The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center presents a dialog about Edouard Glissant’s Tale of Black Histories (Histoire de nègre) livestreaming on the worldwide, commons-based, peer-produced HowlRound TV community on Friday 5 May 2023 at 9:30 a.m. PDT (San Francisco, UTC -7) / 11:30 a.m. CDT (Chicago, UTC -5) / 12:30 p.m. EDT (New York, UTC -4).
Join us for a chat with Caribbean theatre director Gilbert Laumord (Guadeloupe) dialogue his newest work Tale of Black Histories (Histoire de nègre) by the late, legendary Caribbean author, poet and thinker Edouard Glissant. Born in Martinique author Edouard Glissant and his colleagues on the Institut Martiniquais d’études (IME) wrote and carried out this intellectually wealthy, formally progressive, but long-neglected distinctive play themselves 1971-72. They drew on works of historical past and literature—from Martinique to the United States, colonial Algeria to apartheid-era South Africa—to teach Martinicans about their historical past and tradition, excluded from colonial schooling, and to hyperlink Martinican experiences to these of different black and postcolonial peoples. Histoire de nègre is a play in three “parts.” Part I describes the European conquest of the New World, the arrival of the primary African slaves, the corporeal and social violence of enslavement, and the resistance and flight of the primary maroon. Part II focuses on the struggles for civil rights, independence, and decolonization, and depicts moments of resistance in Martinique, Algeria, the United States, and the Congo. Part III, on “neocolonialism,” dramatizes the efforts of the previous colonial powers to brainwash their former colonial topics by way of political and cultural assimilation, and client capitalism. Laumord will likely be joined by producer Elvia Gutierrez from the SIYAJ Company, Emily Sahakian (University of Georgia), Andrew Daily (University of Memphis) and Daniella Kostroun (IUPUI – Indiana University).
Gilbert Laumord is a Guadeloupean actor and inventive director of the internationally famend SIYAJ theatre firm, which is taken into account to be the main up to date theatre firm from the island of Guadeloupe (French West Indies). His inventive work is dedicated to the African-derived oral cultures and efficiency types of the multilingual Caribbean. In 2008 he obtained the distinguished Mackandal Award, given by the Cuban Ministry of Culture, for his contributions to Caribbean cultural manufacturing.
In 2002, after working for greater than twenty years in theatre, music, dance, and cinema, Laumord based the SIYAJ theatre firm with Elvia Gutiérrez. Laumord has acted in theatre, movie, and tv. He performed main roles in lots of foundational productions within the historical past of French Caribbean theatre, such because the storyteller Zéphyr in Maryse Condé’s An tan revolisyon. In cinema, he’s identified for his portrayal of the President of the Republic of Haiti within the Venezuelan movie Bolivar, el hombre de las dificultades (dir. Luis Alberto Lamata), which he’ll display screen whereas in residence at UGA. He seems commonly on the Avignon worldwide theatre pageant (see the characteristic under). He continues to behave in theatre productions in Montreal, the place he at the moment resides.
Elvia Gutierrez (Mexico/China/France/US) created in 2002 the SIYAJ firm along with the actor, writer, and director Gilbert Laumord. As the co-director and producer Gutierrez works tirelessly in direction of the dissemination of Guadeloupe tradition. She is contributing in direction of fostering Caribbean worldwide affect by way of workshops, productions, worldwide excursions, analysis, and coaching within the area of theater and efficiency, specializing in Cuba and Haiti, the United States, and South Korea. Gutierrez organized inventive alternate between Paris and Tokyo with Master Izumi’s School of Kyögen and he or she was the manufacturing supervisor on the French Connection Project Métissage, working in France, Brazil, Guatemala, and Mexico, and have become the chief producer of the venture for French/German cultural TV channel Arte. She was a co-producer for the Off Street Theater Company’s broadcast of the opera “Carmen Opéra de rue,” an inventive alternate between France, Venezuela, Mexico, and Colombia. She collaborated with Casa de las Américas in Cuba for celebration of the work of the legendary Guadeloupean author and big of literature Maryse Condé. Gutierrez was instrumental in creating the distinctive anthology New Plays from the Caribbean, which represents a most important and lasting a part of the 2019 Caribbean Theater Project ACT (Actions Caribéennes Théâtrales)—co-organized by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center in New York City, her theater firm SIYAJ, and Stéphanie Bérard (France).
Eddy Compper is the inventive director the Centre Culturel Sonis and of the Festival Cap Excellence en Théâtre in Guadeloupe the place he packages the Ilot Jazz Festival and the Cap Excellence en Théâtre pageant. He was the founding father of Casa 70 Room and Afro Caribbean Festival at Dream Space in Angola, Africa, the place he began his profession. Compper created with Pierre Édouard DECIMUS the Créole Blues pageant, which later turned Terre de blues, the Lokans pageant, and Sacred Voices in Baie Mahault on the island Marie Galante in Guadeloupe. In 2004 with Soana Devarieux, he arrange “Kolimel”, a coaching and integration middle by way of performing arts.
Coming from a household of musicians, Compper created a musical group known as OMEGA the place started his profession as a drummer alongside musicians similar to Fréderic CARACAS, Dominique GENGOUL, Eddy LATOUR, Paul Émile Halian and others. In 1992 Compper arrange the Sérénade Productions label in Guadeloupe and the United States to have extra independence over our manufacturing and phonographic distribution and opened a file retailer in Guadeloupe. Compper can be the inventive director of the Cayenne Jazz Festival, the Matoury biennial in Guyana, the Gwadeloup pageant in Guadeloupe, the Gwadadli pageant in Port Louis and he collaborates with the Port au Prince Jazz Festival in Haiti.