Seuls en Scène awarded a new FACE Grant for Performances by Daniely Francisque/Guy Regis Junior and Felwine Sarr/Étienne Minoungou.

Seuls en Scène festival, the Princeton French Theater Festival, will present Traces by author-scholar Felwine Sarr (Senegal) with actor Etienne Minoungou (Burkina Faso) and Moi, Fardeau Inherent by Guy Regis Jr. (Haiti), performed by Daniely Francisque (Martinique) in September of 2022.

Written by author and scholar Felwine Sarr and performed solo by Burkinabe actor Étienne Minoungou,  Traces, speech to African Nations is a lyrical text that looks at the history of the African continent and points purposefully toward its future. Felwine Sarr is also renowned for his research report on the possibilities of returning objects of African cultural heritage from collections in France to their countries of origin. He wrote this text as a vast odyssey, a journey towards a luminous engagement: his continent looking at itself and the world in service of the future of its youth. 

Written by Haitian playwright Guy Regis Jr, Moi, Fardeau Inhérent denounces sexual violence and harassment towards women. Daniely Francisque, herself a playwright and director, will perform the work. 

FACE Contemporary Theater will support these two performances.

Created in 1999 by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and the FACE Foundation, FACE Contemporary Theater fosters French American artistic collaborations in theater, contemporary circus, and puppetry by allocating grants to French or American nonprofit institutions.

Since 2017, the program has expanded beyond artists based in France and the United States to include artists from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East performing in the United States, as long as their work is co-produced by French cultural institutions. In this age of global mobility, the goal is to support artists with varied backgrounds and influences, promote a diversity of voices and foster a rich intercultural dialogue.