Lhe times are also tough for culture, but in this difficult context, the company Hecho en casa, based in Anglet since 2019, is resisting. “Currently, we have managed to fill our schedule of shows until 2026,” confides Hervé Estebeteguy, co-founder, director and director.
Its appearance at the Avignon Festival in July 2024 enabled the Basque-Chilean troupe to perform 16 performances of “Blanche”, its creation of the year, and to obtain standing ovations from a standing audience. “We also had a lot of press and multiple contacts with programmers at the national level,” says the company director. Avignon represents a significant financial and human investment, but it allows us to have a very broad influence. »
Hecho en casa has managed, for ten years, to maintain a rate of 110 performances per year. She currently offers programmers five different shows, “Blanche”, “Sometimes, I wish I had a family like that of Little House on the Prairie”, “BAK”, “Lexique de nos petits et grands resistances” and always its exceptional “Hidden in his lavender bush, Cyrano smelled good of laundry”, awarded in Avignon in 2015 and which is celebrating its tenth anniversary this December.
An annual budget of 600,000 euros
The Angloye company is currently preparing its new creation, “Code name: Marichiweu”, a word from the language of the Mapuche Indians in Chile, which means resistance. It is a diptych bringing together, in the first part, “Looking at the world with your head planted on your shoulders”, by the Chilean author and director Luis Barrales, and in the second part “With the wind at your back, it will grow wings to you”, by Sylvain Levey.
“To lead a project of this nature, you have to have your head in the stars and your feet firmly planted on the ground”
Part of the company is therefore working on this creation, while another is on tour. “We have to deal with an annual budget of 600,000 euros. Hecho en casa has 24 intermittent employees and associated artists, who are loyal to it. We collectively take the directions to follow. It is a fight against individualism. We must have the courage to continue living together. To lead a project of this nature, you have to have your head in the stars and your feet firmly planted on the ground,” says the co-founder, with Viviana Souza, Chilean actress, of Hecho en casa.
In the Hergarai valley
Determined “to fight so that culture is not just an adjustment variable”, the company has just signed its third three-year agreement with the City of Anglet. “We have a real partnership with the co-construction of projects,” emphasizes Hervé Estebeteguy. For creation, distribution and mediation. This allows us to do long-term work. »
In addition to theater workshops at the Baroja stables and openings to the public during its creative work, Hecho en casa will, within the framework of a tripartite agreement with Anglet and the Basque Country Urban Community, carry out one project in three years in the Hergarai valley, at the gates of the Iraty forest. “It will concern all audiences and we will create a link with Anglet, but everything has to be invented,” notes, greedily, the insatiable director of Hecho en casa.
