Federal Alliance of European Federalists

A play about Federalism

We, the people of Europe

Catherine Guibourg, author of the play, and the association Tyr et Sidon, will present the play ‘We, the people of Europe’ (‘Nous, le peuple européen’) at the Festival d'Avignon in July 2019. In April/May 2019, performances are also planned in a number of theatres in France, before the important European elections on 26 May 2019.

 

The project and the performances are led by the association Tyr et Sidon (places in present-day Lebanon where the myth of Europe originated), which aims to manage the activities, in particular the theatre activities, around the theme of Europe.

Scenario

It is a play with six characters, of different European origins, who enter into dialogue and confront each other in order to better define the Europe of their dreams. The story is set somewhere in Europe in 2018.

 

A number of European citizens feel European and want more Europe: a more democratic, more humane Europe. A Europe in which they can participate directly. Others, on the other hand, dispute the European identity and claim that there is no European people.

 

The actors France, Italo, Maria, Pedro, Peter and Pierre decide to meet each other on a theatre stage and discuss the problems that concern them. Problems such as increasing intolerance and the desire to resolve it with democracy, global warming, increasing inequalities, while European democracy is surrounded and threatened by empires with strong powers. What future is there for Europeans in these worrying circumstances? 

 

France proposes to unite around a federal constitution of some countries of the European family with common values. Pierre at the head of the National Renewal is strongly opposed to this. France and Pierre may belong to the same generation, but nothing seems to unite them anymore. 

 

But what is at stake on stage is that theatre or reality? Do France and Pierre play their role as actors or as citizens?

 

In this age of intimate theatre, it is an ambitious subject. A play as a mirror of subjects about the identity of Europe. Is there a European people? What is European history? How can we understand Europe and feel European in the absence of European education in schools and in the media? Can we make a common history between Western and Eastern Europe, and under what conditions? What role does the people of Europe want to play in this project?

Crowdfunding

This ambitious project requires a substantial budget. Hence the call to find a solution of participatory funding to mobilise as many European citizens as possible, aware of the future of Europe, its transformation, in a difficult political context.

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