November 28th 2023 - Morocco
Rabat / Villa des Arts;
Décembre 1st 2023 - Morocco
Casablanca / French Institute
Décembre 5th 2023 - Morocco
Marrakech / Dar Denise MAsson
March 9th 2024 / Scotland
Festival StAnza / St Andrews
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2d part creation
26 to 29 May 2025
ABC La Chaux de Fonds
Switzerland
From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin
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Poetic Stand-up performance in Arabic with English subtitles
with Mouna Ouafik (Arabic language)
direction Henri jules Julien
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As in her texts, where poem and life, life and poem, feed off each other and sustain the vitality of the verb, Mouna Ouafik's poetic stand-up on stage is fueled by textual energy, to which she lends an unprecedented physical power.
The audience witnesses a very special kind of autobiographical stripping: each line, as if transformed into a punchline, is torn from the body to make way for the next line. And so on, until the partial epiphany is eclipsed by the sequence that follows.
With the fire of the texts finding a singular resonance in the intense fever of Mouna Ouafik's voice, the performance From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin resolves itself into a staggering expenditure of sincerity.
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Only the first part of the performance is created.
from I decorate her navel with Ezra Pound’s penis.
(...)
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With an untainted disinfectant I will wipe the wound which I made in your belly on your wedding night.
I will leave you in need of care.
I will drip cold coffee into a Coca-Cola bottle, I will
Drip my heart into yours.
I will continue to make you jealous
With Ruby Rose.
My straightness is not straight when it comes to her
I will push your thighs together. You will open them like a pair of translated poems.
You will open them on a letter I love:
V
I decorate your navel with Ezra Pound’s penis.
The piercing will dangle as you tremble. Amy Lowell, folding into a gale of laughter
And immediately I press
PAUSE
I will lose what little strength is mine, o let
This pain take me, either to remember or forget.
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translation Robin Moger