| Summary: | Although Treme, the new project by Simon and Overmyer for HBO, has not yet been integrally broadcasted, a recurring motif appears, which is that of the reprise. There is of course the renovation of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the flooding that followed it, but also the reconstruction of local culture, and that of the characters. In one way or another, these elements are all engaged in a process of reconstruction, after the destruction of the intimate, the material, and the immaterial. This article questions the way in which the show works through the motif of the reprise, understood as the altered repetition of something that already exists, just as well in the characters’ lives as in the show’s poetics. In the eleven episodes of season 2, three avatars of reprise appear: musical reprise (cover), metaphorical reprise (recover), and critical reprise (uncover). These three motifs overlap to give the show an idiosyncratic tonality, a mix of slowness, of compassion, and of indignation, a “Treme note” that finds its origin in the generalized recourse to the figure of the reprise. In placing reprise at the heart of its craftsmanship as well as in its diegesis and metadiegesis, Treme constantly questions the complex relations between power, culture, and resilience of the impoverished.
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