Singer, dancer, resistance fighter, mother of twelve adopted children…Joséphine Baker had a thousand lives. An incredible destiny, which earned him entry to the Pantheon in November 2021, transposed to the stage in a musical show unveiled next June, at New Eve.
It was after a visit to the Château des Milandes – the former home of Joséphine Baker, now owned by the Saint-Exupéry family, who have turned it into a museum dedicated to the artist – that the idea germinated in my head. by director, librettist and composer Jean-Pierre Hadida.
In this ‘castle where she created her famous rainbow family [12 enfants adoptés aux quatre coins du monde ndlr] but also the castle which ruined it, because Josephine had ups and downs”, explains the director, “there was a soul”. He therefore set out to devote a show to the extraordinary destiny of this great lady, born in 1906 in the United States, married at 13, who became a music hall star, a spy and died in 1975, in Paris.
A musical biopic
“His life is a novel”, continues the director, who likes nothing less than to highlight inspiring figures advocating tolerance, like Anne Frank or Nelson Mandela, to whom he has respectively dedicated a show. With “Joséphine”, given from June 3 – his birthday – it is his incredible journey that he puts to music. A story unveiled for five performances (June 3, 7, 15, 22 and 28) at the Nouvelle Eve, a hall located a stone’s throw from the former cabaret of Joséphine.
In this biopic show, he retraces, in fifteen paintings, his journey, from the ghettos of Missouri to the Pantheon, passing through his past as a resistance fighter, his humanist dream but also the ruin which he had to face.
His life is a novelJean-Pierre Hadida, author, director and composer
“Everyone knows the singer, the banana belt, “I have two loves”, but not everyone knows her past as a resistance fighter, a spy. She passed scores written in sympathetic ink. She hid people in her castle. She joined General de Gaulle in North Africa, but also Martin Luther King, in 1963, during his famous speech “I have a dream” in Washington where she was the only woman to speak that day. notes Jean-Pierre Hadida. And to continue, in her castle of Milandes, “she created her rainbow family, faithful to her humanist dream, and then there was also ruin”.
She could then count on a fellow American, Princess Grace of Monaco to help her, before going back on stage in 1975 in Bobino, thanks to Jean-Claude Brialy. Joséphine Baker gave her last show there at the age of 68, before succumbing to a cerebral hemorrhage the day after her fourteenth performance. “Like Molière, she almost died on stage,” says Jean-Pierre Hadida, leaving behind her the destiny of a free and courageous woman.
A journey through time in which his son took part
From the 1920s to the 1970s, this is a whole section of history and of an era that this show goes through where we meet all those that Joséphine rubbed shoulders with: Jean Gabin, her on-screen partner in 1934, Willie Baker and Jo Bouillon her husbands, Paul Colin, who created her silhouette on her first poster and was also her lover, Brigitte Bardot and of course Martin Luther King, with whom she shared the great fight of her life against racism and xenophobia. A show in which one of his sons, Brian Bouillon Baker, collaborated, whom he fed with “lots of anecdotes”, notes Jean-Pierre Hadida.
The two men also wrote a song together “C’est pas moi”, which tells of the solidarity of the twelve brothers and sisters when they were children when “Josephine was a strict mother”, notes the director. A crowd of memories populated by stars coming home, her mother’s trips leaving with all her dresses and trunks as well as the two faces of Josephine Baker. “The pre-war one, where she represented the Roaring Twenties with her androgynous character which scandalized Paris. Her smiles, her grimaces that made her a comic book character. And the post-war one with a more peaceful smile of a woman who has become a humanist above all, fighting against racism, xenophobia and intolerance”, concludes Jean-Pierre Hadida.
A great lady with a thrilling story encamped on stage by Nevedya, who will notably take up the great titles of the one who is nicknamed “The Black Venus”. An inspiring woman for sure.
“Joséphine”, June 3, 7, 15, 22 and 28, La nouvelle Eve, Paris, then on tour from next November.