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Actress Victoria Quesnel brings the voice of author Constance Debré to the stage alone. In tune with the power of this great autofictional tale, she recounts the journey of a woman ready to do anything to emancipate herself and become herself.

The name is Constance Debré, author of a short autofictional novel published in 2022, adapted for the first time for the stage by Hugues Jourdain. In an abrasive and brilliant style, she settles accounts with her own family: she, the granddaughter and niece of three ministers who left their mark on the country's history; she, the daughter of one of the greatest journalists of her time. This ‘name’, whose homonymy must be understood, is also that of refusal. A refusal to lead the bourgeois life that was predestined for her. In 2015, Constance Debré left her husband, temporarily lost custody of her son, and gave up her job as a lawyer, in which she excelled, to change her life, become an author and be reborn. Free.

Directed by Hugues Jourdain, who gives a brilliant demonstration of his talent for dissecting the intimate, Victoria Quesnel makes her own this raw, angry, authentic and demanding language. With only a chair and a pair of trainers as her backdrop, she plunges us into the inner workings of a woman struggling to resolve all her contradictions. With no concessions and no self-indulgence. With a radicalism matched only by her demand for absolute freedom. Few experiences of introspection are as scathing.

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