‘Dad, do you know what the Algerian war and alcohol have in common?
I’ve found three: silence, taboo and shame.’
—Yasmine Yahiatène

When she was a child, the girl who wrote these words saw her father as a hero. The kind of hero she wanted to be like when she grew up. And then time took its toll. The daughter grew up, and the hero grew old, edging little by little into the crevices of his own memory, into the tortuous grooves of life, as if searching for something, making up for something missing, or forgetting himself. That was until the day the young woman decided to cut all ties and stop seeing her father. Step by step, she erased him from her memories, like an old drawing fading away…

In this raw solo performance, Yasmine Yahiatène sets off in the footsteps of her father Ahmed, the loss of whom she had to come to terms with while he was still alive. Using video and mapping as her raw materials and playing partners, she probes the cracks in this painful, interrupted relationship in an attempt to find her way back among the fragments of legacy she carries within her that seem so inaccessible. From personal archives to historical documents, the images intermingle, and Ahmed’s memory is reconstructed in bits and pieces: his Kabyle origins, his exile to France in the midst of the revolution, the loss of his mother tongue, which he abandoned as he gradually assimilated into the culture of the colonial power. But there are also moments of jubilation: such as recollections of the 1998 mens’ World Cup final and Zinedine Zidane’s two goals. The result is a recounting of a Franco-Algerian memory full of scars. Between these two shores, alcohol serves as a poor remedy for the emotional effects of this decomposed past.

Through a subtle interplay of oral evocations and visual superimpositions,Yahiatène slips into the gaps in her family history, transforming the stage into a place of investigation and reparation. Grabbing hold of this succession of traumas and wounds passed down from generation to generation, she uses the power of words, images, and fiction to reconstruct her own history, and to define new paths of personal and collective resilience.

This event takes place in the frame of On Football and the Theatre of Collective Body Making.

Created, directed, and performed by Yasmine Yahiatène
Playwright and associate director: Sarah-Lise Salomon Maufroy
Artistic collaborators and associate directors: Olivia Smets & Zoé Janssens
Music composer: Jérémy David
Video: Samy Barras
Video and lighting management: Samy Barras & Estefania Bigatti Huygen (alternately)
Lighting design: Charlotte Ducoussu
Accompaniment in distribution and project development: Ad Lib · Support d’artistes

A guest performance at Haus der Kulutren der Welt (HKW)

The guest performance is produced by Yasmine Yahiatène, delegate production l’Atelier 210 as well as additional co-producers and supporters

Co-produced and co-presented with Kaaitheatre

Co-produced with BUDA Kunstencentrum, Little Big Horn asbl, la Coop asbl, and ShelterprodIn
With support from the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles / Service du Théâtre, der Stadt Bruxelles / Bourse Kangouroe and Vlaamse Gemeenschap Commissie

With additional support from Kunstenwerkplaats, Citylab, Darna asbl, Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles Paris, Montevideo – Centre d’art, Espace Senghor, Cie L’hiver nu, Le Sillon Lauze, taxshelter.be, ING & the Belgian Tax Shelter