You are currently rehearsing LACRIMA. Can you tell us how you came up with the idea and how it has developed over time?
It started with Princess Diana’s wedding dress! I don’t have any personal memory of it, I had only just been born, but my mother told me about it. When I started researching it, I discovered everything that had to be organised to keep that dress secret. I immediately knew I wanted to work on the theme of secrets. Around the same time, I also became acquainted with the work of Rieko Koga, an artist who hand-embroiders texts onto fabric. One of her works really moved me.
On a piece of linen she had stitched: ‘According to an ancient Japanese belief, stitches carry something magical, and I still feel that myself today. The clothes my mother made for me when I was a little girl always wrapped me in her great love, and the seams on the back protected me from fear and anxiety.’ And from there—if I may stay in the language of craft—a kind of fairytale-like idea emerged: what if all the characters were connected through the making of a single dress? And then, thinking further, I wondered: what if everyone who comes into contact with the dress is somehow cursed?
In hindsight, it feels as if everything naturally led me towards the world of sewing, and later to haute couture, where everything revolves around secrets.
From there I was able to build my story—or rather my stories, because I always work with a choir of voices, a multiplicity of narratives that intertwine and resonate with each other. The setting also came naturally: a workshop. So the story begins with a princess who wants the most beautiful wedding dress, and you have only eight months to make it.
The location is often a first anchor point in your writing process. How did you develop the concept of a workshop through your discoveries and encounters?
For this world of haute couture, I initially imagined a workshop in the heart of Paris. I spoke extensively with people working in that field—pattern makers, model makers, all kinds of haute couture artisans. Then the idea of a veil led me to the lace of Alençon. There I spoke with lacemakers, as well as with Johanna Mauboussin, curator and director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle [Museum of Fine Arts and Lace]. Once again, secrecy turned out to be part of the story, because the way lace was made there was for a long time a kind of industrial secret. Then I went to India, because that is where the embroidery is done.
I visited workshops in Mumbai, and that truly changed the direction of my writing process. Until then, I had wanted to focus entirely on women’s life stories. But in India, embroidery is done by Muslim men. It is a craft passed down from father to son, and Indian embroiderers are among the best in the world. Their craftsmanship is unparalleled, and it is their work that appears in the most beautiful haute couture creations on the catwalks. I realised I could not ignore that aspect.
This led to the idea of a shifting space that allows for three workshops: Paris, where the dress is made; Alençon, for the lace; and Mumbai, for the embroidery. I liked working with this multiple geography, as it allows me to show a contemporary world shaped by themes such as violence and secrecy.
The secrecy you are talking about is even codified in contracts. It is almost unimaginable that so many people work on something without ever really knowing what it is.
Haute couture is a fascinating world: everything begins with a designer’s idea, but around that person unfolds a highly specialised universe that outsiders can barely access. In Mumbai too, this culture of secrecy prevails. To enter a workshop, you have to hand over your phone at the entrance, and you never find out which brands the embroiderers are working for. Asking questions is not allowed, nor is taking photos. I was there shortly before Fashion Week, when the workshops were operating at full capacity. Events in cities like Milan, Paris, or New York reverberate all the way to Mumbai. Yet you rarely think about the fact that those embroiderers are involved too, thousands of kilometres away from the catwalks.
In LACRIMA, you also address this Indian craftsmanship from which Europe benefits, and which wealthier countries profit from. Of course, many Indians live from this work, but how do you deal with it in a fair and ethical way? Can working conditions be improved without falling into a postcolonial dynamic, where measures devised by European research bodies are imposed without consultation on Indian companies and workers? Through social media, news now spreads extremely quickly, and fashion houses fear that something happening in an Indian workshop could damage their reputation.
So we are seeing a kind of race towards ‘total transparency’, alongside the established culture of secrecy in haute couture. In India, I also met Maximiliano Modesti, founder of Les Ateliers 2M in Mumbai. He lives in India and works to improve working conditions and recognition of embroidery as a craft. He approaches the profession in a distinctly political and ethical way, and his artisans work for the biggest fashion houses. He told me how it used to be completely hidden that embroidery was done in India—and moreover by men.
The transmission of craftsmanship is also an important theme, especially in the profession of lacemaker. Did this aspect enter the performance through your encounters with the lacemakers of Alençon?
Absolutely. In my conversations with Johanna Mauboussin (director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Dentelle) and lacemaker Brigitte Lefebvre, transmission was a recurring topic, because it is a profession that is at risk of disappearing. They were very happy when twenty-five-year-old Amandine joined them and also wanted to become a lacemaker. With her arrival, this craft may survive for another twenty or thirty years. The others are older and can no longer work until seventy-five due to eye problems or joint pain. The profession could therefore die out within ten years, but thanks to Amandine taking over, it continues to live and may be passed on again in the future.
We have already spoken about professional secrecy, but there are also storylines involving family secrets and other private secrets…
I will not reveal the story of the character Thérèse here, but I can say that it touches on a recurring theme: that women are often the guardians of secrets and silence. When they were victims or witnesses of domestic violence, they not only carried that secret themselves, but also passed it on to the next generation. I am thinking of a documentary that made a deep impression on me: Histoire d’un secret by Mariana Otero (produced in 2002 by Archipel 33). It tells the story of a family with two parents—a father and a mother—and two daughters. One of the daughters made the documentary. The mother died when the girls were young, and astonishingly, no one in the family had ever told them.
You choose to work in blocks: periods of rehearsals alternated with breaks for the team. What does this method give you as a writer?
I have been working this way since SAIGON. At the beginning of each block, I bring written scenes that I test on stage and then rewrite. It also gives me time to get to know the actors. My productions always involve multiple languages and registers, and I want to become attuned to each performer’s specificity: what kind of French they speak, what kind of Indian English, London English, or Tamil… What I write must connect with the actors’ language.
That is important to me, and it is only possible if you take the time. I also have many fictional storylines in my head that I want to test on stage. And sometimes I think: this was a beautiful idea, but it doesn’t work on stage. Then I have to let it go. In that way, new storylines emerge while others disappear because they do not convince in rehearsal. Between blocks, I need time to reflect and continue writing. There is also a very practical reason for these blocks. As in my other productions, LACRIMA includes both professional and non-professional actors. You cannot work with a traditional rehearsal model where you start two months before the premiere and rehearse continuously until the performance is ready. People who have never acted need time to adjust, even just to leave home and spend entire days in a theatre. A kind of organic rhythm must emerge, and that comes from this back-and-forth process. The piece also needs time to mature between blocks. Moreover, it takes time for people to really get to know each other, both for them and for me. The actors are between 18 and 82 years old, so truly people of all ages and backgrounds. How do you really get to know each other in that case? A plant does not grow faster if you pull on it. For me as a writer, it is also a process of integrating people into my writing, and with performers who are new to theatre, you have to build all of that gradually.
In LACRIMA, actors play multiple roles. Is this the first time in your work?
Yes, I had never done that before. I am so obsessively committed to the credibility of characters that for a long time it was unthinkable for me to have one actor play two roles. But I also realised it limited me in terms of storytelling—I could not bring a character on stage for just one scene. That is why I decided to do it in LACRIMA. I wanted to challenge that aspect of my work, and I also needed that freedom in writing. What is also different is the stage design.
It is less realistic than in my previous productions. It takes place in several locations at once, and part of the stage remains visible. We do not pretend the stage is ‘real’: it is deliberately shown as theatre. We were not sure it would work; we even thought we might return to one actor per role after a week. But it does work, and I actually enjoy it a lot. It is a playful approach that gives me new freedom in writing. Even non-professional actors play multiple roles. It also changes the audience’s perception. Previously, spectators might think someone on stage was more or less themselves. But that has never been the case: everyone performs a fictional character with a name, a costume, and a story unrelated to their real life. Even a non-professional actor is performing an interpretation. When actors play multiple roles, it emphasises the fictional nature of the role.
Could you tell us more about the role of video? Video also allows you to introduce other characters. And as you said, it is part of a stage design that does not imitate a realistic space.
From the very first discussions with the team, we talked about using split-screen. It is a great way to show multiple situations simultaneously: what is happening elsewhere at the same time? It was widely used in the American series 24 (by Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran). There you see Jack Bauer in action while simultaneously discovering what is happening elsewhere on the split screen. In LACRIMA, I also want to move towards this kind of storytelling: ‘meanwhile in Mumbai’, ‘meanwhile in Alençon’, or ‘meanwhile in Paris’… This allows the audience to experience how it becomes almost a ‘mission impossible’ to finish the dress on time. We are playing with this familiar narrative language.
Aside from Princess Diana’s wedding dress, did you have a specific princess in mind?
The princess in LACRIMA does not really exist. At one point I considered basing it on a fictional version of Meghan Markle’s dress, but in the end the storyline worked without being attached to a known figure. At first I had made the princess rather unsympathetic, but I changed my mind. I have no particular fascination with Princess Diana, but what moved me was that she was loved by the public. I also knew that sewing as a theme would resonate with everyone in the team, not only haute couture. In SAIGON, food brought people together, and here sewing plays a similar role. Dinah, Liliane, Vasanth, Anaele, Vinoth or Nanii are all very different people, but they all have an emotional connection to sewing—sometimes simply because they saw their mother sew as children.
Has the theme of sewing also sparked conversations about the professions involved? For example with Benjamin Moreau, the costume designer, or Pauline Zurini, head of the Théâtre national de Strasbourg costume workshop, or the workshop team?
Absolutely. The costumes were made in the Théâtre national de Strasbourg costume workshop, led by Pauline Zurini, whose team has tremendous craftsmanship. We also held our first rehearsal blocks in that workshop. Benjamin explained to me the different steps in making the dress. He would ask: what kind of dress do you imagine? We discussed it, and he made sketches.
I also immersed myself in the terminology of all these professions. That is almost an obsession of mine: I always feel I do not know enough. If it were up to me, I would spend years on it or even obtain a DMA (Diplôme des Métiers d’Art) diploma in costume making. When I did research for KINDHEITSARCHIVE (2022), with the Schaubühne in Berlin (where Caroline Guiela Nguyen was artist-in-residence), I followed several adoption organisations for a year, and I could have continued indefinitely. The lives and daily realities of people in their professions are an inexhaustible source of inspiration for me. But at some point I have to accept that I will never know everything, and that I already have enough material to let my imagination work and start writing.
You are considering making a series as a follow-up to LACRIMA. Would you keep the same characters and storylines?
I do not know yet, but it will probably be a completely new project. I love the idea of having, on the one hand, the stage production LACRIMA, and on the other, a series. I am looking forward to a second platform to continue telling the story, but with different characters and different narratives. In the stage production, for example, I did not develop the mystery of the veil. That veil is the largest piece of lace ever made in Alençon, but no one knows who it was intended for. It disappeared for years but resurfaced in the art market. Who ordered it? Who wore it, and on what occasion? These questions keep haunting me. It would be a wonderful storyline to explore, and possibly an important thread in the series. I also want to develop the family history of the character played by Nanii. In the performance it is only a faint thread in the background. Things that are minor in the stage production could become central in the LACRIMA series. The series would therefore be a spin-off or sidequel of the stage production LACRIMA. Do you know what that means