Grace Seri
poupée N.
théâtre
- 45'
- F Hearing-impaired spectators welcome
- E Partially-sighted spectators welcome
- B Accessible to persons with reduced mobility
Production: Cie portrait fractales et Le Voisin. Coproduction: Arsenic - Centre d'art scénique contemporain, Lausanne. Soutiens: Point Éphémère, Lafayette Anticipation Fondation Galeries Lafayette, T2G Théâtre de Gennevilliers.
In a room of one’s own haunted by symbolic objects, a young girl becomes a doll when she hears voices coming through her: Poupée N. N like negro.
Lanieka, the porcelain dog, the purple corded telephone and posters by May Ayim, Toni Morrison, Soraya Bonelli and Nina Simone, to name only a few, set the reminiscent scene and follow Poupée N. on her memorial quests.
In the form of a collage as mad as it is experiential, Grace Seri summons a melting pot of images and memories fracturing her thoughts. All together creating a poetic self-fiction between Saint-Louis, the island of Gorée and the docks of La Garonne in Bordeaux. Like a ritual of reconciliation, in this tale, she dreams up reviving the dead who would rise to the surface of the Atlantic waters. Those thrown overboard slave ships during a crossing. Poupée N. is not afraid of the monstrous. She flirts with the spiritual and the hidden zones of the unconscious on the one hand, and the morbidly mournful burlesque on the other. In the intimacy of this teenage bedroom, Grace Seri scans the traces left by a dehumanizing and violent past on the present and on the flesh.
Grace Seri is an actress, writer and director. Her artistic practice are rooted in stage performances, film and writing. Since graduating from the CNSAD in 2016, she has explored various collaborations with Josza Anjembe, Georges Lavaudant, Keti Irubetagoyena, Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, Kayije Kagame, Rodolphe Tissot and Laurent Cantet. In 2016, she played the lead role in the short film “Le bleu blanc rouge de mes cheveux”. She was awarded the Best Actress award at the Festival Clermont-Ferrand et Jean Carmet for it. In 2018, she starred in her first feature film “Un violent désir de Bonheur” by Clément Schneider, which was selected by the Acid at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2019, as part of an artistic collaboration with artist Kayije Kagame on directing and acting, Grace writes the scenario for the first part of the diptych “Sans Grace”/”Avec Grace” presented at the les Urbaines festival in Lausanne and the Grütli festival GoGoGo. In 2020, the second part of the dyptic “Avec Grace” is presented at the Théâtre de l’Usine, Théâtre du Grütli, and at Arsenic with Kayije Kagame and Grace Seri as a duo. In 2020, they publish at the Editions Clinamen in Geneva “Sans Grace”, a poetic narrative.
She wrote a text for the magazine Chiche (persona), nuit de doute, and a fragment of her text poupée N. was published in the magazine Muscle. For an Arte series, H24 – 24 heures dans la vie d’une femme, she shot an episode directed by Nathalie Masduraud and Valérie Urrea. In it, she plays a young female preliminary judge. It’s the second lead role alongside Ophélia Kolb. She also played the role of Sylvie for a 4×52 series by Rodolphe Tissot. In 2024, she shot a short film by Camille Dumond, Prospect Center, and will star in Aude Léa Rapin’s Planet, which will premiere at the Cannes Film Festival. She collaborates with Marvin M’Toumo for the play “Rectum Crocodile” at the ADC Pavilion. Next fall, she will star in Dorothée Munyaneza’s next production, Inconditionnelle, a text by Kae Tempest, at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord (FR).