Florence Chitacumbi — Soul, Jazz & Groove

Actor Samuel Labarthe turns Nicolas Bouvier’s fever-drenched memoir The Scorpion-Fish into a hypnotic, miniaturist tour de force: marooned in 1950s Ceylon after a headlong road trip from Geneva through the Balkans and Afghanistan, the once-ebullient traveller spirals into tropical delirium, trading human company for buzzing insects, mirage-bright visions and mordant humour that flits between the sublime and the grotesque. Under Catherine Schaub’s finely gauged direction, Labarthe channels both the lush lyricism and the slow-burn torment of this “motionless voyage,” distilling Bouvier’s languid prose into a tactile, rejuvenating elixir that lets the audience feel every bead of sweat, jolt of wonder and sting of isolation.

In French. Ages 12 and up.

Nine exiled Afghan actresses and their director turn Sophocles’ Antigone into a luminous act of defiance, weaving their own flight from tyranny into a fluid chorus that moves between whispered poetry and blazing resolve; on a moon-lit set where shadows ripple across a reflective pool, their shared fervour collides with oppression’s darkness, conjuring a present-tense theatre of resistance performed in Dari (with French subtitles) that pulses with the courage, grace and unbroken spirit of women who refuse to fall silent.

In Dari, with french subtitles.  Ages 14 and up.