Top start for the RFI Theatre Prize 2023

On 20 March 2023, RFI launches the call for writing for the RFI Théâtre 2023 prize. © Siegfried Forster/RFI, Pascal Gely/RFI, Julien Chauvet /VDLR, Studio Infographie FMM

Text by: Pascal Paradou Follow

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An annual event for theatre authors, the call for writing is launched this Monday, March 20. To apply for the 10th edition of the RFI Theatre Prize, candidates have five weeks to invent, refine, refine, adjust their text and send it to us before the deadline of Sunday, April 23, 2023, at midnight.

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This RFI Theatre prize, born in 2014 with the complicity of Marie-Agnès Sevestre, at the time director of the Festival des Francophonies de Limoges, and under the encouragement of Koffi Kwahulé, celebrates its tenth edition this year. Thus RFI returned to the Inter-African Theatre Competition that revealed so many talents between the 1970s and 1990s, from Sony Labou Tansi to Kossi Efoui who tells in his latest novel, An Ordinary Magic, how this prize "saved his life". With the support of Koffi Kwahulé who has constantly said that there was a lack of a prize to motivate né.es theatre authors on the continent, a new page has opened, with new partners including the SACD and the Institut français.

The name of the new winner will be announced next September at the Zébrures d'automne festival in Limoges, and he/she will complete this decade of theatre where Julien Mabiala Bissila, Hala Moughanie, Hakim Bah, Edouard Elvis Bvouma, Sedjro Giovanni Houansou, Valérie Cachard, Souleymane Bah, Jean D'Amérique and Gaëlle Bien-Aimé have been rewarded.

Send us your text before the deadline of Sunday, April 23, 2023, at midnight

The address for the RFI Theatre Prize 2023 remains unchanged: prix.theatre@rfi.fr. Each candidate must send his text with title and name of the author as well as the registration form completed. If the pages are numbered, it's much better!

Last year, Gaëlle Bien-Aimé won, becoming the third woman to win. She succeeded fellow Haitian Jean D'Amérique. Who will succeed him? An author? Coming from Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean? The suspense will last until the jury meeting in September.

Before participating, read and re-read your text, but also read the rules carefully!

To participate, authors must be between 18 and 46 years old and send a text in French with a minimum of 15 numbered pages (which is much easier for the reading committee to read). The prize is open exclusively to authors born and living in Africa, the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean or the Middle East. To take into account local political situations, the call for writing is also open to nationals of the countries of the aforementioned areas, living in France for less than four years and holding a resident card or political refugee status.

With the Festival d'Avignon's reading cycle, Ça va, ça va le monde!, and with the Prix Théâtre, RFI has been engaged for several years in the discovery and highlighting of new talents in playwriting. And it is clear that the winners of this prize have all, all, evoked an essential human and artistic adventure in their career. All are read, some are performed, others published, but each has multiplied the working meetings during the proposed residencies and invitations to festivals and theater houses.

Accompaniment and support

This prize allows to be heard on RFI as part of the cycle of readings of Ça va, ça va le monde! recorded at the Festival d'Avignon, but all the faithful partners of this prize allow the winners to benefit from working time whether at the villa Ndar in St Louis of Senegal, at the Maison des auteurs in Limoges or at the CDN Normandie-Rouen, dramaturgical accompaniment with Théâtre Ouvert and the unfailing support of the SACD and the Institut français. There will be only one winner, but among all the texts sent, a dozen will be shortlisted and proposed to an international jury. It is therefore the certainty of being read and spotted sometimes.

The RFI Theatre Prize is organized in partnership with the Institut français, the Institut français de Saint-Louis du Sénégal, the Centre dramatique national de Normandie-Rouen, the SACD, Les Francophonies – Des écritures à la scène and the Théâtre Ouvert, Centre national des dramaturgies contemporaines.

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Haitian Gaëlle Bien-Aimé, winner of the RFI Théâtre 2022 prize for "Port-au-Prince and its Silent Night"