SILENCE DU CHŒUR

Performance premiered on 22 September 2026 at the Théâtre Jean Vilar, Louvain-la-Neuve

Thursday 15 October : Gala in aid of the JARFI FOUNDATION

In his epic choral novel, Mohamed Mbougar Sarr – known for *La plus secrète mémoire des hommes*, which won him the Prix Goncourt – recounts the journeys of seventy-two men who have crossed the Mediterranean and landed in a small village in the Sicilian countryside. We call them ‘refugees’; ‘immigrants’; ‘migrants’, but in Altino, they are first and foremost ragazzi, ordinary lads taken in by the Santa Marta association, whose presence turns the small town’s daily life upside down.

As they await their fate, they encounter all manner of characters: an unconventional priest who listens to their stories, a woman determined to offer them asylum and a man resolved to deny it, a disillusioned doctor and a poet who no longer writes, and even a former ragazzo, Jogoy, who has become an interpreter. They all find themselves at the foot of Mount Etna and must learn to live together so as not to erupt like the volcano watching over them.

When Marie-Aurore d’Awans discovered this book – she who takes ragazzi into her home – she recognised faces, stories and voices within it. Surrounded by a dozen actors, she extracts the chorus from the novel to bring it back to the theatre – like a return to Greek tragedies – and paints a profoundly human portrait.