Adel Hakim, co-director with Élisabeth Chailloux of the Théâtre des Quartiers d'Ivry, Centre Dramatique National du Val-de-Marne, has left us.
A man of the theatre - actor, director and author -, Adel Hakim was a deeply committed humanist who always relied on the arts to transmit the values of solidarity and justice.
Adel Hakim was born in Cairo in 1953. He met Élisabeth Chailloux in 1980 during an internship given by Ariane Mnouchkine. Together they founded the Theatre of Libra in 1984. In 1992, they took over from Catherine Dasté at the Théâtre des Quartiers d'Ivry, which became a National Dramatic Centre in 2015. Together, they accompanied the CDN relocation project, inaugurated in December 2016 at the Manufacture des Œillets.
A prolific director, Adel Hakim has created many shows presented in Paris, on tour in France, in many European countries, in Canada, in Lebanon, in Central Asia. He has translated, adapted and directed plays by Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Pirandello, Goldoni. Author, he has written, besides Executor 14 and Body, The Song of the Night, Cloradosco, The Golden Fleece, Um, After Pasolini: political vision, Roses and jasmine. In particular, his magnificent Antigone of Sophocles, worn on stage by one of the few Palestinian theatre companies, the Palestinian National Theatre, which he had chosen to resume in early 2017 to inaugurate the large hall of the Manufacture of Carnations.
As a painter of works, he also knew how to be a knowledge broker: he taught drama in many institutions, in France and abroad.
In the footsteps of Antoine Vitez, Philippe Adrien and Catherine Dasté, he defended with Élisabeth Chailloux a «theatre of ideas», demanding and popular. He has thus made the Théâtre des Quartiers d'Ivry a place of reflection and debate, a place of sharing inscribed in depth in the City, open to the World, and worth this theatre to be recognized as a "National Dramatic Centre" by the Ministry of Culture.
I extend my sincere condolences to his family and loved ones.