Do not tell Woke. Say: intersectional. Because as with the devil, the greatest trick of wokeism is to make people believe that it does not exist! It is therefore an intellectual constellation around a center that claims to fight against discrimination. However, it is the nature of these that can be surprising. We remember the astonishment at the accusations of racism made against the staging of Aeschylus' play The Suppliants. It was 2019 – five years already! – and many of us were probably discovering new words such as “ blackface "(the act of white people dressing up as black) and " afrophobic », and that we are guilty, for want of a sufficiently "awakened" conscience, of "propaganda, colonialist and racist" Western. On top of that, since Franglais has long been a national sport, we learned that the play was “cancelled”, not to say cancelled.

Five years later, what was the name of this cancellation? A simple incident due to the intervention of an ultra-minority group, the CRAN, self-proclaimed representative of all blacks in France? A reaction of indignant outrage at an "avant-garde" show (in fact: setting itself the objective of reconstituting a performance in the conditions of the time) as others have been subjected to (such as The Last Tango in Paris by Bernardo Bertolucci in 1972 or The Last Temptation of Christ by Martin Scorsese in 1988)? Or rather the return of a more general censorship that does not say its name, a sign of a break in the standards of what is representable imposed by a part of the cultural world anxious to acquire power and visibility in the name of the "fight against discrimination"?

Let us judge this through the situation of today's theatre. And to do this, let us look at two categories of means that give us access to the intentions of the authors (most often women) regarding the political and moral control of the content. From above: by listening to and reading what they themselves say about the message they wish to convey. From below: by examining certain programmes even in the villages.

So from above, let's look at the plays and debates organized at the time of the Avignon festival. There is Marie Ndiaye, who denounces fatphobia, the careers of women ruined by their husbands, the sexual abuse suffered by women in their childhood, and who goes so far as to make fathers guilty of the infanticides committed by their wives (Vengeance is mine, Gallimard-Folio) ; Caroline Guiela Nguyen, who will introduce "diversity" to the National Theatre of Strasbourg, although we can assume that it will not be social; Camille Giry, who has made a specialty of flushing out misogyny where it is, that is to say, in fact... everywhere. In this concert, the cultural magazine (and now Woke) telerama plays its part by directing the shows to which to go. Of course, it will be noted, this drift probably affects the "stand-up" scene more, very subject to the spirit of the times, than the theater itself, which continues to stage Classics. Nevertheless, today, a troupe ("Pleurer dans'douche") can present itself as "queer and feminist"... but it is true that we are among our Quebec cousins ​​and not in France.

Back in France: the city of Paris is promoting "8 feminist plays", which in itself should not be a problem (who would dare to argue against the fight for equality between men and women?) - unless it involves accusing men because they are men. This fear is confirmed when we read, about a play (Global Closet), what "His male colleagues are convinced that they are victims of discrimination. To denounce this injustice, Laurent, a manager with a big appetite and above all a complete misogynist, decides to dress up as a woman to finally taste the benefits of positive discrimination.". Or, in the room Consent yourself : "She knows it: the one she loves is also her attacker. (…) this dive into the intimacy of a couple that addresses the oh so taboo question of marital rape. A poignant story about the non-respect of consent"The entertainment press is not left out: theOfficial of the shows announces no fewer than 64 feminist plays in Paris, proof of the existence of a genre market. Of course, they are probably not all sexist, that is to say misandrist, and do not denounce a partly imaginary "patriarchy"; but the transition from the fight for equality to the unilateral denunciation of the wrongs of one sex towards the other is made more likely by the spirit of the times, and too often the boundary between the one and the other is tenuous. We even saw a masochistic play, which “examine patriarchy in their own family” (On France Culture, Saturday September 17, 2022)…

However, anti-patriarchal feminism is not the only facet of the theatre. Woke : it must also promote sex change. This is the task that Didier Ruiz has dedicated himself to in his play soberly entitled Trans, produced at the Avignon Festival, and presented as “a show that frees up speech on gender” : “Why not get that girl inside me back?” says the author. Or the Quebecer Marie-Claude D'Aoust, author of Trans Girl, who explains that he is telling his own story… But – it cannot be said enough – wokeism is self-consuming: the piece A little bit by Laurene Marx, intended for "give more visibility to transgender people" and which was to be performed in January at the Théâtre 13, was…. cancelled, following pressure from transgender people, on the grounds that the actress was not trans herself! And this in order to “ to draw attention to the underrepresentation of trans people in the theatre world.”

Let us now look at "France from below". We know that ideology Woke is concentrated in the world of media, entertainment and at the University, mainly in the departments of (in)human and (a)social sciences. But this ideology trickles down from the large urban centres to the countryside, particularly since the installation of neo-rural people who want to import their way of life and their values. In the Virois bocage we still escape, for the moment, "cancellation", probably due to the lack of a diversified offer and a sufficiently large audience. In a village of 650 inhabitants, a stand-up (defined for the occasion as a "gesticulated conference") denounces (by a man) patriarchy and all the faults of men, in front of a half-male audience, admiring for some, disillusioned for others. In another (700 inhabitants), it is the story of a person who changes sex. In Vire itself, the presentation of the year's program has the objective “the abolition of patriarchy” (see press article from The Free Channel).

We see here that there is only one thing missing from wokeism to be really inclusive: the concern for social inclusion, which seems to be the last concern of authors and programmers. Because how can we not see what is prohibitive about such a program for a population, generally elderly, who still travels outside their homes to attend events (outings, meals, exhibitions, conferences, etc.), often poorly educated and whose relationship with the theater is limited to the plays formerly studied in class?

Thus the theatre reveals itself for what it really is: not a theatre for "raise awareness" ou "make the world a better place", but an elitist theatre, designed for those who make it and not for those who should see it.