A young woman is dancing to the Bollywood song Bole Chudiyan on the stage of the "Théâtre de l'Enfumeraie," an NGO in the suburb of Allonnes in northwestern France. She is wearing a black, sleeveless belly top and a long skirt with embroidered flowers. She's spinning around and shaking her hips, a radiant smile on her face, reports Deutsche Welle.
Half a dozen people are watching and cheering loudly. They are sitting among piles of clothes, hats and instruments and waiting for their turn to go on stage.
What appears like just another theater rehearsal would have been unthinkable for the performing Anissa Vieira just a few months ago.
"I wasn't allowing myself to listen to music or to go out and see a play — acting a part in one would have been completely out of the question," she told DW.
The 26-year old used to practice a very strict version of Islam. For 10 years, she wore the veil, hardly leaving her apartment, and dedicating herself almost entirely to studying the Quran. She spent a lot of time with other veiled women she had met at the local mosque.
"We were almost like a little sect and only felt safe among ourselves. Out of our suburb, people would start abusing us verbally because we were veiled," she explained.
Things might have ended badly. Especially if Vieira had met someone malicious wanting to recruit her for radical Islamism.
But she decided to go back to a more moderate Islam and stop wearing the veil — also because finding a normal job would have otherwise been difficult. Joining the theater has been hugely important to help her find her way back to a more normal life.
"Acting has given me a lot of confidence. People don't judge me here and groups like this one are crucial to get women like myself out of our isolation," she said.
And not just women, the theater's co-director Bastien Chrétien told DW: "Many young boys come here and I can see a kind of darkness in them. For them, our public education system has failed — they no longer believe there have a place in our society. These boys become very vulnerable to radical preaching."
Local groups like his are often the last chance to give young people hope again, Chrétien thinks. "We can act as a spiderweb and connect people from the community with each other. You need cultural activities to have them turn away from their isolation and radicalization."
But the government doesn't seem to agree. Since he came to power last year, Macron has cut the number of subsidized jobs by about 40 percent — jobs that had largely benefited the suburbs' NGOs.