K Samka

"Penelope O Penelope" - New creation in 2018
Pénélope ô Pénélope was first performed at the Théâtre National de Chaillot, Paris, in may 2008. At the Théâtre national de Toulouse in november 2008.
It won the award of the Syndicat de la Critique Dramatique 2008 for the best show in french language.
The text is published by ACTES SUD-PAPIERS.
I wanted to write a play about my mother, to write the story of a women awaiting the return of her man, trying to find Penelope in her, for this character like those of Ulysse, are among the celestian columns holding up the great canopy of my imagination. I wanted to bring to life a queen of theater, an ordinary queen, a queen of present day. From her, Dinah-Penelope, all the others emerged : Elias-Ulysse, Theos-Telemaque, Ante-Antinus, Nouritsa - the Nanny. All during the writing of this play, there was a discret and tender invocation between these legendary heroes and my own story, until it merges in the ocean of the great myth. In theater we have our laws, our history, our memory and perhaps I wanted, in my turn, to let the breath of an ancien theater appear suddenly on a contemporary stage.
For me, theater converges to a center : the actor. The stage is the place of this convergence, of this rush, of this exodus. In this story, Pénélope ô Pénélope, at the center is this woman, the mother. A woman that can be met on the corner of any street, a woman from another continent, suffering today. The way she dresses is like ours : clothes covered with the dust of time and stars.
The acting space – five meters by five – has lent us a style that is drawn and delicate, intimate, but nevertheless epic and of course always joyfull. Music is never far away ; it gives a secret breath to the tragedy that couldn’t be told without it. Upstage, a curtain : the imaginary space. Ghosts and beings who do not recognize each other until theater tears off the veils that separate them. A door open to all possibilities. A table, a space of ritual and magic where the victim and the executioner embrace each other. All of this is offered to the audience with parsimony of blood and tears. And always to music of course.

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Pénélope ô Pénélope was first performed at the Théâtre National de Chaillot, Paris, in may 2008. At the Théâtre national de Toulouse in november 2008. At the Grand T- scène conventionnée Loire- Atlantique, Espace Malraux in february 2009 and at the Scène nationale de Chambéry et de Savoie in january 2010.
Production Compagnie TERA, Théâtre national de Toulouse, Théâtre national de Chaillot, Centre dramatique national des Alpes, le Grand T- scène conventionnée Loire-Atlantique, Espace Malraux- scène nationale de Chambéry et de Savoie.
With the participation of DRAC Ile de France and Théâtre National de Toulouse Midi-Pyrénées