Writers and Directors: Élise Chatauret and Thomas Pondevie
Babel Company’s Élise Chatauret and her collaborator, Thomas Pondevie, conducted a series of interviews with families in 2020. Together with actors Laurent Barbot and Iannis Haillet, they have shaped those interviews to form a piece of documentary theatre focussing on one role in particular – the father. Originally entitled Pères when first produced in France, it is presented here with an English translation by Abla Kandalaft.
Starting with a set dominated by a plain, white wall and what appears to be a couple of beaten-up wooden tables, Haillet and Barbot attach photos of their younger selves to the back wall and begin talking about their own fathers. How much of this is actually their own life and how much cribbed from others is not wholly clear, but that’s not the point. The initial contrast comes from the two tales juxtaposed: first, Barbot’s story of immigrants and constant moving, facts getting lost behind the cracks until memories of one’s father, and his father before that, becomes a world of maybes. For Haillet, his family is one of secrets, of mysterious wedding dresses that nobody talks about, the “don’t ask” to Barbot’s “don’t know”.
From there, the stories expand out, and so too does the set. The nondescript tables are deconstructed to reveal speakers and an array of switches that act as a soundboard, illuminating tales with music and effects. At one point, a hot plate pops up, allowing the live cooking of crêpes.
And the stories come – of a man whose grandfather was a Fascist, keeping a photo of Mussolini next to his portrait of the Virgin Mary. Another related of a man who would inflict corporal punishment on his children – not the limited use of a slap or even a cane, but binding his children’s hands and feet and then using a martinet on their backs.
In between each tale, Haillet and Bardot adorn the back wall with a series of magnetic illustrations, until it begins to resemble a collage of the varying degrees of paternal history, good and bad. Stories merge into one another, sometimes overlapping, sometimes both actors uniting to tell a single story. Gradually the magnetic illustrations become less abstract and start to illustrate facts about the links between fatherhood and laws founded upon patriarchy – for example, until 2005 it was mandatory for French children to be given their father’s surname.
The latter half of the evening looks at the social and economic impact of attitudes towards fatherhood. A tape recording of economist Hélène Pérevier talks about how the roles of “Mister Breadwinner” and “Mrs Housewife” subjugate women. We also hear a 1950s French hit about how “A woman is at her most beautiful in the kitchen” – but these antiquated views are presented alongside more modern takes on fatherhood, as a gay couple talks about the steps they took to have children by surrogacy, and a pregnant trans man joins the collage on the wall of fatherhood.
The bigger question, though, is the effect patriarchy (literally, “the rule of the father”) has on family life – and how much all our lives would be improved if, and when, fatherhood and patriarchy are separated once and for all. As a long quote from the French rapper Casey, printed on a massive sheet that is unfurled across the whole stage, the next stage of feminism requires men to get on board – and only then can it succeed in truly reaching equality.
Starting as a series of confessionals and ending as an informal lecture on the need for radical sociopolitical change, Fathers never quite settles on what it wants to be as a piece of theatre. But what it does do engagingly, superbly even, is provoke the question, what does it mean to be a father? The only condition it demands of us when seeking an answer is that we do not repeat the sins of our own.
Continues until 17 July 2022
