Zabou Breitman launches into the economy with fantasy

Even if the modesty of the author suffers from it, the director and actress Zabou Breitman does not skimp on the references to describe the ” thunderbolt “ that she got for the play Rosa or how to become rich, poor or both at the same time ? by Grégoire Biseau, journalist at “M Le Mag”, of which she proposes a reading staged on Saturday September 17, at 8 p.m., in the auditorium of the World. “To be honest, I read the text because I was committed to it. But, frankly, a journalist’s piece on the economy, I feared that it would be didactic, highlighted… And, from the first lines, I fell in love. There is Balzac in his way of making such a dry subject sensitive. »

Consider Rosa, 20, the only daughter of working-class parents, in the outer suburbs, haunted by the universal and polysemous question of knowing what she “worth”. His dream: to become an acrobat and get out of his condition. Bad luck, the Ministry of Living Together informs her, by mail, that she “will remain poor until the end of his life”his worst nightmare – “Since I was little, I’ve been afraid of being poor. I know it’s silly, but I can’t manage to reason with myself, to reassure myself. To tell me that a girl like me can’t become poor for her whole life. I sometimes have real surges of violence. Against me, against others. Against this idea. To settle all accounts, the said ministry grants him a “exceptional contribution worth 1,000 euros, [car] the poor can no longer be assisted all their life”.

Initiatory story

Arise Word of gold. This character, passionate about liberal economics and “which takes from the ladybug of Gotlib and Jiminy Cricket”, according to Zabou Breitman, offers his coaching services to Rosa. Let her follow his advice and she will become rich. We will not reveal the plot either, which draws threads from a humorous and erudite initiatory story during which Rosa will try to overthrow financial capitalism with the – often involuntary – complicity of a serial CEO, a President of the Republic, a banker and workers. Balzac therefore, and fantasy in this tale that the director describes “without morality but also, and this counts for [elle]without cynicism.

Four actors (Florence Müller, Olivier Broche, Juliette Léger and Stéphane Facco), “all crazy about the room”, according to Zabou Breitman, will embody this gallery of characters for the first time at the Festival du Monde, a hoped-for prelude to a subsequent staging, to be slipped into the artist’s busy schedule, still on tour this fall with Dorothyand which refines a Zazie in the subway musical version for early 2023.

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