The scars of history in a person’s life: Nina Simone

Nina Simone’s 70-year life was filled with drama and ended in almost total solitude in France in 2003. The great-great-granddaughter of an Amerindian married to an African-American slave, Nina Simone inherited part of the history of the USA and also carried four centuries of colonial history within her. David Geselson returns to D. Maria II with O Silêncio e o Medo and a team made up of African-American and French performers who will breathe life into a fiction inspired on a History, with a capital H, that Nina Simone knew. Visions of those that accompanied her throughout her life as well as their ghosts are evoked.

Like the diverse facets of a stone that can never be seen fully from one angle, this performance may well transcend all the fears and silences of History and provide a space we can all share and in which we can see and acknowledge one another as well as ourselves individually. Telling the story of Nina Simone’s private life is an attempt to perceive some of the scars and struggles of History through the life of just one person.

Performed in French and English with Portuguese surtitles.

text and stage direction David Geselson
codirection and interpretation Dee Beasnael, Elios Noël, Laure Mathis, Kim Sullivan