Following her dazzling staging of Koltès’ Roberto Zucco at La Cartoucherie last season, Pauline Bureau turns her attention to the intimate construction of sexual identity. Her latest creation, Modèles, currently playing at the Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil, is led by a team of actresses all in their thirties, and reveals the secrets of femininity with incisive freshness.
Photo - Cédric Calmels
Portrait of a generation: on stage, four actresses, little girls in the 80s, young girls in the 90s, women in the 20th century. Whether they grew up with the liberating ideas of May 68, or were shaped by a more traditional upbringing, they come to testify with their own words. Whether they lived or didn’t, they tell of the wound of being born a girl, the upheavals of the body, the indifference to pleasure, or the violence of being annexed by everything that prevents them from being themselves.
Who? A woman who breaks out of the shackles of the past, escaping the destinies programmed by the mechanisms anchored in our collective memory, which guide everyday gestures and the impulses of the heart and body? This woman who runs freely without having to bandage her breasts to make herself believe that one day she’ll be an athletics champion? Does she really exist, or is she just another ideal? And should we pursue this ideal if only to find ourselves alone, like actress Marie Nicolle (magnificent), shouting Mommy in the dark?
Kaleidoscopic composition: to help her construct these questions, Pauline Bureau drew on videos, songs by Edith Piaf and Courtney Love, selected pieces by Virginie Despentes, Simone Beauvoir, Pierre Bourdieu, Judith Butler, paintings by Cranach and photos by Nan Goldin. Without moralism, without victimization, without trying to prove anything, she manages to let the freshness of these fragile lives shine through. And because she has managed to remain at women’s level, we are moved by these beautiful thirty-somethings who come “with what they are”, with stories that are not funny but make us smile, high notes that go off the rails, legs thrown in the air that will never reach the moon…
Real moments of grace.
Odile Woesland
Modèles, directed by Pauline Bureau
With the actress-musicians – Sabrina Baldassarra, Laure Calamy, Gaëlle Haussermann, Sonia Floire, Marie Nicolle, Dramaturgy and artistic collaboration – Benoîte Bureau, Video – Gaëlle Haussemann…
Until January 11.
www.nouveau-theatre-montreuil.com
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