Avignon Festival: Tribute to the Fathers of “Israel & Mohamed”

“Israel &Mohamed” by Mohamed El Khatib and Israel Galvan. CHRISTOPHE RAYNAUD DE LAGE

One wears a "Tangier Morocco" T-shirt and sports shorts, the other a long djellaba and leather ankle boots. On the stage of the Cloître des Carmes, on either side, are altars dedicated to their respective father figures. In the garden, Mr. El Khatib, father of director Mohamed El Khatib. There, beneath his portrait, are numerous copies of the Quran (among the 300 in his library), a frame with the ^62nd Surah, a stuffed deer head, a prayer rug... In the courtyard, Mr. Galván, father of dancer and choreographer Israel Galván, a figure of contemporary flamenco. Beneath his effigy, an egg in an egg cup, a stuffed parrot, punctured soccer balls, a cup, and medals galore. Throughout the show, the veil will be lifted on each of these objects, and the (often painful) imprints they left on the two creators.

After paying a vibrant tribute to his late mother in "Finishing in Beauty," the show that made him famous, Mohamed El Khatib chose to evoke his father. After the need for consolation, that of reparation. At the same time, Israel Galván's presence also emerged. Through a creative process that felt like a stripping down, the two friends—who share, among other things, a love of football—discovered so many common traits.

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Behind the apparent bonhomie they exude—we see them express themselves repeatedly on two giant screens—the two men turn out to be bitter, sometimes brittle or violent. Unkind to their offspring and the artistic path they have taken, they blame them for their betrayals. For the Galváns, with a dancer father who was the first to train his son, it's not easy to take the path of flamenco, which is hardly academic, and probably not manly enough in the eyes of the father. A bitter observation: " My son has changed his mind. " As for El Khatib, the father describes it as "a waste" : " That's not how I raised my children. " It's hard for him to understand all those long years of study, to end up like this, playing the acrobat by attaching his first name to that of Israel, whose simple word brings to mind a country that murders the children of Gaza.

The two men are mostly silent and El Khatib confides this in a long open letter to his father that is heartbreaking and brings tears to his eyes. There, he remembers these slippers that fly and replace words, the 2,400 kilometers traveled by car between France and Morocco, without a single sound coming out of his father's mouth, " playing the king of silence and the only one who knows the rules."

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During the first minutes of "Israel and Mohamed" we see the two artists roaming the stage from one end to the other, between small strides and stretches: they are warming up, like athletes preparing for a crucial match. The opponent is present only through image and speech. We laugh a lot, with a grating laugh, we are also moved. If the piece, which unfolds here to the notes of the Moroccan singer Najat Aâtabou, there to those of Oum Kalthoum, proves to be uncompromising, it avoids the pitfall of settling scores and is neither more nor less than a hollow declaration of love, and the quest for a recognition that will probably never come.

◗ Israel & Mohamed , design by Mohamed El Khatib and Israel Galvan, Cloître des Carmes until July 23, then on tour and, from December 10 to 20 at the Festival d’Automne, Théâtre de la Ville, Paris.