Entretien avec Michel Simonot, auteur de Delta Charlie Delta¹

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Notes

1 During the month of May 2018, the theater L'Échangeur in Bagnolet (in the outskirts of Paris) celebrated the fifty-year anniversary of May 1968 by holding events, talks, and plays around what made the date possible as well as its legacy today. On May 10, Delta Charlie Delta, a play by Michel Simonot, premiered at L'Échangeur. I interviewed Michel Simonot the day after the premiere of the play. We talked about the riots of 2005 in France, the trial that inspired his play, his writing process, political art, the metaphor of light, and the responsibility of the artist.

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Notes on contributors

Elise Bouhet

Elise Bouhet is Visiting Assistant Professor of French Studies at Union College (NY). Her research focuses on the performances and visual arts inspired by the riots of 2005 in France. She has publications in French Cultural Studies and Mondes francophones.

Michel Simonot is a man of theater, as well as a writer, a film director, and a cultural sociologist. He has written twenty books, all adapted to film or radio. His most recent plays include: Delta Charlie Delta (Éditions Espaces 34, 2006, finalist for the Grand Prix for literary drama), Le But de Roberto Carlos (Quartett Editions, 2003). He has also published a book on cultural politics, La Langue retournée de la culture (Éditions Excès, 2017).

With the composer Franck Vigroux, he co-directs the festival Bruits Blancs (musical and literary creation) as playwright working with actors, stage artists, and musicians.

Simonot has been an author-director at the Théâtre Gérard Philipe in Saint Denis (Centre Dramatique National/ National Drama center), and assistant director for fiction at France Culture, and directed or co-directed cultural and artistic centers, in charge of job training for the Ministry of Culture. He has published many books and articles on writing and the stage, but also on the politics of culture. He is a member of the group Petrol, with fellow writers Lancelot Hamelin, Sylvain Levey, and Philippe Malone whose publications include among others: L’Extraordinaire tranquilité des choses (Éditions Espaces 34, 2006); and Merry Go Round (Éditions théâtrales, 2014).