Abysses – Festival de Tragéides
Theatre
20 June 2025
Abysses pays tribute to the stories of these women and men in the Mediterranean who risk their lives to escape their hell, but also to those who save and welcome them, even at the risk of their lives.
In just twenty-five pages, Davide Enia takes us to the coast of the island of Lampedusa to give a voice to those who suffer. Interwoven with the narrative of this contemporary drama is the more intimate journey of a father and son watching history unfold before their eyes. Accompanied by the traditional Sicilian songs of musician Claire Vailler, Solal Bouloudnine embodies the power of these words with immense sensitivity and invites us to come face-to-face with reality, but above all with ourselves.
What is beautiful in this text, as in life, is that it is constructed from small, insignificant things, from everyday acts. Nothing heroic. Far from grand speeches, these "small, insignificant things" make sense. They do so even more so on a theater stage because there, away from the outside light, we can pay tribute to them in all their dimensions and thus restore a place for humanity. Theater is accurate, necessary, and joyful in this role.
Especially since there is an urgent need to deliver this voice, which does not participate in the current information strategy, the one that condemns us to emotion by distancing us from the complexity of situations and their origins, and which perhaps reduces us to inaction, paralyzed by the amount of distress pouring out of Europe. Here, it is the words of a poet that allow us to vibrate, to glimpse this reality in its human dimension, that restore courage, faith, and energy. There is therefore an urgency to say this, to listen to this today.
Abysses
by Davide Enia - Translation by Olivier Favier - Directed by Alexandra Tobelaim
with Solal Bouloudnine & Claie Vailler (guitar and vocals)