Iannicko N’Doua spent 15 years turning a journey to Côte d’Ivoire into Neige sur Abidjan
Iannicko N’Doua and Hamadoun Kassogué perform in Neige sur Abidjan, N’Doua’s first play, which comes to the National Arts Centre in Ottawa Oct. 8–10.
Photo credit: Valérie Remise
While studying theatre in Quebec, Iannicko N’Doua travelled to Côte d’Ivoire for the first time to find his father. Waiting there was a part of his family life that had largely existed at a distance.
Father and son had been separated for more than two decades. N’Doua’s father had left Montreal to return to Côte d’Ivoire, but the two remained connected through years of correspondence. According to production company Orange Noyée, N’Doua also encountered brothers and sisters he had known little or not at all.
It took him another 15 years to turn that journey into Neige sur Abidjan, his first play.
The autobiographical work comes to the National Arts Centre’s French Theatre in Ottawa from Oct. 8 to 10 as part of a fall tour following its 2024 premiere at Montreal’s Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui. Written and performed by N’Doua and directed by longtime collaborator Marc Beaupré, with N’Doua collaborating on the staging, the production draws on correspondence between father and son, family photographs, writing N’Doua made after his trip and material recorded in Côte d’Ivoire.
“Neige sur Abidjan, c’est le récit d’un voyage que j’ai mis quinze ans à mettre en mots et en images,” N’Doua writes in his program note for the NAC production.
Those years allowed him to return to impressions he had recorded after coming home while the relationships created by that first visit continued to develop. He describes making the work as “une plongée dans mon propre silence.”
The Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui describes the production as drawing together intimate writing, more than 20 years of correspondence and moments captured during N’Doua’s trip. Orange Noyée credits Louis Aka-Trudel for sound recorded in Abidjan and Harley Francis for footage filmed in Côte d’Ivoire. The NAC describes the resulting work as combining autobiography and documentary theatre and places it within autofiction, while publisher L’Instant même describes the published text as moving among theatre, storytelling and autofiction.
N’Doua had already spent decades acting before writing the piece. He says he began performing at age 10 and had spent roughly 30 years carrying other writers’ words before putting his own story onstage. A graduate of Collège Lionel-Groulx, he has worked across Quebec theatre, film and television, with stage credits including Chante avec moi, Caligula [Remix], Dom Juan uncensored, Atteintes à sa vie, Brigitte Haentjens’s ROME and Le Misanthrope at Théâtre du Nouveau Monde.
His artistic relationship with Beaupré also predates Neige sur Abidjan. Beaupré previously directed N’Doua in Caligula_remix, Dom Juan_uncensored and Fredy, and has described theirs as his longest-running artistic collaboration. Neige sur Abidjan is their fourth stage production together.
The play changed substantially during development. N’Doua originally conceived it as a solo work, but the arrival of Malian actor and theatre-maker Hamadoun Kassogué, who plays the father, led to the creation of another figure: the Griot.
N’Doua describes the Griot as a living link to collective memory and cultural transmission within West African oral culture. In the production, the character moves through the son’s memories, helping him revisit people and experiences that remain partly unfamiliar, and N’Doua has described the figure as a bridge between two realities that appear separate but remain connected.
Kassogué also contributed to the dramaturgy alongside Stéphane Martelly, Alice Ronfard and Mani Soleymanlou. The creative team includes Max-Otto Fauteux on scenography, Julie Basse on lighting, Guillaume Vallée on video, Frédéric Auger on sound design with Popimane, Wendy Pires on costumes, and Frédérique Rodier and Zab Maboungou on movement. The production is a co-production of Orange Noyée and the Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui.
N’Doua received a Fonds Michelle-Rossignol writing grant from the Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui for the play, and its development also included creation residencies supported by Festival TransAmériques and the NAC’s French Theatre. Neige sur Abidjan premiered at CTD’A on Nov. 4, 2024, as part of a run that continued through Nov. 23. L’Instant même published the text in 2025.
N’Doua’s relationship with the NAC also reaches back well before this production. His professional CV lists his participation in the French Theatre’s 2012 L’acteur-auteur laboratory led by Wajdi Mouawad, following a 2011 laboratory with Claude Poissant.
The 2026 tour begins Oct. 2 at Quai 5160 in Verdun before moving to Ottawa and other communities in Quebec. The production returns to the Centre du Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui from Oct. 28 to 30, then continues through the province and into New Brunswick, with performances scheduled in Caraquet and Moncton in November. The tour is currently set to finish Dec. 4 in Shawinigan.
For N’Doua, the trip to Côte d’Ivoire began with the search for his father and opened into a larger encounter with family, heritage and a country he was visiting for the first time. The relationships that followed became part of the material he returned to over the next 15 years, alongside the letters, photographs and recordings that eventually entered the production.
Neige sur Abidjan runs Oct. 8 to 10 at the National Arts Centre’s Azrieli Studio in Ottawa. The production is performed in French and runs approximately 75 minutes without intermission.
