Simon-Élie Galibert
Stage Director

Simon-Élie received a creation grant to help him with his play Race d’ep - Réflexions sur la question gay.

What is your artistic background ?
I couldn't pinpoint the beginning of my artistic journey, as it started in childhood. At age 8, I practiced theater, dance, and music; at first, surely to keep myself occupied and escape the reality of the small town where I grew up, then for pleasure, before it became a necessity. Theater quickly established itself in my life as an essential link with the world around me. It creates bridges between things, puts movement into thought, meaning into gestures... So rather quickly I determined myself as "destined" for this, without really knowing why or how. With confidence in this movement.

Then I would mention a turning point in 2011, when I decided on my own to go to the Avignon Festival, to see shows from the "official programming" at random, and I was struck by the proposals: the stage and its promises opened up a bit more to me. I was 17 then, and from child, I jumped to adulthood (from seeing to doing).

What followed: the "climb" to Paris, film school progressively abandoned in favor of theater, "private" schools, first productions of Gabily, Koltès, the competition, studies at the National Theatre of Strasbourg, all the decisive encounters, more ambitious productions Pellet, Duvert, Batista, COVID as a brake, AtelierCité in Toulouse as a rebound, Blanchot. Then a brief wandering, the Médicis Studios, Wittig, and the return to Paris, Cooper. Finally, there will be Béthune, the creation of the company Venir faire, the establishment, Walser, and finally Crevel, Dustan.

And this is where we are today, on the eve of Race d'ep - Reflections on the gay question which will see the light in February 2026, 32 years after the beginning of my "journey." I obviously forget many things, if not the essential: personal, family, intimate trials, but also political, societal, social events that make up our history; and mark, articulate, define, nourish thought (and the Art that is its repository). And it's thanks to all that that it stays alive, in movement; that it maintains itself, swollen full of stories, sensations, emotions, intriguing intuitions. But it doesn't write itself, at least not here, not like this: it coats itself like candy, before it slips away, that it slips through our fingers. And surprisingly, that's what creates the movement: it comes a bit from the interior, a bit from the exterior, it fills up inexorably, and it overflows from time to time, then it starts again as if it had no end...

How do you view your profession today ?
A view full of contradictions. It's an immense "chance" to be here, but for how much longer? This state of affairs doesn't only concern our profession: we are all caught up in a generalized impoverishment movement, on the financial, intellectual, and cultural levels; due to the unreasonable application of savage neoliberalism and ultimately: fatal.

Of course, the "cries of wolf" that have marked the history of "French cultural exception" since the end of the Lang era unfortunately no longer allow us to be heard by the "general public," but today's challenge of abandoning, scuttling public service culture is a tacit desire of the State itself: we should cry wolf but we no longer have the possibility.

I am simply convinced that culture (and particularly public service culture) is an intellectual and political bulwark more necessary than ever: a space for free thought and free creation. This is the only thing the institution must respond to: total and unlimited freedom of creation; because it is creation that plays a social role, whatever its subject, angle of attack, aesthetic, its direct link with reality or not.

But this, and in a very internalized way (some speak of self-censorship or self-sabotage), the public theater institution has itself forgotten! Since, in a concern for efficiency, it requires themed shows, carrying obvious, transparent, consensual subjects, which speak directly to "its" audience and is no longer interested in rhythm, aesthetics, poetry, complex thought, or the general composition of a show, its "staging"; since that day, culture, engaged in a survival operation at all costs, has laid down its arms, taken a knee.

Behaving thus, it has abandoned by the wayside what made its character exceptional in order to play the perverse game of liberalism. It has traded its depth for a smooth and readable surface, but it has been caught in its own game: it has given capitalism (and fascism in its wake) all the weapons to ridicule it, caricature it, soil its history, and its independence. No longer remembering that creation cultivates freedom, freedom cultivates creation which then cultivates freedom of creation. And that the thought born from it gives the public the weapons to fight. Alone. Full of their thought. And in that, it's an indisputable public service: the public service of thought and free opinion.

So there, one of the views I have of my profession. But the profound challenge is intimate above all: I wish to transmit, to be worthy of those who moved me, who changed my life. Finally, this view is one among others, the view of a Monday morning in October 2025, and one must know how to read between its lines: full as it is of hope, knowledge, and immense confidence in my profession. The one that has been, the one I dream of, that I'm working to create. Unlimited confidence in its absolute and eternal usefulness: hope without which I wouldn't even take the time to write these lines, to reflect on all this...

Where do you see yourself in 5 years? In 10 years?
I don't necessarily have a five-year plan, let alone a ten-year one. One thing is certain: I will do everything to continue, to be here in one way or another, in order to defend the decisive encounter that the art of performance was in my life. I hope to evolve as much in the next five/ten years as I have in the past five/ten; because when I no longer make the effort to evolve, I can tell myself it's time to stop. But for the moment, I wish to continue thinking, making, and encountering.

This interview was conducted in 2025
Photography credit: Isabelle Chapuis