Theatre
Le Carrefour
Not translated into English
Kossi Efoui · 1990
Synopsis
Under an unlit streetlamp, at a crossroads shaped like a cross, the Souffleur, an activist imprisoned for twenty years who survives only by replaying his memories, brings back the same figures: the Woman who waits, the Cop who prowls, the Poet who returns from a failed attempt to head for the open sea. The same scene repeats, the characters, living or shadows, feel they are living it again, and the outside and the cell, the open air and the prison, end up merging.
Context
The play won in 1989 the Tchicaya U Tam'si grand prize of Radio France internationale's inter-African theatre competition, an award which, says the author, “saved his life”, and was published in Paris in 1990 by L'Harmattan, in the Théâtre Sud series. It lays down the framework that its author would take up again afterwards: mask-characters condemned to replay at the crossroads a tragedy from which they cannot escape, under the eye of a narrator who feeds them their lines, and who denounces the repressive mechanisms of totalitarian regimes. RFI gave a reading of it at the Avignon festival in 2023.
Who it is for
A short play, with tight, allusive language; the author is better known for his novels, which give a different idea of his language.
Prizes and reception
Awarded the RFI prize in 1989; critics see in it the beginning of a turning point in the dramatic writing of francophone Africa.
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