"BOUJLOUD, بوجلود / MAN OF SKINS", A PERFORMANCE BY KENZA BERRADA

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I was doing a survey on consent in Morocco, among women of my generation, friends and strangers alike. I was asking them what consent meant to them, women in their thirties whose grandmothers were almost all married by the age of 14. Meeting Houria turned my initial idea on its head. Her story became the heart of my project and it is from her words that Boujloud was written as a succession of raw testimonies: the victim, the aggressor, the witnesses, those who knew and those who didn't want to know, those who speak and those who don't, and finally those who know because they, too, have experienced sexual abuse. At the end of this journey, an ancestral Moroccan rite will impose itself: that of Boujloud, man-animal. The thread that runs through the story are unanswered questions: how do we make ourselves heard? Is there a "right time" to say something and to be heard?

Boujloud - ‘Man of skins’ in Darija - is a character who is half man, half beast. In Morocco, he gives his name to the festival celebrated the day after Aid el Kebir (the sacrifice of the sheep) in the Rif and Atlas regions. On this day, he is personified by young men who cover themselves entirely with the skins of freshly sacrificed sheep. He leads a masked procession of carnivalesque and obscene characters. The preparations for the masquerade take place in a room attached to the village mosque: the woman is played by a man with two gourds for breasts, the slave is smeared with ashes, the judge wears a piece of cork representing the sacred book, the Jew wears a mask with a large nose and two cow's tails, the old man has aubergines as sexual attributes. Married men must be absent from the village, while the women confront and negotiate with the dark and supernatural forces he embodies. He bestows fertility, healing and baraka. An anthropologist associates Boujloud with an ancient myth: God metamorphosed a man into an animal, to punish him for abusing women in a sacred place. It is a masquerade through which the deep culture of the country represents itself and stages its own tensions. There are ominous signs in him that the old balance between male and female forces is being disrupted. He shines as a god of panic and master of fear. 

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Boujloud is a monster, both feared and adored.

Boujloud is a masquerade.

Enacting abuse.

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Kenza Berrada, 2022

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BOUJLOUD ON TOUR

12 December 2023 - Salle Leila Alaoui de l’Institut Français, Marrakech (MA)

9 December 2023 - Lycée Descartes, Rabat (MA)

7 December 2023 - Centre Culturel Les Étoiles, Fès (MA)

5 December 2023 - École National du Cirque Shems’y, Salé (MA)

16 June 2023 - Latitudes contemporaines, Maison Folie de Wazemmes, Lille (FR)

15 June 2023 - Latitudes contemporaines, Maison Folie de Wazemmes, Lille (FR)

14 June 2023 - Latitudes contemporaines, Maison Folie de Wazemmes, Lille (FR)

19 January 2023 - Point Éphémère, Paris (FR)

29 October 2022 - Jassad, Festival international des femmes metteuses en scène, Marrakech (MA)

12 November 2021 - Les Rencontres à l'échelle, Friche La Belle de Mai, Marseille (FR)
11 November 2021 - Les Rencontres à l'échelle, Friche La Belle de Mai, Marseille (FR)

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ARTIST'S NOTE >

THE CHARACTERS >

BOUJLOUD, THE MYTH >

EXTRACTS >

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THE TEAM >