Theatrical Performance - Les Flamboyants!
Réunion Island-based theater company Tilawcis brings their latest work, Flamboyants!, on a North American tour this fall. This work of documentary theater with music explores the remarkable intersections of Creole culture and identity between the geographically distant communities of Réunion Island, New Orleans, and Puerto Rico through music, storytelling, and gorgeous projections.
Five languages are spoken on stage, and nearly a dozen instruments are played, fusing maloya, bomba, and Mardi Gras Indians songs. The piece explores themes of memory, identity, resilience, connection, and cultural transmission through the prism of the Creole experience. It shines a light on the richness of Creole cultures and their capacity to overcome historical oppression.
Flamboyants! blends the cultures of New Orleans, La Réunion, and Puerto Rico, drawing on the cultural and historical similarities of these regions, particularly Creole traditions and histories of colonization and marronage, the resistance to and self-liberation from enslavement. This ambitious production was born from a meeting between Florient Jousse and Big Chief Juan Pardo, an iconic figure of the Mardi Gras Indians of New Orleans. From a simple human connection, these artists, along with La Réunion musicians Frédéric Madia and Zélito Deliron and Puerto Rican musicians and activists Marién Torres Lopez and Ivelisse Diaz have forged a unique expression of “Créolité”, a fusion of the ancestral culture of the Mardi Gras Indians—with their chants, percussion, and dazzling costumes—with the maloya music of La Réunion and the bomba music of Puerto Rico.
La Compagnie Tilawcis describes their performances as show-making without borders, places where various art forms hybridize, unleash, and weave together again to create something mystical and spectacular. Beyond their shows, company members are committed to inspiring the ambition of young theatre students in La Réunion through their performances in many schools and conservatories.
Performed in 5 languages (including Créole, French, Spanish and English) with subtitles projected in English.
Tickets: General Admission - $30, AFMSP members - $25. Free for Macalester College students with ID (limited seating).
Macalester College Mainstage Theater, Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center 130 Macalester St. St Paul, MN 55105
Plot Summary: Réunion Island. While a cyclone rages, a man curses his name before throwing himself in the Indian Ocean. He has no idea what repercussions this action will have on the other side of the world. From Puerto Rico to New Orleans, Creole peoples will unite to teach him his true history. A work of musical theater, documentary and fictional, even fantastical in certain moments, Flamboyants! asks us to interrogate what stories our own names carry, the ways we’re interconnected, and the cultural resilience of those who fight to not be forgotten.
About the Playwright & Director
Florient Jousse is a playwright, director, and the artistic director of Compagnie Tilawcis, based on Réunion Island. His work blends documentary theater, music, and storytelling to explore identity, memory, and Creole cultures through international artistic collaborations. You can learn more about la Compagnie Tilawcis at tilawcis.com.
Flamboyants! received Reunionnese support for its premiere production from the CDNOI, Cité des Arts, the Région Réunion, the Départment de la Réunion, the City of Saint Denis, and the City of Saint Paul, and national support from FME. The Flamboyants! tour is produced by the Collectif Tilawcis, with the support of the French government. This tour is additionally supported by Villa Albertine through their Theatre & New Forms program, as well as the Institut Français, through their International Artistic Dissemination Programme (PIDA).