Theater of Disaster: The powerful play about France’s Grenfell moment | stage

“IThis was a turning point for Marseille, and shed light on the politics of France’s second-largest city. There are still a lot of things left unsaid, things that are not pretty. But it also set things in motion.

Playwright and director Mathilde Aurier talks about what is referred to as France’s Grenville moment: the collapse of two dilapidated houses on November 5, 2018 on rue d’Aubigne in the Noailles district, a few hundred meters from the picturesque old port. Eight people were killed, sparking national outrage over urban inequality and social deprivation.

“All disasters are paradoxical, because they are an opportunity for strength in a difficult and utterly torn moment,” Aurier continues. “This is what amazed me: how the residents were able to unite their forces, outside of what the administration was offering them, and move things forward. What amazed me was the solidarity and love.”

The 29-year-old blushes as she says the word “love”, speaking via Zoom from her home in the city. She points to the likes of the November 5 rally that brought together 8,000 people to protest two days after the event, or the town criers loudly chanting the proceedings of each day of the subsequent 2024 trials in the streets of Marseille.

The play she wrote and directed, 65 Rue d’Aubagne, is her contribution to this powerful civic response. The film is based on the experiences of Nina, a fictional resident of the building who happened not to be there the night of the collapse, and becomes a cacophony of Marseillaise sounds that encompass different aspects of the tragedy. The narrative covers the aftermath of the shock, the evacuation of more than 4,000 people living in similar dilapidated housing, the struggle with strict bureaucracy and a golden presence in the shattered Mediterranean.

Aurier grew up in Marseille and knows Rue Aubagne well; Her grandfather still lives a few doors down from the collapsed buildings. But a chance encounter in 2022 on a Marseille beach with the woman Nina relies on gives her an important entry point to write about; Survivor’s guilt embodied the reckoning the city was going through. “When she told me her story, what struck me was the feeling of psychological trauma,” Aurier says. “I wanted that to be the through-line of the piece — how it was reaching out for some kind of healing.”

Aurier completed this lucky break with eight months of research, “bouncing” her way through a network of survivors and others affected by the disaster. She describes her approach as “documentary” rather than strictly documentary because she was also intent on infusing this factual material with her own sensibility. Hence the lyrical daydreams in which Nina reconnects with her dead Italian friend Chiara, or surreal touches like the inflatable crocodile representing Jean-Claude Godin, the city’s longtime mayor at the time, whose clientelism helped stifle the systemic change needed in Marseille’s infrastructure.

Crucial to her approach was the heavy fragmentation of the play, moving between different points of view and times, and dividing it into five sections named after the stages of a wave breaking. “This is the messiest thing I’ve ever written, which comes from the sense of a before, during, and after of this drama,” Aurier says. “I thought it would be interesting if the drama reflected housing collapses – and that the form and narrative of the play also seemed to be in a state of collapse.”

As she speaks, the angle and zoom of her webcam keeps changing, as if, like a playwright, she is searching for the right perspective on the subject. But the play’s buzz remains an unsettling center: the feeling of being left in limbo, of dealing with indifferent officials, of clinging to memories of the dead, of struggling to give meaning to the disaster.

Aurier has an unexpected star in her exploration of trauma: British playwright Howard Parker, known for his “theater of disaster,” who dramatizes open questions of power, violence, and patriarchy, often in historical settings. Having written her thesis at the Sorbonne on Parker, Aurier saw him as the catalyst for her later dramatic work. “There’s something difficult about the purity of his language. At the same time, it’s very English – sarcastic, acerbic and pathological. And also how he highlights strong female characters and addresses women’s bodies and other issues.”

65 Rue d’Aubagne is her third play produced, following her debut about the relationship between Salvador Dali and his muse Gala, and a follow-up set in a children’s home about the transition from adolescence. Aurier says the common denominator in her work is disaster. Was there a specific event that sparked such intense preoccupation within her? She doesn’t want to boil it down to one thing. “Be a woman,” she says, flashing a dazzling smile. “And all the things associated with being a woman.”

A TV series called 65 Rue d’Aubagne is in development – ​​which will expand the story to include the trial that took place after Aurier finished writing the play. Besides the public backlash, the ruling was “not up to scratch,” Aurier says. She points to light prison sentences, many under house arrest, and weak fines for the property owners and building inspectors involved.

National and regional schemes to assess Marseille’s housing stock, announced in the wake of the disaster, appear to be being rolled out too slowly to address the widening social gap in the rapidly expanding city. Of course, political priorities change over time. “We are about to elect our new mayor in March,” says Aurier. “I don’t feel like housing is essential now. It was, but there are other issues taking its place.”

She admits that she is not a proponent of urbanization – and therefore ill-disposed to assess whether real reform is possible. But the psychological echoes of Marseille, a city of broken promises, are certainly ground zero for her. “I have always been a tragic author—and I believe I will remain so to the end.”