This project has a dual purpose. On the one side, it aims to study and promote in France the story of original Reinhabitory Theater: in the 1970s, this company, based in San Francisco and led by ex-Diggers Judy Goldhaft and Peter Berg, tried to invent a theater based on bioregionalism. This meant for them to create and perform site-specific fictions, based both on Native American mythology and precise knowledge of the watershed of Northern California, its history and its inhabitants (both human and non-human), in an ecological perspective. On the other side, it tries to explore the possibility of adapting such a theater in nowadays France: does it make sense to perform in France plays that were originally written specifically for Northern California ? If not, what would a Reinhabitory Theater play inspired by a French waterhsed look like ? In both cases, theater is considered not only as a an artistic event, but also a tool to transform imaginaries in a political perspective.
Biography
Sacha Todorov is a stage director, a playwright and a researcher. Alumnus of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon and of the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, author of a thesis about activist carnivals, he teaches regularly at University Paris Nanterre, the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique and other theater schools. He’s a member of the collective of the Nouveau Théâtre Populaire, and associate artist to the Tréteaux de France.
The original Reinhabitory Theater troup (© Erik Weber, 1978)