Paths of exile

- A text

- A play

- A podcast

- A text

Paths of Exiles is the fruit of years of encounters and thoughts.

The need to write this text came to me in 2015 with the massive influx of refugees , in our country and the fear that this influx was met with. Since the dawn of time there have been recurrent exiles wich have simultaneously always sparked a wave of fear.This phenomenon woke in me a creative urge to adress the issue.

The text unfolds in five chapters, five paths of exile, wich cover 100 years, from 1915 to today. It focused on forced exiles, experienced by both children and adults and wich take place all across the globe:

1. Setrak , 1915: an Armenian child, the only survivor of a family decimated by the Turks and who is trying to survive his journey to France where he starts a new life. On the road, he writes to his brother in Maku, Iran, hoping they will meet again.

2. Edith , 1939: a 9 year old Polish Jew child, sent by her parents to England as part of a convoy of children. She is welcomed to this new country by a foster family who both speaks a different language and practices a different religion. The letters she wrote to her parents tell of her daily life as welle as her hope of being reunited once again with the rest of her family. Unfortunately, this is not to be, as her family has laready been deported.

3. Paul , 1940: a 19 year old man of 19 who has a problem with one of his legs which prevents him from enrolling in the army. He flees Arquennes in Belgium when the Germans arrive in order to escape their labour camps in Germany. His journey will take him to the south of France where he is taken in by a farming family. During his exile he will write many letters to his family but to which he receives no answer.

4. Béata , 1994: Béata, a young mother and businesswoman comes home from a business trip just before the start of the Rwandan genocide. She is Hutu from the north and her husband Hutu from the South. Both are close to the president Habyarimana and find themselves caught in the storm that broke loose as both refused to take part in the exactions. Confronted several times on her choice to leave her country during her journey from Rwanda to Kenya then Belgium, she must continually justify herself.

5. David , 2003: a young man who came to Belgium because of serious problems in their country, he writes to his brother about the hardships he must face as a refugee requesting asylum in Belgium. He desscribes his hopes but also his disillusions.

The five parts can be discovered separately in the shape of an epistolary novel and are introduced by my thoughts formulated as letters to my grandmother. However, I strongly suggest a linear aproach as this allows for a better aprehension of the subject : the recurrence of forced migration.

Through this text, I hope to open the door to a different vision of those we call "migrants". Indeed, each of us, even in our family, knows or has known people who had to leave. These people are people, with a history, emotions and needs.

- A Play

The text has been adapted for theatre with the help of Sibel Dincer and is a play that is as of yet, unfinished.

Distribution in progress:

Cast : Sibel Dincer and Bénédicte Monnoye

Music : Vardan Hovanissian and Daniel Vincke

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you wish to receive a presentation of this coproduction. This will soon be made available on the website.

- A podcast

In order to enable this work to be accessible to the greatest number of people and most notably schools a 5 episode podcast is being made and subsidies are being sought.

- A blog

Simultaneously to the conception of this text, a blog was opened. It was created as a space for sharing and for testimony in written, video, visual...form.

https://monnoyebenedicte.wixsite.com/cheminsdexils

- Workshops

An artistic residency (subsidised by the ‘Cellule Culture-Enseignement de la FWB’ ) was established to develop this theme from October 2017 to March 2018 at the Espace 2000 school in Genappe.

If you wish to organise a workshop or a conference or to collaborate around a call for projects, don't hesitate to get in touch!