French actor and author Nicolas Lambert brings his timely anti-colonial stance to Avignon

LA FRANCE, EMPIRE

After the Theatre de Belleville in Paris, the 11 • Avignon venue in the French southern capital of the theatre world hosts 'France, Empire', written and performed by Nicolas Lambert, a writer who uses his past experiences as a journalist and documentary maker to explore the darker part of French history. 

Nicolas Lambert is an actor and an author but he is first and foremost a storyteller, who acts as a history teacher for his daughter, especially in this play where he performs all the roles himself, including impersonation of Charles de Gaulle, General Leclerc and most of the presidents of the last two French republics. 

While his trilogy The A-Democracy devoted his expertise to the business of oil, nuclear power and armaments, France, Empire is part of his 'Theatre of Operations' series.

From the disintegration of its Picardy to the Second World War and the dismantling of the French Empire, he links common and personal history, including infamous political speeches and testimonies from overseas, until some masks fall.

The play is on during Avignon Off until 21 July 2024, at Theatre 11 • Avignon. 

"I wanted to have testimony on that part of France's history," Lambert told RFI English, "and I wanted to give testimony that was not one of guilt. Because, as our former President of the Republic, Nicolas Sarkozy, says so well, 'children are not responsible for their father's policies, for their father's crimes', as he said in his infamous Dakar speech."

'A family secret'

Lambert uses his family history in the north of France to retrace the different parts of the imperial, colonial history. And one day, he realised his own daughter didn't know anything about colonial history.

"By the end of third grade, my daughter had never heard of the years of the old French empire," Lambert told RFI English.

"She didn't know that Morocco was part of France, that Tunisia was part of it, or Cameroon, etc. Or that all her friends came from places like these used to be the French Empire. More French people should know and not only through school programmes, but through exhibitions, debates, museums, theatres..."

He presents that part of colonial history and its traumas around the notion of family secret, a metaphor to explain why the subject is so often avoided in France, while knowledge and conversation, according to me, should help.

"There is a lot of emotion in the room during the show," he added. "We can sometimes have somewhat typical audiences who come, but mostly we have a lot of psychologists, who work on the notion of trauma, who come, and that touches me a lot. It seems like a good, good tool for them, to discuss these issues individually but also collectively. Some people cry too, it frees something."

Enduring empire

From Algeria to Vietnam, including the Americas, Subsaharan Africa and the current overseas territories in the Caribbean sea, the Indian and the Pacific oceans, like Mayotte and New Caledonia, the show opens a thread that unites all the territories controlled at some point in history by Paris – a form of gigantic empire, that is still resisting.

Lambert says that in the current political context, the rise of racism, and the denial of past violence in the global south, his text only seems more relevant to him.

The author-actor is now plotting to turn the show into a film, later this year.