Hyacinthe Hennae develops a multifaceted practice at the intersection of performance and participatory projects, with a particular focus on public spaces and non-professional audiences. His work views these contexts as spaces for transformation, empowerment, and collective experimentation.

His approach is rooted in transmission, playful interaction, and shared experience, offering creative frameworks that blur the boundaries between performers and spectators. Through site-specific performances and participatory formats, he explores the uses of spaces and modes of audience engagement.

More recently, his work has been enriched by forms of immersive fiction and life-size role-playing, opening up new modes of storytelling and reinforcing the transformative dimension of his projects.

Hyacinthe Hennae joined IN SITU PLATFORM in 2025 with his artistic project "Parades". It was selected along with 9 other creations to participate in a coproduction support programme, offering residencies and programming opportunities for artists to thrive on a European scale. As part of this programme, Hyacinthe was invited by our partner Atelier 231 for a research residency which took place in Sotteville-lès-Rouen from 26 February to 6 March 2026. The following interview was filmed on this occasion. It is in French, but English subtitles can be enabled in the settings.

Parades, a live-size role-playing game addressing discrimination in public spaces.

Parades invites its amateur protagonists to come together and take ownership of the very places where they experience various forms of harassment: public spaces. By metaphorically reenacting their lives there to a musical soundtrack interwoven with multilingual accounts of real, concrete experiences, they present a performance that is courageous, generous, moving, and unifying.

Initially concealing their appearances, much like the various forms of armor they sometimes rely on, they gradually reveal themselves and dare, together, to forge connections among themselves, with the audience, and with passersby, ultimately emerging as a powerful group. The allies they find around them will soon be called upon to help them build and shape a temporary space for exchange and ceremony.

In the midst of this “safe space”—if such places even exist—the protagonists of Parades invite us all to listen to their voices, which are usually silenced, before coming together in a co-created rite of passage that takes the form of a traditional collective dance.

Hyacinthe Hennae is co-produced through IN SITU PLATFORM, a project co-funded by the European Commission’s Creative Europe programme.