Whitewashing

Whitewashing is the practice of having white actors play characters from other ethnic groups. Here, starting from the same term – whitewashing – Rébecca Chaillon experiments with skin lightening in concrete terms, exploring the political power of this gesture. In this work, Chaillon investigates the ambivalent tension experienced by a black woman within a white-dominated society between being a cleaning lady and taking care of her body and her self. On stage, Rébecca Chaillon and Aurore Déon are two housekeepers who clean and polish the floor with bleach. From their gestures – a continuous movement to clean and to dirty the space, skin and hair rituals – a painful truth emerges: many black women are relegated to socially demeaning tasks. “Whitewashing” – bleaching – becomes an extreme attempt to escape racism and the absence of one’s identity in the media and collective representations.

A performance for audiences aged 16 and over. The performance features nudity and the acrid smell of paper smoke and bleach.

written and directed by: Rébecca Chaillon
starring: Rébecca Chaillon, Aurore Déon
technical support for the performance: Lisa Wegener, Suzanne Péchenart

Performance with subtitles in Polish and subtitles in English.

premiere: 2019