What would you say to prove your feelings were real?

What if you weren’t believed?

What if it wasn’t enough?

What if it was never enough?

 

A play about life as a bi-national couple by RPS theatre in collaboration with Compagnie Le Ruminant. Developed in France and Burkina Faso from the real life testimony of international couples.
To add your voice to our research for Dix Lions / Bõyēes Piiga / Ten Lions click here.

The Visa process for a non-EU spouse or civil partner of an EU citizen is a gruelling administrative task.
In the UK, if the Home Office questions the authenticity of your relationship, a marriage interview is arranged. Each partner is taken into a separate room, where they must respond to a series of questions. The interview lasts around 4 hours. Many people describe the experience as the most stressful, humiliating and difficult of their lives.

Similar systems are in place in numerous European countries. In France, many local government offices regularly call couples in for ‘pre-marriage interviews’.

How do we judge love? How can we prove love? In a social and political climate where immigration is a daily presence on the front page, governments seem to have found answers to these seemingly difficult questions: you need to provide documentary proof of living together, of shared private life (personal photos, texts, emails to one another). You need to know the colour of the bathroom walls and what you both had for dinner last Saturday night.

So, state snooping into private life becomes ordinary, and the Home Office takes its place as the best, and only, judge of your emotions.

Dix Lions/Buugness Piiga/Ten Lions tells the story of this high-stakes fight for emotional legitimacy.

Dix Lions/Buugness Piiga/Ten Lions is a multilingual production in French, English and Moore. Don’t worry, we’ve worked hard so you can understand it.

Although it has begun its life in France and Burkina Faso, it has ambitions to travel more.
Contact us for more information or to request a tour pack or video of the performance.

Production:
Rock Paper Scissors
&
Compagnie le Ruminant
Photography:
Naatab Panga Prod
First Performances:
Lyon & Bourg-en-Bresse, France, 2017
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, 2018
Written & directed by:
Claire Tipy
Assisted by:
Halimata Koussé
Cast:
Bethany Greenwood
Tony Ouedraogo

With the kind support of:
Théâtre Mobile Populaire
Espace Culturel Gambidi
CCO J.Pierre Lachaize, Villeurbanne






Dix Lions/Diarra Tan/Ten Lions art by Henri Lemahieu
Photography by Pauline Pirisino
Rock Paper Scissors logo & artwork © Bethany Greenwood 2015-2016