Mémoire de fille

The adaptation of Annie Ernaux’s novel: alone on stage, a woman looks back on her first loves and her first shame. Summer 1958, Annie is 17 and dreams of love. Working as a counsellor at a summer camp, she falls for H., the head instructor. But their first night is extremely violent. The young woman then embarks on a series of affairs, seeking a freedom that is immediately denied to her. Veronika Bachfischer, Sarah Kohm and Elisa Leroy take on a challenge: adapting Annie Ernaux’s coming-of-age novel for the stage, for which she won the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature. Between memories of youth and a contemporary perspective, actress Suzanne de Baecque, microphone in hand, traces the thread of Annie Ernaux’s memories. She interweaves them with her own memories and evokes her own “girlhood shame.” An intimate and universal journey through women’s desire in the face of the merciless patriarchal law. Based on: Annie Ernaux A creation by: Veronika Bachfischer, Sarah Kohm and Elisa Leroy With Suzanne de Baecque and the voices of Lou Chauvain, Mélodie Richard, Elizabeth Mazev and Christine Guerdon