24 Place Beaumarchais

Brahim Koutari grew up in the Grenoble suburb of Échirolles. At a very young age, he was subjected to police checks and saw the shattered destinies of those around him. He dreamed of going elsewhere, saw himself as a footballer and trained as an electrician. But it's the theater that will change his life.

24 Place Beaumarchais is the fruit of his collaboration with author Adèle Gascuel and director Catherine Hargreaves. Together, they set out to tell the rich and complex story of his journey, that of a young Arab and Muslim man from France who becomes an actor. His trajectory evokes both the difficulty of imagining a future for oneself when growing up in a territory forgotten by the Republic, and the unlikely encounter with the theater and a milieu where the young man doesn't always feel at home. It's also an opportunity to talk about love, faith, mutual aid and pride, with the desire to bring people who don't usually go to the theater together, to give them the hope to believe in themselves, and in us all.

The play is nourished by Brahim Koutari's multiple languages, from stand-up and its irreverence to those of Molière and Shakespeare, via rap, the Moroccan language of his family back home or the Koranic Arabic of his Muslim faith. All these voices tell of the plurality of sources that make him up, far from clichés about the suburbs or a success story.