With Sarah Chaumette, Camille Dagen, Marie Depoorter, Romain Gy, Hélène Morelli, Achille Reggiani and Nina Villanova

By using Simone de Beauvoir’s Mémoires for its material, the company Animal Architecte is neither looking to celebrate an iconic figure nor offer a biopic. At the crossroads between a documentary approach and an immersive dive into often dazzling texts, seven actors and actresses reinvent through their interpretations a life that continues to recreate and rewrite itself. How did Simone de Beauvoir become the author of her own existence? How did she manage as an adolescent to escape the script imposed on a young girl from a French Catholic bourgeois background? How does she continue to tell, with razor-sharp lucidity, how her time, the world and people influenced her? This is what lies at the heart of Les Forces vives.

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Based on The Second Sex, Cahiers de jeunesse, Memoires of a Dutiful Daughter, La Force de l’âge and La Force des choses (books 1 and 2) by Simone de Beauvoir © Éditions Gallimard

Cast

set design, costumes Emma Depoid
dramaturg Rachel de Dardel
artistic collaboration Lucile Delzenne
lighting Sebian Falk-Lemarchand
composer Kaspar Tainturier-Fink
video and framing Typhaine Steiner
wigs Kuno Schlegelmilch
design of technical equipment Édith Biscaro


production Animal Architecte
coproduction Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe, Maillon - Théâtre de Strasbourg / scène européenne, Le Phénix - scène nationale de Valenciennes pôle européen de création, Centre dramatique national de Tours - Théâtre Olympia, Centre dramatique national Besançon Franche-Comté, Comédie de Reims - centre dramatique national, Comédie de Colmar - centre dramatique national Grand Est Alsace, Festival d'Automne à Paris

with the support of the Fonds de production de la direction générale de la création artistique
with the artistic participation of the Jeune théâtre national, the Jeune Théâtre en région Centre-Val de Loire and the Fonds d'insertion de l'école du Théâtre national de Bretagne

Animal Architecte is supported and accompanied by the Direction régionale des affaires culturelles Grand Est - ministère de la culture, as part of its support for contracting.

in co-production with the Festival d'Automne

Biography of Camille Dagen and Emma Depoid

Camille Dagen, director, writer and actress, and Emma Depoid, set designer, founded the company Animal Architecte together in 2018. After Durée d'exposition (2018), in 2020 they presented Bandes at Le Maillon in Strasbourg, based on Lipstick traces by Greil Marcus. These two shows will be revived at the Festival d'Automne in 2021 and 2022, the year in which they co-wrote La Vie dure with Eddy D'aranjo at the CDN de Tours - Théâtre Olympia. The fruit of a close dialogue between writing and stage design, Animal Architecte's shows draw on non-theatrical material: photography, architecture, dance, philosophy, history...