How did the creation of Casting Lear take shape for you?
For several years, I knew I would one day speak about my father in a play. This creation emerged at a moment in my life when I needed to re-establish a more singular relationship with theatre. It was while rereading Shakespeare’s King Lear that the possibility of representing my father on stage began to take shape. In this character there is a tension between extreme theatricality and profound vulnerability. The text then began to function like an oracle, a support that encouraged me to try to understand the violence inherent in my relationship with my own father. I have never been a great admirer of Shakespeare. With this project, I wanted to move away from the “museum piece” and enter into a relationship with the force of words, with the hidden meaning of this play, and bring into it the light of life, the kind that allows speech to emerge from the present moment of performance. I then began to create a play based on instructions, inviting a different actor each time to undergo this “casting” for the role of father. I conducted various research workshops with these men. These could range from playing a game of tennis on stage to reading personal documents or excerpts from Shakespeare. My aim was to reverse power dynamics while inviting these men into an authentic dialogue with me on stage, around the question of the father. I also understood that I needed to call upon the “director” within myself in order to enter a process of listening; to listen to their vulnerability, to care for them on stage, and to open up a space of genuine communication. These actors who step on stage each night do not know what awaits them. They place themselves in a position of real vulnerability and generosity in order to bring about dialogue within the theatrical performance. It is an emotional journey that requires a deep love of theatre and an acceptance of this call for help that I am formulating.
What dialogue have you established between Shakespeare’s dramaturgy and your own story?
I have accumulated a great deal of text and conducted extensive research around King Lear. The play has become an obsession. I worked with British director Ursula Martinez, who is accustomed to developing a writing gesture from the stage itself, and with playwright Olga Iglesias, who helped me connect the two stories. We reflected on the best way to sustain “nothing,” a fundamental concept in King Lear, where the word appears around forty times. One of Lear’s most famous statements is that “nothing will come of nothing.” My own trajectory, like Cordelia’s, converges around the idea that, in fact, something can be invented out of nothing. This promise is also that of the theatrical act, which can bring everything into being within the empty space of the stage. But “sustaining nothing” also means, in a creative process, not rushing to resolve questions and doubts too quickly: because if a response is found too soon, one tends to repeat old forms from the past, without allowing what is singular and unique in the project to emerge. What is specific to this project is the attempt to stage King Lear with an actor who does not necessarily know the text and has not rehearsed it. When Cordelia is asked what she would say to obtain a larger share of the kingdom than her sisters, she does not respond: she does not yet have the right words. She dares to remain in that “nothing” rather than choose a false or inadequate speech. This radical honesty is a source of inspiration in our research. It was about understanding, in real time, the meaning of this relationship to my father, through fiction. We moved forward with the possibility that there might be no answer, that the pain within this father-daughter relationship cannot be resolved through resilience or forgiveness. In accepting this, I was also able to reposition myself in relation to Shakespeare’s “genius,” to the (once again) authoritarian vision of the great male genius. This was a twofold process: connecting to a rage that allowed me to address the figure of the father, and initiating an act of rebellion against an untouchable monument of theatrical literature. I was accompanied by feminist voices that warn against the idea of unquestionable genius. By lowering this image I had of Shakespeare, I was able to reposition myself as an artist and to reconsider my own origins, lost within this genealogy of violence.
On stage, there is also a prompter, who accompanies the actor through this journey. Is he given a symbolic role within the context of this performance?
At first, I truly conceived of this presence as a mediating role between the actor and myself. The idea was to move away from the dynamic of a young woman working opposite an older man and therefore potentially caught up in other issues of authority. His presence makes it possible to move beyond a confrontational relationship within the framework of the performance and to invent a kind of fraternity in real time. Little by little, this prompter became Kent, a character in the original play who stands beside the king and advises him. He is a benevolent figure accompanying this leap into the void while maintaining calm around it. It is a very beautiful relationship for an actor to inhabit: he is the host of the stage and helps me direct the one who moves forward blindly. His presence makes the experience easier, allowing the actor playing my father to go as far as possible in his interpretation.
The scenography is also a continual embodiment of this mise en abyme that you play with throughout the performance. What were you hoping to highlight and give meaning to?
I spent a great deal of time writing a version of King Lear set on a tennis court, and then the idea of “theatrical nothingness” emerged. It is one of the words most frequently repeated in Shakespeare’s play, by Cordelia, King Lear’s daughter, whom I portray. I realised that if the scenographic gesture was to be Cordelia’s, then that gesture had to be “nothing.” It was in this spirit of revelation and nakedness that we stripped the space down in order to pay tribute to that idea, which runs throughout the entire performance: there is the risk that there may be nothing, but behind that nothing there may also be the possibility of truth. This process then came to structure the entire creation of the production. I think this spareness also allows for an even stronger connection with the audience. Theatre, in its nakedness, then becomes capable of speaking and showing, of revealing a truth that is being sought in real time. What is at stake, then, is naming things again, and naming them better, in order to expose what we are afraid to see or confront. And that truth begins from emptiness.
How do you navigate between reality and fiction?
Casting Lear allowed me to rethink my previous creative gestures. I usually imagined the theatrical event during rehearsals and then brought it onto the stage. Here, everything begins on stage, which allows me to delve deeper into this obsession with “real time” as a space of truth. I wanted this act of searching for my father and dissecting his violence to take place in reality and within a performative framework. The entire path of the staging and dramaturgy was built so that speech could emerge and this hypothetical encounter could take place. A story in which my father would come to a theatre, sit down, and listen to what I had to say to him.
Interview conducted by Marion Guilloux in March 2026