shows in
production
From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin : #1 the day
From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin : #2 the night
two fully bilingual Arabic/French performances
with Mouna Ouafik (Arabic language) and a French-speaking actor
Mouna Ouafik is currently completing a large autobiographical collection entitled From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin. A "different autobiography", according to her. The poems speak of her "own relationship to God, Islam, Satan, Eve, Adam and even Darwin, of her mother, of sex, of love." Poetry without posturing or provocation: simply uncompromising in following a poetic ideal. But certainly burning.
Mouna Ouafik proposes to perform these fiery poems on stage by creating a diptych. Not everything she writes is audible everywhere; she has to say what she has to say. So she separates. On the one hand, she puts poems that would be rather diurnal, that certainly burn but are tolerable by society, even with a disapproving pout. And on the other hand, a nocturnal side, poems whose flame is not, or not yet, publicly admissible everywhere.
She will create two autobiographical performances:
From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin: #1 by day, which can be performed anywhere
From the Female Chimpanzee to Darwin: #2 by night, with more delicate themes
Her entire performed autobiography will be presented as a diptych.
from I decorate her navel with Ezra Pound’s penis.
(...)
With an untainted disinfectant I will wipe the wound which I made in your belly on your wedding night.
I will leave you in need of care.
I will drip cold coffee into a Coca-Cola bottle, I will
Drip my heart into yours.
I will continue to make you jealous
With Ruby Rose.
My straightness is not straight when it comes to her
I will push your thighs together. You will open them like a pair of translated poems.
You will open them on a letter I love:
V
I decorate your navel with Ezra Pound’s penis.
The piercing will dangle as you tremble. Amy Lowell, folding into a gale of laughter
And immediately I press
PAUSE
I will lose what little strength is mine, o let
This pain take me, either to remember or forget.
translation Robin Moger