ORANGE NOYÉE - MONTRÉAL, CANADA.
worldwide except CANADA.
A few words by Mani Soleymanlou, Artistic Director:
“Orange Noyée was born of a scream that was buried deep inside me. I didn’t really even know it was there. This scream surfaced in 2011 and became One, my first solo show.
I was born in Iran on January 17, 1982, at the dawn of the Islamic Revolution and in the middle of the Iran-Iraq war. Like millions of other Iranians, part of my family fled. They went to France ,then to Toronto, Ottawa and, finally, Quebec.
This exile, this flight, became the basis for Orange Noyée and it colours the thinking and theatricality behind all our past and future creations. One took form during an uprising in my birth country, when young Iranians filled the streets of Teheran to demand their right to exist. From a distance, comfortably installed in Montreal, I saw people, with whom I was constantly compared, fill the streets and fight for their country, the very same country where I came into this world.
This came at a time when I was wondering what it was about me that still made me Iranian, and I found myself watching young Iranians, who had neither the opportunity nor the misfortune to leave their country, live through a time of war and revolution. They were caught up in a bloody conflict and a fight to the death for their country. I felt a duty, an urgent desire to give a voice to these young people, who now account for 70% of the Iranian population.
Orange Noyée was born. One was created and presented over 150 times in French and English around the world. Since then this show has been presented over 150 times, in 19 cities on 2 continents. Eight other works have been created, three artistic collaborations have been presented and one show was completely rewritten.
In addition, all the company’s creations have only obeyed my urgent desire to speak in the present, the one that we all had, to follow these events as they unfolded. By trying to develop a “live” theatre that was as harsh (and therefore as full of roughness) as it was raw and frank, we wanted to make Orange Noyée a place where we could get everything on the table.
These works laid the foundation for what theatre represents to me, or at least the theatre that I hope to create with my partners. Theatre is an art form unto itself, one that can only exist on the stage before an audience that is present in the here and now. On the other hand, theatre is an exercise (in the sense of expending physical and mental effort) in empathy, of projecting oneself in the “Other.” In sum, theatre is the search for community through the communication—whether successful or aborted, reassuring or confrontational—of our experience and aspirations.
Each of the works created since then has therefore developed its own theatrical language. The situations, ideas and words are singular, the actors change, the visual and sonic dressing is unique. But everyone participates in the search for one thing: to deploy a “popular” space, in the most positive sense of the term, where artists and citizens meet and confront each other, think and feel. In short, a meeting place that is accessible and welcoming, then destabilizing, where we work together in trying to “bring it all together”.