Je meurs de ne pas mourir

What if Saint Teresa of Ávila returned to Earth today and discovered, stunned, that her remains had been scattered as relics to the four corners of the world? Once she has regained her senses and reassembled her body, she travels across Spain, navigating marginality, new mystical revelations, the beginnings of a career in stand-up comedy and electronic music.

Paco Bezerra’s text resonates particularly strongly today. Saint Teresa of Ávila, Spain’s great mystical icon, embraces her desire, her fire, her freedom. She dismisses her father, who wants to marry her off, and invents a form of absolute resurrection. Like Isis, who finds the pieces of Osiris scattered to the four winds and brings him back to life, Teresa recreates herself and literally goes out into the world to retrieve her limbs and her identity. From this initiatory journey, she will be reborn anew and as a pioneer, recreating the possibility of a human community.

After lending her features to Sarah Bernhardt and Gisèle Halimi, Estelle Meyer here embodies another flamboyant figure, a feminist ahead of her time.

Performance Estelle Meyer Direction and set design Aurélia Lüscher