2023-05-28 12:15:58
The play Jean Moulin, Gospel by author Jean-Marie Besset has been canceled in Béziers. AFP
Jean Moulin, Gospel of the playwright Jean-Marie Besset, which was to be played in the city of Biterroise, was deprogrammed under pressure from the family of the hero of the Resistance.
80 years ago Jean Moulin, heroic symbol of the Resistance, died after being tortured by the Gestapo. Because he was a child of Béziers, the city decided to devote many commemorations to him in 2023. In this historic setting, the play Jean Moulin, Gospel by the playwright Jean-Marie Besset, evoking in particular his homosexuality, had initially been programmed. But under pressure from the family of the great French resistance fighter, the mayor of Béziers Robert Ménard, took the decision to cancel the performances scheduled at the Béziers theater.
The author of the play Jean-Marie Besset, former director of the national dramatic center of Montpellier, immediately reacted in the columns of the Free lunch expressing his indignation:I find that this behavior of the family and of the chosen one is not honest, that they seek to hide the truth from the Moulin man, and that they fall under homophobic prejudices».
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This piece created in 2015 by Jean-Marie Besset has therefore already been performed many times. The playwright defends his originality by saying that “Jean Moulin loved boys and that didn’t stop him from being a hero.” But if he also admits that this point of the intimate life of Jean Moulin is based on “more clues than evidencehe wants to show with his play Jean Moulin, Gospelhow homosexuality had to be hidden 80 years ago.
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Gilbert Benoît, husband of Cécile Escoffier, a cousin of the hero of the Resistance, gave the reasons why the family vetoed performances of Jean-Marie Besset’s play: “If Jean Moulin had been homosexual, it wouldn’t have been dishonorable, but we like historical truth“. A point now that historians will have to clarify in order to extinguish or revive this controversy.
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