Article Daily Star Liban
Get slammed, the way French people do

By Chirine Lahoud Special to The Daily Star BEIRUT: Selecting at random from the forest of online def- initions, dyslexia is “a severe difficulty in understanding or using one or more areas of language, including listening, speaking, reading, writing, and spelling.” It is a serious, sometimes debilitating, disorder and, as such, it is ripe with poetic, some- times comic, possibilities. French comedian Laureline Kuntz gives these possibilities a squeeze in her one-woman show “Mon Monde est Dixlesic” (My world is dyxlesic – yes a dyslexic misspelling of “dyslexic”), which is scheduled to be staged this week at Beirut’s Theater Montaigne. The show will launch the French Cultural Center’s “Francophone Month,” which will see a range of Francophone talent – visual artists as well as performers – bring their latest work to Beirut throughout March month, with an eye to demonstrating that Lebanon and France still have a soft spot for one another. The invention of the poetry “slam” has been located in 1980s Chicago and attributed to American poet Marc Smith. Its object was, and is, to per- form live poetry for an audience in a limited time. The phrase “to slam” suggests a focus on sound and language. Kuntz insists that slamming implies “no music, no accessories, just our own texts and poetry.” The winner of the 2007 slam cham- pionship at the Cultural Center of Bobigny (a suburb north of Paris), Kuntz, who is not herself dyslexic, regards dyslexia as the perfect tool to show that language was an endless labyrinth in which to play. Her performance mixes her talents as a poet and a comedian, mingling acting and rhythmical speech. She deals with the themes of life, death and the economic crisis. Some of her characters, Kuntz told The Daily Star, are comic. “Bistouri- Star,” she said, “becomes a robot after [innumerable face-lifts. Then there’s] the story of a trader who cannot have erections anymore, and even the story of an immigrant boy who lives in a basket” is amusing. Behind each of the subjects she takes up, however, resides a serious lesson to be learned, whether it be issues of emi- gration or the proliferation of cosmetic surgery in contemporary society. As with Anglophone stand-up com- edy, Kuntz’s performance mixes fic- tion with personal anecdotes – the sto- ries of her grandmother from the northeast of France, for instance – to forge strong and witty writing. As she moves from chronicle, to tirade, to poetry, her goal is to transport her audience someplace else. “Acting,” she said, “adds to the audience’s comprehension,” especial- ly if they are not familiar with the sub- tlety of the French language or poetry. At various points in her show, she assumes the voice of a 14-year-old boy. At others, she mimics an elderly woman – underlining the relationship between voice and message, content and context. Kuntz’s work plays with language. When she travels outside her French ambit, she observes how people live and talk and her writing takes its inspi- ration from what she hears and sees. “When I am in a country, I try to col- lect as many sayings and expressions as I can. If we go to Francophone
African countries” she says, “we notice people don’t speak French the way that people do in France. Same thing in Canada. So, I do my best to memorize their expressions, to use them as tools in my following shows.” For Kuntz, what matters are people. They are her source of inspiration. She says meeting a country’s inhabitants is the best way to know a country. The comedian performed a “slam” at the Francophone Book Fair in BIEL last November and she said she was surprised at how quickly the audience became interested in her routine. Children rapidly understood the mechanics of “slamming,” she said, and they were attracted to interactive techniques that she assumes were unknown to them. Since returning to Lebanon last week she has been getting to know this country a little better, and she says she has been impressed by the Lebanese capacity to mix different languages. In “Mon Monde est Dixlesic,” the comedian doesn’t deal with dyslexia as a handicap but uses it as a perfor- mative tool. She reverses words and expressions, plays with the language and makes numerous puns. These ups and downs make her per- formance a linguistic patchwork, which leads the audience to an unknown world where language is used as a tool to open audiences’ minds rather than merely a means to express thoughts or feelings. “Writing this show wasn’t the most difficult task,” Kuntz said. “The hardest thing is to make the technique work afterward. We work hard in order not to take too many risks. And then … Inshallah!” Laureline Kuntz’ “Mon Monde est Dixlesic” will be performed at the Theater Montaigne on March 1 and 3 at 8:30 p.m. For more information and reservations, call the French Cultural Center on 01-420-200.