Cataract Valley

She has played André Agassi onstage. At the Théâtre de la Colline, she gave a voice back to Barbara Loden, the wife of Elia Kazan. At the Comédie-Française, she reinvented, in the company of Sébastien Pouderoux, one of Bob Dylan’s mythical recording sessions. Marie Rémond certainly has a keen eye for the singularities of American culture. Here, she turns her attention to Jane Bowles. The latter published only three books in her lifetime. But they were enough to earn her praise from her peers: her husband, Paul Bowles, but also Tennessee Williams and Truman Capote. Her enigmatic sense of humour bridges gaps, beautifully. Behind her plots are a wealth of secrets, mistaken or difficult-to-live-up-to desires, and, of course, the unsaid. Her female characters are “incapable of adapting to the world handed out to them”, and succumb to the torment of their own emotions. They constantly find themselves being confronted with infinitely small decisions which, though invisible from the outside, change the course of their whole lives. Why does Harriet play around with the feelings of Beryl, the stumpy, blond-haired waitress, with a stubborn look in her eyes? Why does Sadie, her young sister, pay her an impromptu visit? At Camp Cataract, somewhere between summer camp and sanatorium, madness is never far away... For Marie Rémond and Thomas Quillardet, there is something very touching about these difficult to grasp figures, and their “interior chaos”. The task ahead for this duo will be to build up close, delicate portraits of these  unpredictable women.