“New Paradize” is the product of a three-year collaboration between a group of young adults and artists from Ris-Orangis (France) in the Parisian “banlieue,” and Jaffa (Israel), Arab neighborhood of Tel Aviv, through a project entitled “Behind the Walls, the Sea.”
The Youth and Cultural Center (MJC) of Ris-Orangis conceived and realized this project, inspired by the values of “popular education” to use artistic action as a means of expression, which allows us to explore the relationship between the individual and the challenges, conflicts, human interactions, and different representations of the world with which he or she is confronted.
"New Paradize" The Youth and Cultural Center... par MJCRISORANGIS
The experience was enriched by exchange and debate resulting from this unusual encounter between a group of French young adults and a group of Israeli young adults. The groups were created with the goal of mixing different religious and ethnic backgrounds (Muslim, Jewish, Christian, atheist; Arab, Hebrew, African, European), genders, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Over the course of six exchanges in France and Israel, in which both groups together participated in a series of theater and dance workshops, an artistic process was undertaken, driven by existential, philosophical, social, and political questions which arose from numerous site visits, improvisations, and discussion groups. This process of research and creation, which gave a real voice to its young participants, culminated in a common questioning of what it means to be twenty years old in our respective societies today, a common outrage at confinement and closed-mindedness, a common assumption that it is impossible to dream, and a common desire to live with dignity.
The artists put into words, into choreography, into images, into music and onto the stage the feeling of suffocation expressed by the participants; the false dream of the television, the smoke and mirrors media that proposes the creation of a paradise on earth in the form of a TV reality game show; and the hope that we can someday cast aside those beliefs which prevent groups of people from uniting around common human values that would bring us together rather than divide us.
“New Paradize” is no longer a project; it is now a dance-theater production in its own right.
The artistic team gave a concrete shape to the observations, ideas and emotions expressed by the young adult participants during the workshops and debates.
Led by Catherine Regula, playwright and director, and Corinne Deroide, assistant director, several young artists were given an important role in the artistic creation. The music for the play was composed by Nicolas Keriven, a student at France’s premier school of engineering, Ecole Polytechnique, who completed a civil service internship at the MJC of Ris-Orangis in 2010-2011. A high-caliber musician and pianist by training, Nicolas has proven his ability in both the scientific domain and the musical domain; through the confidence placed in him by the artistic directors of “New Paradize,” he was able to put his creativity to work and produce his first full-length original composition. The choreography for “New Paradize” was also entrusted to three participants in the project: Sandra Petour of France, and Aviv Halfon and Malina Hanania of Israel. For these three young women, who are trained in contemporary dance and modern jazz, this was also the first opportunity to produce and stage a full-length original choreography.
“New Paradize”
It is a message carried by 20 young adults; by a group of artists and educators, including Vanda Gauthier, in charge of International Relations at the MJC; by a director, Max Leguem of the MJC; by a group of MJC administrators; by an MJC (Youth and Cultural Center) that has always worked toward social change; and by the Arab-Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa, which for thirty years has advocated Arab-Jewish collaboration as a form of resistance and response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The play’s construction was finalized in Israel, at the Hatzerim kibbutz (Beer Sheva), which hosted the group for one week of final rehearsals in September 2010. It was performed in France: in Ris-Orangis, at the MJC’s Jean Gouin Theatre in September 2010, and in Fontaine (Isère) at the Edmond Vigne Theatre, which hosted the group as part of a weeklong artists’ residence in March 2011; and finally in Israel: in Jaffa, home of the Israeli actors in the group, through a co-production with the Arab-Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa in October 2011.
In Ris-Orangis:
The audience greeted this work-in-progress with curiosity, having heard about the project for over two years. In their reactions, they were particularly surprised by the engagement of the project participants, their energy and perseverance, and the force of the play in its desire to end all forms of closed-mindedness and confinement. The audience witnessed the strength and resolve of an artistic project constructed patiently through a process that encouraged its participants to get to know themselves better by encountering the Other, confronting each other face to face, and creating together.
In Fontaine:
The audience, composed of both adults and young people, noted in particular the unique methods involved in the play’s creation: the fact that we created a single French-Israeli group, took the time to get to know one another, to talk to each other and to dare to say things openly to each other, to debate about the issues that separate us, to analyze the things that bring us together and to write a common “cry from the soul”…and to entrust this cry to the pen of a playwright.
A question-and-answer session following the performance allowed the actors to take the floor and answer audience questions. It was at times complex for the young people to answer some of the questions asked by adult audience members, about the future, about war and peace, about the young people’s political engagement or lack thereof, and other topics…
And the question often asked: why choose Israel in this international artistic project – a country that has been the subject of much controversy because of the political stances it has taken in the conflict which opposes it to Palestine? To which the play, the project and the debate with the audience offered several responses:
It appears clear to us that we must not confuse a country with its leaders and its inhabitants, and risk thinking that a nation’s population is uniform in its behavior and ideas. The young actors were 16 and 17 years old when the project began. As adults today, they have learned through this project to exercise their critical reasoning and freedom of thought, and to bring to the stage their feeling of rebellion and their desire to live in a more just world.
The Other is a mirror.
The two countries represented onstage serve as mirrors for one another. For the group of young Israelis, both Arab and Jewish, the project challenged the communitarian behavior of Israeli society. Not only did the project encourage dialogue, but it created the conditions necessary for a collective creative construction that brought its participants well beyond coexistence, toward true cooperation. On the French side, the group of actors is composed of young people of different origins and social classes, whom nothing but an artistic project could have brought together in one common action. Each of them was able to analyze the examples of injustice and discrimination that exist in our respective societies, and to measure the impact of the words that our society uses—the discourse held by their schools, their families, the television, or political parties that encourage hatred, separation and segregation— in order to question the damage caused by a divided social organization where not everyone is allowed a place.
The play and the lived experience behind it help to change our perspective:
The composition of the groups gives us a more nuanced perspective on the social reality of Israel and France, which forces us to rethink our tendency to stereotype. The young Israelis informed the audience members that several among them, Muslim or Christian Arabs, have relatives in Gaza and the West Bank, and are very alert and mobilized with regard to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When possible, these young people protest in the streets to express their resistance or their dissent. The Arab population of Israel struggle for equality in this country where they were born, which they did not choose but which is theirs nonetheless; while the young Jews – there are three in the group – complete their “mandatory” military service for Israel. One of the Jewish Israelis in the project served time in prison for deserting from the army, and has now been placed in a unit where he is supposed to serve for the next three years. The “broken” Jewish Israeli youth is swept up despite itself in a sixty-year-old conflict. We are far from the clichés of fanatics, terrorists and tyrants.
As for the French youth, the diverse group includes a number of young people of immigrant origins, some of whom live in poor neighborhoods but do not quite resemble the image portrayed by the media: one of them is a university student in political science, another is starting his own business. This project has allowed them to understand what “being French” means, in regard to the values of the French republic – even if these values are not always respected by our governments.
After being exposed to Israel’s communitarian behavior, the French participants were able to measure the impact of this communitarianism on social relations. They each realized that French laïcité (secularism) was an integral part of their early education, and that it had led the young Muslims and Jews of the French group to live their religious beliefs in the private sphere, in order to be able to participate collectively in a common action in the public sphere.
Two of the young adults in the group come from a so-called “privileged” background, both of them students in prestigious schools and born to Catholic families. This project gave them what was probably a unique opportunity to meet other young adults of so-called “disadvantaged” backgrounds and to collaborate with them, knowing that their modes of operation differed considerably – in their use of abstract thought, in their cultural references – and to realize that despite this, they were all equal in the existential questions they asked about the present and the future. The truth is not always found in books, and the real lessons in life emerge from human experience, especially that of people who live in economic need.
Finally, the young adults of French origin who come from so-called “modest” backgrounds, and are for the most part atheist, found themselves quietly serving as models for their freedom of action – especially in the case of the girls, living their life with their hair blowing in the wind, for whom the most important cause is that of gender equality.
In Jaffa,
We presented three performances of “New Paradize” in partnership with the Arab-Hebrew Theatre of Jaffa.
The three performances were sold out. The audience, consisting of families – an important detail for the Theatre, which is working to attract a more local audience to its shows –, of curious passers-by or people who had seen our posters displayed in the neighborhood, of a number of Israelis of French origin, and finally, of 90 Arab high school students, mainly from the Collège des Frères (a school open to Muslims, Christians, and Jews, who are rarely mixed in the school system), overall reacted positively to the play, even in cases where it provoked confusion or disturbed pre-held notions.
Among the reactions, those that caught our attention the most were:
1.The audience’s surprise at discovering such a great diversity onstage: in particular, at hearing four different languages, and especially Arabic and Hebrew spoken side-by-side.
2.The emotional reaction to the initial texts in the play, which symbolize the personal thoughts of each young individual facing the future with uncertainty: “Today is my birthday. I’m twenty years old. I don’t like birthdays. I don’t like being twenty.”
3.The laughter of the audience at the unexpected introduction of television into the story, in the form of a reality game show, an integral part of the cultural environment of every young consumer of TV. Television alone gives this young generation a chance to dream, which it has been deprived of. It is a cardboard dream that claims to create a paradise on earth, on a beautiful island of which the winning candidate will become the owner. Paradise is for sale on TV (capitalism full powered obliges). Theater allows us to ridicule and condemn the role of television in a direct way. In the “New Paradize” reality show, the French team is pitted against the Israeli team in the name of solidarity. The candidates sing and play ridiculous games, the audience votes. Anyone can recognize themselves in this TV-mirror, which reflects what is vulgar and common and appeals to our base instincts.
4.The audience’s pleasure or displeasure at seeing themselves reflected in the mirrors held out by the actors at the end of the play – a powerful gesture that carries a political and human message.
5.The desire of certain spectators who waited after the show to ask us to perform “New Paradize” elsewhere in Israel, where the play’s message and the experience behind it would be relevant, and who offered to help spread the word about the play and attract an audience, as long as we are able both to find theaters willing to host us and to secure the means to finance the trips.
These last performances have reinforced our determination to pursue this adventure, in France to begin with, to search for new partners and continue in the hope of finally being understood – to show that “New Paradize” offers an experimental model for encounter, cooperation and creation, beyond cultural and political divisions. The collective creation of an artistic product involves deeper risks and challenges than a simple cultural exchange. It creates the conditions for true individual and collective transformation.
We are proud of our artistic product, the visible part of our three-year experience, which we continue to improve with each meeting, having had only a short time to finalize it. We are just as proud of the human adventure of “New Paradize,” which shows us, with every performance and with every audience exchange, that art has the capacity to inspire a desire to change the world. To change it how, you ask? To change it for the better, seems to us the only possible reply.
Catherine REGULA
Théâtre de Jaffa
15, 16 et 17 octobre 2011Répétitions/Générale
18 mars 2011 - Fontaine (38)Salle Edmond Vigne
18 mars 2011 - Fontaine (38)
Répétitions/Générale
28 septembre 2010
MJC de Ris-Orangis (91)Théâtre Jean Gouin
28 septembre 2010
MJC de Ris-Orangis (91)
