Paris (France) (AFP) – Bring three people on stage, from Ukraine, Gaza or elsewhere. Interview them live like on the radio, punctuated with live music and video reports. Here is the recipe for the poignant documentary shows from the Radio Live collective.

Published on: 09/11/2026 - 2:50 p.m.

At the head of this project of on-stage testimonies: journalist and program producer at Radio France Aurélie Charon.

She has just delivered two new creations, performed at the Théâtre de Chaillot in Paris, as part of the Autumn Festival.

The first, "Obstiné.es (Kyiv)", hands the microphone to a Ukrainian actress, to a Gazan poet and journalist who arrived in France ten years ago and to a German-Ukrainian woman hired to repair houses destroyed by Russian bombings.

The second creation, “What lifts us (Cairo)”, involves Amina, a Cairene working in the cultural sector, Hala, Syrian director and actress, and Asmaa, Moroccan author, singer and actress.

Every evening, in these shows where the dialogue is spontaneous and where the three interviewees play their own roles, Aurélie Charon, in person on the set, brings to life, with her soft voice and the codes of a radio show, stories of life from around the world.

Around a composite device - two rolling tables, three chairs, a small and a large video screen - there is often a question of war, uprising, exile, minority rights, and intimate questions.

Hala recounts how her father, an opponent of the Syrian regime, was arrested and tortured to death. Amina describes how the independent press is repressed in her country.

But daily life, the modes of action of youth, reconstruction, commitment, hope are also addressed.

“They say there’s not much point in getting together to tell sad stories,” Aurélie Charon told AFP.

“But everyone has in common that they are in the movement, that they are committed, that they invent a way to change things in the place where they live. And that is always inspiring,” she emphasizes.

With, to accompany these stories, the drawings of Gala Vanson, projected on the video images and the sublime music of Emma Prat, capable of singing in Arabic, Bosnian, Ukrainian or even Kinyarwanda.

- “Powerful” face-to-face -

Aurélie Charon and her friend Caroline Gillet, who launched radio series on committed youth around the world in 2011 for France Inter and France Culture, founded the Radio Live collective two years later, with director Amélie Bonnin.

Objective: “to provoke meetings between young people and with the public. We rarely take this time to meet people who have stories that are not ours. A powerful face-to-face meeting” for Aurélie Charon, designer and artistic director.

Their first opus ("Radio Live") brought together around fifty young people from 30 nationalities to discuss questions of commitment and identity.

They also designed a triptych, “Vivantes”, “Our lives to come” and “Réuni.es”, performed at the Avignon Festival in 2025. It welcomed young people from conflict zones on the theme of reconciliation.

Since 2013, “the form of the project on stage has evolved a lot”, specifies Aurélie Charon, remembering the “three chairs and the photo slides” from the beginning.

Today, the shows include images of a journey bringing together the collective and the interviewees. This journey is the first step in a joint creation.

“Every evening it’s a lively and different conversation,” summarizes Aurélie Charon, which also allows us to stick to current events in the country of origin.

Another field of intervention, the Radio Live collective offers workshops on documentary storytelling in middle and high schools.

“Obstiné.es (Kyiv)” and “Ce qui nous éclair (Cairo)” are on tour from this fall until May (Nancy, Douai-Arras, Reims, Bobigny). The triptych also tours in France and Belgium.

© 2026 AFP

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