PORTRAIT DE RITA

Rita arrives in Belgium from Yaoundé. A successful businesswoman in Cameroon, she becomes the target of a violent white man in Europe and sees her whole life slowly fall apart. One day, her son, a nine-year-old black boy, finds himself pinned to the ground by the police after lashing out in anger at the racism he faces.

“Portrait of Rita” stems from Laurène Marx’s encounter with Rita Nkat Bayang and the Belgian performer Bwanga Pilipili. Following interviews conducted by the two artists with Rita, the play emerges from these three perspectives: that of Rita Nkat Bayang, who faces systemic racism; that of Bwanga Pilipili, who experiences this same violence and analyses its mechanisms with precision; and that of Laurène Marx, a white trans writer, who weaves together experiences of whiteness, fetishisation and dehumanisation.

Warning: This performance contains descriptions of sexist, sexual, domestic and racist violence.