Kisa mi lé

FRANCE – REUNION

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY DANIEL LÉOCADIE

Kisa Mi Lé recounts the anger of a young man uprooted at the age of 7 and forbidden to speak his mother tongue, Reunionese Creole. Twenty years later, he returns to retrace the steps of his childhood, in search of answers about a troubled past, and in search of his own identity. The show echoes the testimony of a grandfather, or “gramoun kréol”, who explains that he forbids his grandson to speak the language because “there’s no future here”, and “this language won’t get him a job”. Daniel Léocadie understands this fear, but asks the question: if all grandfathers did this, what would happen to the language? He then imagines the words of this grandson: the death of his grandfather provokes an upheaval that leads him to return to his native land.

This journey is a quest for his history, in search of another part of himself that has remained there to finally answer the question: kisa mi lé? Who am I? A one-man show, Daniel Léocadie tackles the issues of Reunionese identity, bilingualism and assimilation. The actor is at the centre of a confrontation between the French and Creole languages, between two identities that he is trying to reconcile.

---

---