Stadium

Mohamed el Khatib grew up as the son of an iron foundry worker. For a long time, Mohamed el Khatib was a little embarrassed by his background, but this was mainly down to the boundless passion his

father displayed for football. High time he reconciled himself with this: with Stadium Khatib immerses himself in the world of the football supporter. His work always emerges from a curiosity about the way people live out their daily lives in separate worlds. Curious as he is to see what happens when these worlds meet, he makes a kind of documentary theatre in which that daily reality becomes dramatic material. By staying with his main characters very closely, Khatib creates unique and intimate portraits. Previous works featured meetings between characters including a cleaner, a sheep farmer, a Front National supporter and a marine. 

This focus on the individual is also carried through in the much larger-scale project Stadium, in which he puts 53 supporters of the football club Racing Club de Lens on stage. Caught in behaviours that unfold according to fixed rituals and fixed patterns, the work shows how tensions arise between the individual and the group. In Stadium Khatib examines the passion that possesses people when they all direct their attention in one direction during a defined space of time, a football game or a performance. His central question: what is ‘the’ audience really, and what’s the difference between the audiences in a theatre and a stadium, apart from what they’re wearing? Whether it’s a crowd gathering for a concert by the Rolling Stones or a sports event, in both cases we are dealing with regulated ceremonies with their own fixed codes. 

The supporters of RC Lens have long held the reputation of being the best spectators in France. To experience what it means for a crowd to reach fever pitch you need to take a seat on the terraces of the immense Stade Félix Bollaert and sample the atmosphere: the brass band, the dancing mascots, the sea of ‘sang et or’, (‘blood and gold’, the colours of RC Lens), the sounds of the club anthem Les Corons, which honours the club and region’s mining past. In this area, which has just about the worst health indicators of the whole country, as well as high unemployment, alcoholism and suicide figures, people’s passion for football can be intense indeed. 

Khatib offers no judgements. He lets the men and women on stage speak for themselves as they gather round Momo’s chip van, made famous by the film Bienvenue chez les Chtis. One of them is 84-year-old Yvette, who has been a supporter since 1977: ‘I have never skipped a match. In 1997 my husband said he couldn’t stand it anymore. He’d had enough: of the football, of our house being completely decked out in red and yellow. He said: ‘you have to choose: me or the football’. It was no contest: I chose RC Lens.’ 

With Stadium Khatib creates a kind of anthropological map of the meeting place that the stadium is in essence. Along the way, in a pointed examination of what the term ‘audience’ actually means, he takes apart all the familiar stereotypes. At the same time, in Stadium Mohamed el Khatib has created a fitting tribute to the passionate supporter his father is. Also, Khatib wasn’t a bad footballer himself.