Mimi Barthélémy: Playwright, actress, storyteller, musician, writer
Mimi Barthélémy during her show at La Roseraie theatre in Brussels (November 2007).
© Hegel Goutier
Mimi Barthélémy is a name synonymous with storytelling. In fact, there are very few playwrights or professional actors involved in the art of storytelling who haven’t heard of this Haitian artist.
Barthélémy has succeeded in transforming an art – you could also call it traditional folklore – into an experimental theatrical experience of a very high standard. In doing this, she has travelled all over the globe receiving numerous awards and honours for her breakthrough work that borders on the magical. Her focus is on storytelling from every possible angle. She writes, she directs and she does this through a deep understanding of music and sociology.
Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Mérite, France. Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France. Becker d'Or 3ème Festival de la Francophonie (1989). Prix Arletty de l'Universalité de la Langue Française (1992). These are just a small sample of the awards that have been showered upon her during her career, not to mention her roles chairing juries and other honours.
Last November, she was in Brussels at La Roseraie theatre for a performance designed specifically for a young audience, “Quand les chiens et les chats parlaient” (When the dogs and cats spoke). But, as is only to be expected with someone of her reputation, these performances are not confined to the younger generation. Adults, well versed in her ability to entertain, make sure they are part of the audience well before the performance begins.
Arriving in Brussels early in the early morning, Barthélémy makes the time to enjoy a congenial breakfast with the show’s organisers and then it’s off to La Roseraie for some last minute fine-tuning and rehearsal. At the theatre it is a delight for her to rediscover acquaintances and many of her fans before she appears officially on stage. And when she does, her storytelling is delightfully relaxed and easy-going, delivered in her soft-spoken voice. An amiable, informal style that charms everyone present. Barthélémy has that special talent of making you think you are the only person who counts for her at that moment.
Mimi – practically everybody calls her Mimi – is a huge stage presence. She effortlessly creates a chemistry that would win over any audience no matter how unpromising it might appear to start with.
She quickly involves the audience as extras in the performance and they join in enthusiastically, singing songs – often in Creole or Spanish – without having the slightest idea what they are about. The younger members of the audience are overawed, with mouths wide open, hardly daring to breathe. They hang on to her every word, every syllable, every breath.
“I use these simple storylines,” she says, “and a universe of creatures (rat, mouse, lizard, sparrow and so forth) to create all the atmosphere of Haiti…” And, as she leads the audience on her journey, the fabulous becomes reality! After the performance, Mimi was – despite her many years of experience – walking on air because of the spell she had managed to weave around the youngsters who had marvelled at her performance, her words and music.
Later, she met with the Belgian side of the family of her deceased husband, Gérard Barthélémy, her co-author of many books and other works. Talking with her, she recalls her father, a senior member of the medical faculty in Port-au-Prince and a descendant of a former Marooon leader during Haiti's war of independence and her mother, the daughter of a former Haitian President in the 1920s. From the age of 10, Barthélémy travelled a great deal in the Caribbean and to Florida before studying political science in Paris. There she was to discover a sense of disorientation and disappointment. “When I was 16, having completed my secondary school education, I left Haiti for France and soon understood the painful meaning of the word exile,” she remembered. “I had family ties with the French, I belonged to a cultivated mulatto family, but this was colonial France when the war in Algeria was in full spate. For the foreign emigrant, the sole choice in France was assimilation.”
She gave up her studies and now married, travelled with her husband. First as he took up the post of cultural attaché with the French Embassy in Colombia, then the embassies in Bolivia, and Sri Lanka. Following this period, she resumed her studies in 1972, taking a degree course in Spanish literature. Then came a year-long stay with the Garifunas [tribe] in Honduras studying their unique culture. This tribe is a mix of Amerindian and African peoples, whose language, Garifuna, is the Africanised survival of the Arawak tongue, where speech differs according to gender (i.e. men and women do not speak in the same way). As an example, the nouns used to specify the same object are said differently depending on whether it is a male or female speaker. It isn’t, therefore, surprising after this experience that her doctorate in theatre, focused on the role the theatre plays in the identity of a cultural minority: the Garifunas.
“Latin America, and more specifically Colombia, offered me the opportunity to get in touch with many leading cultural figures of the 1960s,” she explained. “My initiation into artistic life began with my association with the TEC (Teatro Experimental de Cali), founded and run by Enrique Buenaventura and the Casa de la Cultura de Bogota, founded and run by Santiago Garcia. This enabled me to discover the works of contemporary European and Latin American authors, such as Brecht, Kantor, Grotowski, Eduardo Manet, Jose Triana, Arrabal, Borges and Joao Cabral Do Melo Neto.”
She took a keen interest in a wide variety of theatre, such as those of Claude Alranq and Peter Brook, as well as, Eugenio Barba's Odin Théâtre and MnouchkineThéâtre du Soleil. She undertook training opportunities with Eduardo Manet and the Roy Hart Théâtre. Then she performed in France under the direction of Rafael Murillo Selva, well-known in Colombia. Later on, she was an assistant to the anti-establishment director Manuel Jose Arce, who was then producing theatrical works critical of the American military presence in Central and Southern America.
The majority of her university research was undertaken at the same time as these theatrical experiences. As she explains, “my first steps towards the theatre, my on-the-job training and my university studies led to a practice of theatre focused on the memory of my country. I had to fight against a loss of identity, the alienation I experienced as a result of my assimilation in France.” And Barthélémy concludes, “my approach to the theatre is based on the need to put up a display of resistance for the sake of my mental survival, to adopt a spirit of rebellion and activism.”
www.mimibarthelemy.com
Last work to appear:
Book and recording : "Dis-moi des Chansons d'Haïti"
Publisher: Lise Bourquin Mercadé
