The show is given at the gymnasium of the Lycée Aubanel, as part of the in of the Festival d’Avignon and it does not leave anyone indifferent. Black card named desire, written and directed by Rébecca Chaillon, questions “the figure of the black woman as an object of fantasies” through the performance of eight actresses. The piece, created in 2018 then revived in a new version in 2021 at the Manufacture de Nancy, intends to play on “tenacious, racist, sexist clichés”, as specified in the note of intent. The register is that of “baroque humor, to upset our benchmarks carnivalesque diversion and especially to make sorority”. Viewers are warned: “Some scenes may offend the public’s sensibilities.”
There is no deception on the merchandise. At the start of the show, the actors invite the black women in the audience to sit on sofas while the other spectators are seated on the usual bleachers. Rébecca Chaillon, of Martinican origin, embodies a cleaning employee, who engages in a frantic cleaning of the white tray. Then, the director strips naked and the other performers make her huge braids that she will keep until the end of the show. The public is taken to task, sometimes harshly; bird names can fly.
During the play, the public is challenged in a game, like Questions for a champion, testifies a spectator who attended the performance on July 21. Then, in a new game, the actresses seek to seize the bags of the spectators. “A man in his sixties refused and the actress began to talk to him, says this festival regular. She asked him for his bag again with more insistence. “You’ve been pissing off for two hours, you haven’t understood anything, give me your bag,” she told him. The actress then took the public to task. Some spectators got up to leave the room, while the others shouted at them “The fascists are leaving”. According to Sceneweb, a site specializing in performing arts, the same scene, involving a recalcitrant sixty-something, took place at the July 24 performance, three days later.
The show includes another striking scene, the one in which “a nanny impales on a stake that crosses her body all the French children entrusted to her”, as reported by the live performance site Sceneweb. This image alone sparked controversy, with some seeing it as a racist anti-white demonstration.
Overflowing social networks, the case took a new turn on Wednesday with a press release from the festival management. “Since July 20, 2023 in Avignon, the performers of Carte noire named desire by Rébecca Chaillon, theatrical and performative show which raises the question of the place of Afro-descendant women in French society, face during performances but also in the streets verbal and physical attacks of a racist nature, specifies the organizers. The Festival d’Avignon affirms that it is unacceptable to leave these surges of hatred in silence and testifies to its solidarity and its support for the artists.
Black card named desire, whose last performance was given Tuesday in Avignon, will be resumed in Paris from November 28 by the Odeon theater, which also denounced the “verbal and physical attacks” suffered by the artists.