A Theatre Troupe Struggles On Amid The Murderous Chaos Of Port-au-Prince

In a dimly lit rehearsal room in a city under attack, Jenny Cadet raised an imaginary pistol and fired a single make-believe bullet at her director.

“Life is a theatre. I am a theatre. We are a theatre. The world is a theatre,” proclaimed the 31-year-old Haitian actor, turning to the audience as she uttered the tragicomedy’s final lines.

Moments later, real-life shots rang out outside the stage school in Port-au-Prince – the latest act of violence in an increasingly terrifying drama that has forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes here in the past fortnight alone.

“Every day [there’s shooting],” sighed the play’s director, Eliezer Guérismé, as his company took a break from their read-through to the all-too familiar sound of gunfire. “But even with the shooting, we keep on working because that’s our mission. We don’t want to stop.”

As gangs tighten their grip over a city now almost entirely outside of government control, Guérismé, 39, said he saw drama as a key way of interrogating and denouncing the social and political crisis engulfing Haiti’s traumatized capital.

Theatre was also “an act of rebellion and resistance” and a way of fostering renewal, given the politically-charged violence into which Port-au-Prince has been plunged since the 2021 assassination of Haiti’s president Jovenel Moïse.

“People need to see the reality that they are living up on stage … theatre is the mirror of society … Everything we hear in this city – the sound of the bullets that are very, very present – we try to put on stage,” the director said.

Doing so has become increasingly difficult for Haiti’s unflinching thespians since February, when a coordinated criminal uprising toppled Haiti’s government and saw thousands of prisoners freed from jail. Nearly 4,000 people have been killed since the start of the year, according to the UN, as rifle-carrying gang fighters have advanced across the capital, opening fire on government buildings and burning homes.

A US-backed policing mission has so far failed to restore order and in recent days the violence has intensified further with gangsters even attacking Pétion-Ville, one of the last supposedly safe enclaves in the hills over Port-au-Prince. Dozens were reportedly killed in the subsequent clashes with police and vigilante lynch mobs. Foreign diplomats and aid workers are fleeing by helicopter amid calls for a UN peacekeeping mission to be deployed.

“It feels like the end of Port-au-Prince,” Guérismé admitted this week. “Every day people are leaving their neighbourhoods. Where are they going? We don’t even know any more.”

The Haitian director recognized that continuing to rehearse his latest production was a perilous business in a city where residents’ movements grow more restricted by the day.

One of his troupe’s actors commutes to the drama school each day from Carrefour, a gang-run area to the city’s south which is effectively off-limits to outsiders. “I know he’s taking a risk to come. He’s taking a huge risk… Living in Port-au-Prince today requires a superhuman effort,” Guérismé said. “It’s an apocalyptic situation.”

But Guérismé was determined to fight on, despite the “monstrous theatre” unfolding on the streets, as criminal groups squabble for territory and politicians squabble for power.

“It’s my country. It’s my homeland. It’s my city … and I have responsibilities,” the director said as his group prepared for Port-au-Prince’s annual ‘En Lisant’ theatre and performing arts event, which is due to start on 9 December.

The recent escalation of violence has put plans for the festival’s ninth edition in doubt.

Philippe Violanti, the French dramatist who wrote Guérismé’s latest tragicomic play, had planned to fly to Port-au-Prince to see his work staged for the first time. But Violanti was forced to cancel after flights into the capital were suspended because three US aircraft were hit by gunfire while taking off or landing.

Six of the seven foreign artists invited to the festival – from Guadalupe, French Guiana, France, Belgium and the US – have pulled out. Performances for primary and secondary school children have been dropped from the programme. Some rehearsals are being held online.

Guérismé said the mood was grim, but he believed it was essential Haiti’s acting community did not throw in the towel.

“The festival will not be postponed. We will go ahead,” he vowed. “This is the time to make a gesture of hope – to affirm that life is here.”

Cadet was also adamant the show would go on.

“We want to exist – to carry on living despite the difficulties and the problems,” she said as she stood on the veranda of the drama school, an early 20th century gingerbread-style residence that was once a bustling family home.

“And our therapy, as actors and people of the stage, is to keep creating,” Cadet said. “We haven’t stopped, we won’t stop – and we do not intend to stop.”