Le Kung Fu, a play by Dieudonné Niangouna

Le Kung Fu follows the story of Dieudonné Niangouna’s childhood in the Congo of the 70s and 80s, a time when cinema, although there was a dearth of it available to the public, was for the Congolese director and author a powerful connection between his personal artistic path, his family history and the construction of speech infused with cinematographic fiction. From Kung Fu movies and popular flicks to art house films, cinema for him was a way to create an identity, to become the word in action, even leading him to theatre. What remains from this experience is the urgency of writing, a practice the author defends as necessarily dispersible with time – ephemeral theatre then, the creation of images, equally fleeting, indissociable from directing and going from word to deed, on stage. This urgency as well as the memory that it constructs is something Dieudonné Niangouna has shared with the residents of Aubervilliers who have joined this project by acting out scenes from their favourite, cult classic films. From there, several stories are interwoven, multiple geographies overlap and the very question of each person’s identity arises.

November 19th, 20th and 21st at 8 pm
Free entrance on reservation at reservation@leslaboratoires.org and +33153561590

Dieudonné Niangouna (text, direction, game), Laetitia Ajanohun (artistic collaboration), Wolfgang Korwin (video), Nicolas Barrot (technics), Laurent Vergnaud (creation and light), Patrick Janvier and Charlotte Humbert (settings), Antoine Blesson with Léa Couqueberg (administration, production and diffusion).

With (extracts of movies): François Corbeau, Nemo Gielen, Agnès Hauenstein, Pauline Hurel, ,Stéphane Guez, Aurélie Rames, Franck Poupon, Malek Semaani, Habib François, Nathalie Incorvaïa, Barbara Coffy, Maurice Kaboré, Nourredine Kaddouri, Fanta Kanté, Sabrina, Chantale, Moussokoye, Sabrina Ouhrani, Ilyan Ouhrani, Serge Sapim, Lydia Cupidin, Olivier Nestor, Michèle Sully, Maxime Lemonnier.

Production : Le Grand Gardon Blanc, Cie Les Bruits de la Rue, les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers. Coproduction : Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Francfort. Sponsors : Région Île-de-France, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication - DRAC Île-de-France.

Thanks to the people who helped us in Aubervilliers : the team of the quartier Paul Bert, la Fripouille, l’association Lumière.