean yes there are other exceptional exceptionally talented writers from Haiti and from elsewhere but I know the censorship added to that too because it was unsteak because people wanted to find her books and you couldn't but I'm sorry I argue with Leonette as well you know but she said that I don't agree with him and there is just when the trilogy came out you know it had lots of press and the only person who said something negative was Leonette but that's you know that's just him and those are those services but I think that when you look at language I mean people can look at the language of Jacques Houma and know that you know there is something exceptional in what he was doing as well as far as working French with the Creole yes we did with the whores we were looking at a lot of this today but there is a level of her language I'm sorry and I'm sorry for the French people who don't know her and I don't care we have been teaching her for a long time and we will continue to do so and we don't care what the French people think but it is a level of language no I mean and others can say this the reader in the original there is an exceptionalism exceptional we don't have to to me exceptionalism instead of discourse right as opposed to so we can still say that she is exceptional without being attracted but I'm talking about the minor works I wanted to first of all thank you for the staging the readings they were extraordinary and also the team of performers as well as much credit extraordinary job of reading these texts to life we talked about this earlier but most of us have never been able to see any of these works performed either under entirety or in the condensed versions that you chose so I wanted to ask first a question of you and then a question of the panelists the question for you is about what you chose to stage what other texts you chose and why you chose it and I'm curious those of you who do know Shovei's work either on the panel or in the room if seeing Shovei performed changed your way of thinking about Shovei being read for you those of you who read her the section from Legend of Flowers I just chose the beginning because it seemed the further we got into that play the harder it was going to be to understand and also there are many more flowers and things and nature of things that come into play so I thought okay let's keep it simple the other two it was easier to dip in the middle and actually those excerpts were threaded together it wasn't even a continuous passage for either of those pieces and so for Love I wanted to hear about Claire's manipulation of Annette and actually I had wanted to do another five pages but we would have been here till 10 o'clock so we got the beginning of that manipulation and then for sorry first pray the eating of the cat the capturing of the cat and the cooking of the cat just seemed like the most visceral exciting part of the play I have to say when we read it as a company cold I think the poem at the beginning the poem at the beginning tells you what's going to happen the poor eat the cat that went over the actors heads five pages in and they said wait a minute they're going to cook it and I was like uh huh and I thought oh it would be great if the audience had that experience as well that it just you know it's such a horrible thing I can add one thing I was thinking about Brecht today Brecht something completely different and he talks about you know Epic Theater is when the audience laughs while the characters cry and vice versa and when I felt to eat this cat I really felt this like dooms that all over the audience of like oh no don't do that what are the circumstances that caused that to happen I mean it really felt quite epic in that moment Question to the um panel about the listening the listening the listening and the reading did it have to impact you? you know the answer to that sure you know the answer radically a thousand percent different than sitting in my bedroom in my office you know a thousand both okay does this mean I'm right obviously it's it's amazing all of the books I read I should see perform sometimes you should stage them I say that to that translation too but if you can engage the text in a different way I'm very proud to it especially when you're us right always reading books and how do you teach this how do you write about this and then you see that they have embodied it and given it back to us and in so doing expose the fissures and the cracks and juiciest bits that somehow and your hundreds of readings and teachings of that same text you missed it's just mind blowing and so again I hope you will stage a merger so that I can write better we're the same university so this could be good to have I think that what happened to me and I didn't have to other people in the audience who know a little bit about it I had read bits of it and thought flowers who talk it was great it was funny it was such a good first it was such a good satire I thought who the hell does that something he is and then with the three flowers and then having a mood right after that I thought wow you can almost see a prefiguration of a mood and I can't do with it as to the men with the three sisters that was really very revelatory for me I also felt they all talked to each other over view but also listening towards the group as a community and audience it's just something that's very special and creates a listening that's very different even if you would lead alone to one audience member it wouldn't be the same as we hear maybe one or two more questions good afternoon I'm sociologist I would prefer to speak in French but I would I will try to say what I have to say in English so I'm sociologist and time is very important time is very important for understand politics for understand economy for understand culture and so forth so when Marie Chauvre wrote she published like in the 60s and the 60s was a very important time in social science corresponds to a mathematical change in the social science at that time I would like to know all the time to what extent the fact she published like in the 60s what kind of reading what kind of book she read in the 60s or she received also external influence to what happened in social science you know in a global yes influence influence I I would assume that because she was corresponding with Simone de Beauvoir that she was certainly reading what was going on in France at that time she was quite well connected to the French intellectual established she was publishing in the 50s so she was publishing in the 50s and with the play was put together in the late 40s so her career really spans about 20 years if you count 1968 as the last publication of her lifetime this is a very big question in the introduction I read the next row of a letter that Manny Sugar had written when she says that my education is I am responsible for my own education because I read a lot and I think the photo that was on the board that Kaya Manonis on the operating pit as to put on the cover of the young friends studies is Manny Sugar in her bedroom with her bookcase behind her so we can zoom in and see to answer your question precisely for sociology I think just from that part of the portrait itself we can see very widely that this is someone who is well, very well well and pretty much an autodidact autodidact one of her characters Lotus it says in Fidaiti the education that we have is the same and what Lotus the character in that novel is a narcissist undertakes is to do an education and she reads a lot and she starts quoting Nietzsche she starts quoting Schopenhauer she quotes Victor Hugo she quotes possibly the Bible and so if we take that just already in 1954 this is someone who could engage intellectually with a range of texts and I'm only saying these because the name dropping them but we can read we can read Maestrovet there are many that are usual to Maestrovet and to textually with several thinkers and other literary traditions and Simon de Beauvoir is also one of them we've closed the tour hours so just for us at the Siegel Center it's a long time maybe for Chabot Chabot not necessarily Chabot but it's unusual and I'd like to thank you all I just want to say a few words of thanks also this will not be too long but we'd be remiss if we didn't so when you talk Alessandro is going to be coming around for those of you who participated I'll try to be brave and talk a lot today and learn an enormous amount first from the very elegant stage setting work done this afternoon by a vision I'm looking at you Virginia I'm here this afternoon as well and then to the insightful presentations done this afternoon also by Stéphanie Bérard by Christian Flore by Échée Jean-Charles and by Jeremy Glick we have flowers since the they don't make flowers let's stay on them here it makes our time really this day has been so enlightening and it's thanks to the work and thanks to what you've given us to continue thinking through it with Marie Chauvet and then also the performance at the discussion this evening and brought her into this space into our here and now today in the most viscerally compelling ways and so we're very very grateful to you Alice Regan, to the actors and to the translators to Gina Ulysse and to June Miller for their commitment to and their engagement with Chauvet's theaters and their French institute to the institute for research on the African diaspora and the Americas and the Caribbean no one's here representing them get their flowers all of their support was crucial to making this happen and last but by no means we certainly could not have pulled this birthday party off without the dedication the commitment, the organization the love, the appreciation the goodwill the generosity Frank and his team advice team, I mean Anja Ovo and I mean Rebecca Sheehan and his incomparable superwoman Yuchenne, who I hope is still here Yuchenne Lu those flowers are for you too they really made this not just possible but they made it a pleasure for Alessandra and me to be a part of so thank you Frank, thank you Yuchenne and happy birthday Marie Chauvet