"Exile is a desert. This is the real night." But the old crocodile will not allow himself to be disarmed. Dieudonné Niangouna, a poet whose use of the French language will not be tamed, tells his story in the guise of Dido, a political enemy in the Congo who is disparaged as a bad representative of African cultural struggles in Europe. Resisting imposed situations, Dido buys himself a bar and scrutinises his life, on the knife’s edge between theatre and words.

Expelled from his country in the middle of a performance, following an attack for which there was no culprit, he has been declared a public enemy because of his statements against the regime in place and because he advocates for a politically conscious theatre. He had no choice but to flee, leaving the audience in agony and his family in distress. Since then, he has lived with the guilt of having left.

The actor has continued to perform in exile, he says. But activists harass him. He is not a good enough artist-herald of the Afro-African community. Can his theatre really be too risky there, but not enough here? Clashes and arguments between old theatre brothers punctuate the endless evenings at “Au dernier verre de Dido”, the bar he bought on credit to sell stand-up comedy on repeat.

But his actor's words are seeking something else. They make misunderstandings speak, stun the absurd, put the ball back in the centre while looking at this side - his own. From the back of this bar-theatre, between the absentees and the fights, "the words arrive, full throttle, hired by urgency." Until someone walks through the door and offers him the lead role in a play, La Fin de la colère.

In this understated yet frank spoken portrait, Dieudonné Niangouna portrays a man between two countries and between two worlds, confounding dominations and denominations with his lively and insatiable language. On stage, he retraces the course of his history, as if to find the path back to his words.