La Résurrection rouge et blanche de Roméo et Juliette ・ Comédie-Française

“Independence gave rise to the problem of ‘identities’.

Personally, I am very wary of identities that belong only to a single geographic region or to a single people. I think that identity is contagious.” Where is this contagion now, twenty years after the death of the Congolese writer and playwright
Sony Labou Tansi

His sharp pen dipped in the ink of philosophical doubt and spirituality, places him in the tradition of the great humanist authors. In 1990, he published The Red and White Resurrection of Romeo and Juliet, which will open this new series of Vagabond Readings coordinated by Laurent Muhleisen, the Comédie-Française’s literary adviser. In the author’s wake, a new generation is emerging.
Three of its representatives will be presented after him during the Vagabond Readings series: the Cameroonian author Léonora Miano who describes herself as belonging to “a generation that, having benefited from the struggles of [its] elders for the rehabilitation of [its] cultures, feels authorised to undertake, with courage and determination, the crossing of its inner shadows”; Julien Bissila Mabiala, born in the Congo, was remarked upon in 2005 by the Readers’ Bureau, which had the following to say about him: “Beyond his talent for bringing language to life, there is a real cruelty, a viewpoint of great seriousness” in his work; and finally the Guinean Hakim Bah whose literary career, already rich despite his youth, took him from writing poetry to short stories before he devoted himself entirely to the theatre.