Under which circumstances did the project La vie secrète des vieux (The Secret Lives of the Elderly) come about?
During the Covid crisis, the question of nursing homes (EHPAD) emerged in the public space in all its “cruelty.” We were able to see that many were little more than places where people went to die, with families being denied farewell rituals after the death of their loved ones. An entire generation was disappearing right before our eyes, and there was nothing we could do. Around the same time, Victor Castanet’s book Les Fossoyeurs was published. This groundbreaking investigation provides a stark and alarming portrayal of the state of nursing homes in France—and particularly private institutions. It highlights two major issues: the infantilisation and abuse of the elderly in those institutions. I also became aware that what attention we pay to elderly people often revolves around the lens of dependency and loss of autonomy. We rarely consider their vitality, their desires, and especially their romantic desires. It is from this perspective that I started conducting interviews in nursing homes. While on tour for my other shows, I would leave a message in the programme leaflets: “If you are over 75 and have love stories to tell, call me.”
What were those interviews like?
Rather than ask them how they envisioned the end of their life, I wanted them to tell me about what made them still feel alive. This question of desire allowed me to understand that I was touching on a taboo, something we as a society refuse to think about. The sexuality of the elderly is like a blind spot, something neither the institution nor the families want to address. There is even a true reversal of authority when the children intrude into their parents’ private lives to prevent them from living out their love stories. It is a sort of reverse Romeo and Juliet scenario. This prohibition is something due to issues of inheritance, jealousy, and family structures coming undone because the children cannot understand why their parents would want to “start a new life” in their later years. I started working on a documentary—La vie secrète des vieux—which will be released in 2025.
When collecting those testimonies, did you have to follow a specific protocol to help them overcome a certain form of modesty?
Those were more open-ended conversations. I suggested we take stock together of their love life and asked them how things were going for them at present. That question allowed me to understand their personal, educational, and religious trajectories, as well as their social background… I found in all of them a great freedom of expression and a need to speak authentically, without pretence. The most common concern was what their children would think of their stories. Through their testimonies, a landscape of love began to emerge, but also the portrait of a generation revealing its most intimate aspects. Most of the elderly people I interviewed were not afraid to divulge details, to share what might be raw or secret in their lives. The trust they placed in me was an honour, even if the question of immodesty sometimes made me ask myself what I could or wanted to hear from my position as a witness. Following those encounters, some of them agreed to take the stage with me to create a panorama of love after seventy-five.
How did you work together on this performance?
When I started working on the show, I wanted their words to be at the centre and for them to tell their stories themselves, with no filter, with all the fragility that might entail. The reason for this gesture is a desire not to produce an expected discourse about old age, but to make space for testimonies that emerge from different cultural contexts. Their presence on stage is the very life of the show. Through them, the play has its own needs and rules. We know it can stop any day and have to work around the inexorability of their physical decline. Therefore, we do everything in our power so that their playing space is a place where they feel comfortable. The form is very free. They move about as they wish. A caregiver—an archetypal figure of care—is also present to help them move around. I may be on stage with them for the first few performances to help them feel at ease until they are able to fully make the show theirs.
Is the text the result of a collective writing process?
We spent a lot of time talking and imagining how to share these intimate stories with full confidence. During a residency in Brussels, a sexual assistant joined us to lead a discussion with the team. Those moments of sharing allowed me to capture their reactions in real time. In a way, the play wrote itself without us realising it, through the reconstitution of the time we spent together, in their moments of complicity or indignation. The dramaturgy of the show oscillates between documentary work through the embodiment of first-person testimonies and more improvised sections which all fit into a canvas we built together.
The question of the usefulness of theatre is central to the play and involves multiple layers of meaning. Can you tell us more?
On numerous occasions during our discussions, they complained about the rather mediocre quality of the shows presented in nursing homes. These are often somewhat outdated performances, lacking any artistic vitality. The medical aspect takes precedence over nurturing the soul. Many of those institutions pay little attention to their emotional or cultural desires. It goes back to that idea of infantilisation, but also of being second-class citizens. What they want to see are intense love stories free of any sappiness, plays with meaning and substance. So, I asked them what their “ideal show” would look like, and from there we played at defining theatre, what it can be, what its purpose is. This daydreaming runs through the play, sometimes in a playful manner. Scenes from the classical repertoire—when Jacqueline can remember them!—sometimes burst into the show. Those are texts they learned by heart when they were young and which they still remember. Here, it’s not so much the performance that matters, but rather the power of their memories. An emotional and literary power some still carry within them, years later. Tragedy is as much a part of dramatic literature as of life in nursing homes, where I have encountered heart-wrenching and sometimes tragic love stories, like that of Anne and Jean-Claude, which ended badly. Sometimes, life is like a play by Musset or Shakespeare.
Interview conducted by Marion Guilloux (February 2024) and translated to English by Gaël Schmidt-Cléach