IN-PERSON EVENT at Invisible Dog Art Center
Presented by our friends at The Invisible Dog Art Center and NYU Skirball with support from MOFAD
Autophagies (Stories of bananas, rice, tomatoes, peanuts, palm trees. And fruit, sugar, chocolate) is a show halfway between theatre and group tasting session. Eva Doumbia plays the role of a master of ceremonies who invites the audience to a "documentary eucharist" orchestrated by the chef Alexandre Bella Ola. Over an hour and a half, the preparation of mafé is accompanied by stories about each ingredient. According to the director, this journey through a dish consists of "starting with a small thing and unfolding it to tell a story". Behind every food item is the story of a migration, a colonial conquest, or different forms of exploitation of people or the environment.
Eva Doumbia confides that she was marked as a child by her father's restaurant, the first in Le Havre to serve mafé. A few years ago, however, she discovered that mafé is not a traditional dish, but a very recent recipe, as peanuts were introduced into West Africa after the Second World War. She then started reading more and more about the history of food and its link with historical and geopolitical phenomena. This gave rise to the idea of recounting the origins of food by cooking, and by linking them, through words and anecdotes, to personal experience. The avowed aim is to become aware of what we have on our plate.
As a founding member of the Décoloniser les arts collective, Eva Doumbia pays particular attention to social dynamics and their influence on culture. If Autophagies puts food centre stage, it is in order to readdress it through a number of paradoxes. Without ever resorting to moralising, Autophagies simply proposes to "eat consciously": to take our daily habits and our prejudices as a starting point for a broader reflection.
During each performance, Alexandre Bella Ola, a Paris-based chef will prepare mafé, a West African stew, to be served to the audience after the final curtain.
Thursday - Friday Performances 7pm
Saturday Performances at 12pm & 7pm
Sunday Performances at 12pm and 4pm
Jean-Marc Zaorski/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty Images
EVA DOUMBIA
The daughter of an immigrant worker and the granddaughter of a railway worker, Eva Doumbia considers herself to be of mixed cultural and social background. After training in literature and directing, she founded the company La Part du Pauvre in Marseille in 2000, which was soon followed by the company Nana Triban, based in Abidjan.
Now based in Le Havre, her theatre explores both classical dramatic repertoire and contemporary writing in the French-speaking world. She is also an author of the novel, Anges Fêlées (Vent d'ailleurs, 2016) and the play, Le Iench (2020), with Actes Sud.
The Invisible Dog is dedicated to the integration of innovation in the arts with profound respect for the past. The rawness of the space is vital to our identity.
Here, art and architecture feed off each other organically. The artists who walk through our doors infuse our space with their creative energy and make The Invisible Dog Art Center a unique home for the arts.