Audience, Get Warmed Up!

Following the painful loss of Béatrice, she joined choreographer and educator Germaine Acogny in Senegal, before taking up residence in Montpellier, France, to pursue the exerce Master course, directed at that time by Mathilde Monnier. She then began creating her own works while dancing in the final pieces by choreographer Alain Buffard (d. 2013), who had a major impact on her. She made waves with her first significant solo work, Quartiers libres, which laid the foundations for her staking a place and is still performed today.

When Beugré takes the stage, it’s for the purpose of making statements, asking questions, tackling taboos. Her engagement in the cause of women is inspired by a historic event, the 1949 women’s march on Grand Bassam. This Ivory Coast uprising aimed at liberating the women’s husbands, who were imprisoned by the colonial authorities, features in her piece Legacy (2015). The spirit of struggle, courage, and self-exposure that marked this movement are key elements in her choreography. Beugré also created the Libr’Arts association with the goal of building connections, particularly between France and Ivory Coast. She recently established an educational project for young Ivorian women in order to provide a space for creation and speaking out, visibility, and freedom. There are no limits to Beugré’s determination.

The biennial festival of the same name quickly became one of the most important theatre events in French-speaking Africa. Starting in 2014, his acting career took flight in Africa and Europe with Dieudonné́ Niangouna’s M’appelle Mohamed Ali and Aimé Césaire’s Cahier d’un retour au pays natal. These two solos were followed by another in 2017: Si nous voulons vivre, a collage of chronicles and interviews by Sony Labou Tansi. Traces – Discours aux Nations Africaines was created in 2018 for the inauguration of the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar.

For instance, she tackled the international Question of Palestine in décris-ravage (2011-2016), which won Belgium’s Prix de la critique award in 2014 and the 2016 Prix SACD award in the “Discoveries” category. Rosenstein and her actors seek to eschew aesthetics in order to make space for contributions from the audience’s imagination and reveal how historians, sociologists, journalists, and witnesses “format” their knowledge. Starting with archival materials openly shown as incomplete and sometimes patched together, the group aims to expose and understand the obstacles faced by those fighting for change—obstacles put in place by the small minority that profits from, and makes accommodations with, the current state of the world.

With degrees in acting from Nissan Nativ Acting Studio in Jerusalem and in directing from the Ernst-Busch Academy of Dramatic Arts in Berlin, Adeline Rosenstein established herself in the late 2000s in Brussels, where she worked as a director, a dramaturge, a translator, an actor, and a writer, notably of a comedy for young audiences based on Orestes, called Détester tout le monde (2019), and radio plays.