Haiti’s ‘Festival Quatre Chemins’ stages an exile’s tale of a broken foot and nostalgia

PORT-AU-PRINCE — The “Festival Quatre Chemins,” led by director Guy Régis Jr. and regarded as one of Haiti’s most influential theater events, continues to push artists to reinterpret the country’s present through intimate, personal narratives. This year’s theme, Pawòl Tifi, centers stories of exile, memory, small histories, the struggles of women and girls, and the everyday truths that shape Haitian life — a reminder that the smallest testimonies often reveal the deepest realities.

One of the works that most fully embodied that spirit was “Pye Kase,” performed by Edouard “Youyou” Baptiste at the Pyepoudre Cultural Center on Nov. 29.

A night settles over the upstairs hall of the Pyepoudre Cultural Center, and the audience’s silence takes hold of the atmosphere before the powerful voice of actor Youyou breaks the room’s stillness. It is the cry of a survivor, a defender of Haitian sovereignty, a victim of misfortune in the United States. Walking with crutches, the actor Youyou reconstructed the ordeal of a compatriot living in the United States who collapsed in the snow, fracturing his left foot on his way to a conference to deliver a message inspired by Dessalines’ vision of freedom.

The play is adapted from an autobiographical text by Jacques Adler Jean-Pierre, written after his own foot fractured in the U.S. This moment forced him to confront the loneliness of exile, the fragility of the body, and the painful distance from home.

Youyou’s performance leans into those silences — the pauses, the breath, the weight of being far from Haiti yet still carrying its unresolved wounds. His portrayal moves between humor and ache, echoing the ways many Haitians abroad navigate uncertainty.

“Pye Kase” is not simply the story of a broken foot — it is the story of a life broken open. Behind this incident lies a much heavier story: that of a forced and painful exile. Jean-Pierre fled Haiti amid rising insecurity and kidnapping threats, joining the multitudes of compatriots who have left in search of safety. Yet in the U.S., he found a different kind of precarity — economic hardship, dislocation, and the emotional fracture of being uprooted.

“This text is a journey for me, a trial in life, because everything said in the text is true, as misfortune really does happen. And while I was rehearsing the text, one of my children fell and broke both of his clavicles,” Baptiste told The Haitian Times.

As the actor recounted lying on a hospital bed while doctors prepared to implant metal supports into his bones, the audience confronted a deeper question of what it means to heal when the place you come from remains unhealed.

“Misfortune is part of our experience; we cannot anticipate it or know where it will come from. And when you try to avoid it, that is precisely when it strikes,” added Baptiste.

Below are scenes from the theater play Pye Kase, a part of the 22nd edition of the Quatre Chemins Festival.

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