The Play : Comme deux frères

Photo by Philippe Bourgade : Ruddy Sylaire (Grégoire) and Gilbert Laumord (Jeff)

Comme deux frères

Produced by Siyaj Company from Guadeloupe

Text by Maryse Condé (in French with English subtitles)

Directed by José Exélis

With Gilbert Laumord and Ruddy Sylaire

Lights by Dominique Guesdon

Music by Alfred Fantone

Production Director, Elvia Gutiérrez

The performance will be followed by a Q&A session with the actors, the director and the production director.

SYNOPSIS

Photo by Stéphanie Bérard : Ruddy Sylaire and Gilbert Laumord, Avignon 2007.

The play Comme deux frères/Like a Couple of Brothers (published by Lansman, 2007) takes place over the course of a night in jail. Two men, Jeff and Grégoire, have been arrested for a crime, probably armed robbery, and somebody was shot. One, a cynical tough guy ; the other, a fragile dreamer, these friends must figure out how to present their case in court the following morning. This intense discussion results in accusation, fears and contradiction. Jeff and Gregoire’s conversation leads us to discover their difficult past, as children largely robbed of innocence and wonder, and as angry adolescents devoid of positive role models and trapped in spiraling pattern of violence and self loathing. We gradually understand the unique nature of the relationship that Jeff and Grégoire have forged one with the other, as brothers.

THE AUTHOR

Maryse Condé, famous author and major figure in Francophone literature, was born in Guadeloupe and studied at the Lycée Fénelon and the Sorbonne in Paris, where she received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature. Condé’s novels and plays explore racial, gender, and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and geographical spaces. In 2004, Condé retired from Columbia University as Professor Emeritus of French.

Photo by Stéphanie Bérard : Maryse Condé and Gilbert Laumord, Avignon 2007.

THE CAST

Gilbert Laumord (Jeff)

Gilbert Laumord is the artistic director with the Siyaj Company in Guadeloupe. After 25 years of artistic work and research primarly in the area of theater, but also cinema, music and dance, he formed the professional theater company Siyaj in April 2002. A multilingual actor, Gilbert Laumord speaks Spanish, English, Dutch, French and Creole. He has taught dramatic arts in numerous institutions, such as the University of the Antilles in Guiana.

Ruddy Sylaire (Grégoire)

Photo by Philippe Bourgade : Ruddy Sylaire and Gilbert Laumord

Actor, director and Ph.D. in medicine, Ruddy Sylaire finally came his own as a man of theater. Since 1990 he has been working in Haiti as an actor with the Hervé Denis Company, in residence at the French Institute of Haiti in Port-au-Prince. Now living in Martinique, he has been performing on the international scene, in Avignon, Montreal, Santo Domingo. Mexico, Ouidah.

José Exélis (director)

José Exélis studied acting from 1984 to 1988 at Theater de la Soif Nouvelle in Martinique under Annick Justin Joseph, Pierre Debauche, and Pierre Vial to name but a few. As an actor, he took part in more than 30 plays (Racine, Genet…). In 1985, he starts to write and direct his own plays, such as HLM Story which won the prize for best director in the French Caribbean. He has directed the highly acclaimed Africa Solo by Ernest Pépin, Iago, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Othello and Les enfants de la mer (adapted from a short story by Edwige Danticat).