It all starts with a few words, quite dizzying for those who speak them in front of Annick Cojean. “I wouldn’t have made it here, if …”. This is how the journalist’s interviews begin.
“Faced with his empathy, his great listening skills, his interlocutors know that they can trust him, engage in a very intimate and universal register at the same time”, Julie Gayet tells us over the phone.
Some of these interviews were the subject of a collection published by Editions Grasset and Fasquelle. We discovered in a new light the fate of thirty inspiring women, from the world of culture, politics or fashion.
Then the book became a show, directed by Judith Henry, which we find on the boards with Julie Gayet.
Winding routes
One turn, each person plays Annick Cojean or an interviewee. Through their voices, in a minimalist device, Christiane Taubira, Amélie Nothomb, Cecilia Bartoli, Gisèle Halimi, Nina Bouraoui or even Virginie Despentes emerge.
“In these women’s confessions there might be something intimidating, even overwhelming. But that’s not the case, they also touched on their failures, their personal construction and some pain. Despentes, she writes. with a scalpel, she’s a strong personality. There, she confides that her life changed at thirty, when she quit alcohol. There is something very powerful in her words “, continues Julie Gayet.
If she recognizes the exceptional nature of each person’s career, she still manages to find similarities in the trajectories of the women she embodies with Judith Henry.
“The relationship with their mother, for example. But also the violence they or members of their family have suffered. It is also often a question of injustices or differences.”
“Very proud” to carry the word of these extraordinary women, the actress having often navigated between the auteur cinema and a more popular register assures to have “felt the greatest stage fright of (his) life” the evening when the novelist Nina Bouraoui is attending a performance.
The one who is also a producer and director then enjoys her projection capacity: “When Amélie Nothomb won the Renaudot Prize, I had an amazing reaction, as if I had won this prize myself!”
Racism, homophobia, gender equality
While not considering I would not have arrived there, if … as a feminist show, Julie Gayet believes that several very current themes are evoked there through the course of life.
“It is a question of racism, homophobia or equality between men and women. We also wonder about the reasons why all human societies are built on the principle of male domination.”
– From December 1 to 3 at the National Theater in Nice. (8 p.m. on the 1st and 3rd, 7.30 p.m. on the 2nd). Prices: 25 euros, reduced from 5 to 22 euros. Rens. 04.93.13.19.00. and tnn.fr.
– December 16 at the Théâtre Princesse-Grace, in Monaco, at 8:30 p.m. Prices: from 25 to 35 euros, reduced from 17 to 24 euros. Rens. 00.377.93.25.32.27. and tpgmonaco.mc.