Parler Pointu - Tournée

Benjamin Tholozan takes us on a journey to the heart of his southern roots. With humour and tenderness, he explores the question of accent, language, and identity, caught between family heritage and the desire to perform on stage. A show for anyone who has ever sought their place between two worlds. Benjamin Tholozan grew up in a village in the South of France. A Provençal, Latin land, violent and boisterous. A land of bullfighting. The trivial and the sacred constantly intertwine there. His entire family still lives there, and everyone speaks with a southern accent. Except him. It's impossible to detect the slightest southern intonation in his phrasing, not a single word inherited from the Romance patois of his ancestors. To become an actor, he erased his accent. He now speaks “pointu”, as they say in the South to describe the Parisian accent, that of normative French spoken in the media and on theatre stages.

Parler Pointu tells the story of the gradual abandonment of regional languages and accents, and what this loss represents, both intimately and politically. In this historical and family epic, Benjamin Tholozan embodies with passion, joy, and precision a whole gallery of characters who made French, and more particularly the Touraine accent, the only dialect still considered legitimate today.

written and performed by Benjamin Tholozan / written and directed by Hélène François / with Benjamin Tholozan and Brice Ormain, alternating with Guillaume L'église / musical creation by Brice Ormain / lighting design by Claire Gondrexon / set design by Aurélie Lemaignen

The press says:

Benjamin Tholozan, through Parler pointu, his own story, denounces the silence imposed on regional dialects, especially Occitan. It's very serious and very funny at the same time. L'Humanité

Accompanied by Brice Ormain's music, whose chords readily transport us to the Mediterranean, the actor propels us into the past, to the origins of French. Parler pointu, directed by Hélè