Suzie Bastien/

Suzie Bastien has written around 15 theatrical works, which have been translated into English and Italian and have been performed in France, Italy, Belgium and Canada. Her first work, Le désir de Gobi (LUX éditeur 2003) was premiered in 2000 and performed several times in Quebec. LukaLila (Éditions Comp'act, 2002, Rubbettino Editore 2016) was performed in Rome and in France (in La Rochelle, Arras and Paris), and in English in Montreal in 2012 and 2014. Her short works L'effritement 1 & 2 (Les éditions de la Gare) were premiered at the Festival de l’Oh in Paris, and Ceux qui l’ont connu in Montreal in 2012. Since 2016, Editions Lansman (Belgium) have republished LukaLila and published Épicentre and L'enfant revenant.

In 2019, Suzie Bastien was in residence at the Saline Royale d’Arc-et-Senans to continue work on her theatre work Gens du dessous: People who arrive, those who have nothing left, those who have seen the indescribable and known the unforgiveable, those who have survived, those who unnerve us. How do we tell children about them? How do we explain that they too carry within themselves all the poetry of the world, that they too want to dance, to laugh, to love? Let us imagine a dystopia, a world which seems impossible. As if we were not on the brink. A world order which is organised and accepted. Those on top and those below. Then, a rumble, a revolt, a demand to allow everyone their place, to raise them up, to give them the freedoms of movement and joy. Four children, Nana, Lola, Pipo and Doudou, grow up in this coldly managed world, unaware that they themselves are the agents of civil disobedience.

Nana tells the story. One evening, through her window, she sees a young boy dancing in the park. She wants to know him, to meet ‘the ones below’, to uncover their world.