Guy Régis Jr.: Haitian rhythms that turn pain into literature
– Haiti
Guy Régis Jr. (*1974) was born in Port-au-Prince in Haiti. He is a writer and theatre director; his plays, novels and poems have been translated into multiple languages. Some of his recent works are the novel Les cinq fois où j’ai vu mon père (Five Times I Saw My Father, 2020) and a play Goebbels, juif et footballeur (Goebbels, Jew and footballer, 2020). In 2001 he created the Nous Théâtre Association, which upends the codes of contemporary theatre – for example by the production of Service Violence Série (2005), an expressive political act and also a starting point for his future works.
Régis’ works have been presented in France (Les Francophonies Festival in Limoges, the Avignon Festival IN, and on many National Scenes), in Haiti and in numerous other countries (including the United States, Columbia, Chile, Brazil, Belgium, Italy and Madagascar). He’s actively involved in the development of the living arts in Haiti – he is the current artistic director of the Festival 4 Chemins in Port-au-Prince, the foremost cultural event in the francophone Caribbean. Guy Régis Jr. was made a Knight of Arts and Letters in 2017.