The Alliance Française of Hyderabad in association with the University of Hyderabad (UoH) and Institut Français, French Embassy presented an onstage adaptation of a graphic novel performed by french writer and illustrator, Barroux and french musician, Julien Joubert titled “ON LES AURA!” (Line of Fire!) on 5th March 2014 at the DST Auditorium.
The novel is the story of a happy coincidence: Barroux’s unexpected discovery of a notebook, hidden in a pile of old things destined for garbage, on a winter day he was walking down the streets of Paris. This notebook contains an incredibly rich human and historical testimony: the diary of a soldier during the very first months of the war in 1914. This text relates the mostly rural everyday life of the soldier, far less horrible than the usual accounts of life in the trenches.
In the performance, electric guitar sounds and brush strokes intertwine and answered one another, forming a surprising alchemy. This modern storytelling used today’s media, and hence allowed everyone to re-appropriate History. Music and drawings suggest, leaving the spectator enough freedom to let his imagination wander, to build his own journey throughout the story, so distant but nevertheless so close.
The students, faculty and staff of the University and some guests from the city were seen enjoying the performance by the French artists who are visiting the city for the first time. Mr. Jean-Manuel Duhaut, Director, Alliance Française Hyderabad and Prof. Ramakrishna Ramaswamy, Vice-Chancellor of UoH welcomed the artists and lauded their performance.